The Right Time?

Suppose you pick up this hand in 4th seat:
Jxxx AJ98x A54 x
LHO starts the auction with 1 Spade, partner passes and RHO responds 1 Notrump. You make a dubious 2 Heart overcall which is followed by 2 passes. Now RHO reopens with 3 Clubs and is promptly raised to 5 by the opener. What do you lead?


I generally don't have a great flair for the dramatic on opening lead, but this hand seemed worthy of some thought. I figured that the opening bidder would be prepared for a heart lead considering his aggressive raise, so apparently our best hope was to make 2 tricks in diamonds to go with my ace of hearts. My best chance was to find the king of diamonds in my partner's hand, in which case it didn't matter which diamond i led...however, if partner didn't have the king of diamonds, LHO was a big favorite to hold it on this auction (RHO should have a good club suit and something less than 10 HCP). My analysis pretty much ended there and I managed to lead my 4 of diamonds reasonably in tempo. I have to admit that my heart started pounding when i saw the dummy:
AQTxx
Kx
KJ
Kxxx
Declarer took quite a while to play to trick one...I'm still not sure if he was suspicious or just taking his time examining his assets, but finally he played the jack. My partner took the queen and returned a diamond to my ace. I cashed the ace of hearts and continued a heart for a one-trick set. Actually if I had played my third diamond we would likely have scored another trick, for declarer's hand was a surprising:
void
Qx
Txxxxx
AQ98x
His choice of 3 Clubs instead of 3 Diamonds seems a bit odd but isn't crazy and this time it led to a pretty good contract. I'm confident that he would have gotten the diamond right if I hadn't led it right away because I had overcalled.

In fact, I had a small extra edge in coming up with the lead--I was playing last night at the local club where the bidding in general isn't precise enough to locate good minor suit games. My goal was to beat the contract, and it seemed likely that the underlead, if wrong, would cost at most an overtrick. Sure enough, our opponents were the only pair in game!

Which Strain?--Updated

As promised, here is one interesting hand from the recent NABC in New Orleans. It comes from the swiss teams--you are vul vs not and partner opens 1 Heart.
A9xx
K
9xxx
A9xx
The auction begins simply enough--with the opponents silent, you respond 1 Spade, partner bids 2 Diamonds and you bid 3 Diamonds. Now partner bids 3 Spades. Apparently he has a good shapely hand, but is there a range? Could he be 2-5-4-2 without a club stop? And, perhaps more importantly, what do you bid now?

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Thanks for all of the comments on this hand. I was planning on updating sooner, but figured I'd let you guys run with it for a while. As stated, I faced this problem in the Swiss. I made a poor bid of 4 spades that had a happy ending when I managed to emerge with 10 tricks. One thing that I did consider that was not brought up in the comments was that hearts could still easily be the right strain. Our stiff king is actually quite a fine holding. My 4 spade bid amounted to a guess, and a bad one, as the comments indicate--although we can control the first round of clubs and will be able to ruff the second round in the shorter trump hand, our trump are not the robust type that you like to have to play a 4-3 fit...not to mention the possibility that partner is 2-5-5-1.

In the postmortem my partner suggested the 4 Club cuebid. Assuming you are willing to give up on notrump at this point (I know that Kenny is!), the cuebid stands out. My partner thinks that 4 Clubs says, "I have a good hand but am not sure where to go with it yet." Over 4 Clubs, partner has an easy 4 Heart bid--his hand actually was: JT7 AQJxxx AQxx void.

To finish the story, 4 Spades needed some luck, including the diamond finesse. We gained an imp on this one when the other table played in 3nt with 9 toppers when the hearts split 4-2...the opposing declarer didn't take the diamond finesse and was duly punished.

Intuitive Bid

My girlfriend Alice and I arrived back in Chicago yesterday morning exhausted from a long weekend of partying in New Orleans. It was a great time, though the partying went better than the bridge for the most part...I'll try to post a few hands in the next few days. I was planning an afternoon sleeping my way out of the daze and then a relaxing dinner/cards night with friends including Dan Wilderman, who is visiting from New York. The sleeping part of that plan was put aside when I heard from Dan that he and Kenny were planning on playing the afternoon game at the local club--Alice and I decided to join in the fun and soon found ourselves sitting North-South at table 3!

Alice has still played less than 10 rounds of duplicate and our convention card includes nothing more than 16-18 notrumps, Stayman, and forcing double-raises. You might imagine my trepidation, then, when I held this hand in 3rd seat with none vul and faced a challenging auction:
AJ9x
Jx
K9
KJ98x
The opponents were silent throughout. I opened 1 Club and Alice responded 2 Diamonds. We had not discussed passed hand jump shifts so I tried to imagine what she had--I came up with a maximum pass with an excellent diamond suit. Going on this assumption, I had a few options--I could pass if I thought we were high enough, I could raise diamonds, or I could mention my spades. I figured that my hand was minimum, but the king of diamonds was likely to be a big card, so I wanted to keep bidding and decided to bid 2 Spades on the way. Alice bid a prompt 4 Spades and again I was concerned, mostly because I thought that I had overbid. LHO led a low heart and Alice produced this fine dummy:
KQT
xx
AJTxxx
Qx
I was delighted to be in the only game contract with a legitimate chance! Normal splits led to making 4--the only +420 in our direction. I was proud of Alice's evaluation of her cards on this one--she could tell that they were all pulling full weight. Well done partner!