A 7-1 vs. a 6-3
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|  8 |
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 A J 10 |
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 A Q 2 |
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 A K 10 9 8 5 |
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| 6 3 |
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J 7 5 |
| 9 6 4 |
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Q 7 5 3 |
| 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 |
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K J 10 |
| 3 |
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Q 7 2 |
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A K Q 10 9 4 2 |
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K 8 2 |
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------ |
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J 6 4 |
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An interesting hand from the standpoint of several wrongheaded notions. First, which works better as trump? The unbalanced spades or the closer-to-being balanced clubs? Ah-h-h-h! You got it. The unbalanced suit works better here. In a club contract, there is simply a club loser you can't escape, which queers a grand slam (which a few were in), which can be made in spades or no trump (the latter requiring a right guess for the heart queen). So have I misled you in encouraging the balanced suit for trump? I plead innocent, your honor, on these grounds:
First, I have always said that a balanced suit won't necessarily work out better. And I have pointed out that the probably inescapable loser in a balanced suit won't be avoided by relegating it to a side suit unless there is a third suit on which to get sluffs. I confess I was thinking of an unlikely third powerful suit on which to get several sluffs, where here it's a simple one-trick ace of diamonds that does the job, allows a club loser to be avoided in anything but a club contract. And lastly, I have often said, indeed as recently as yesterday's hand, that it's awfully difficult to tell during the bidding just how balanced the balanced suit is and whether it will bring in more tricks, and for that reason, when there is a choice between a major and a minor, I'll take the former, even if there is a conflict with balanced vs. unbalanced.
So, what did declarers do with these cards? The most careless declarer was the one who went down in six spades by ducking a club lead. I've referred to this on a number of occasions: be wary of the suit chosen by the defense in a trump contract! Even if you've only got five or six cards in a suit, the odds that that's a singleton are not the same as what your mathematical tables show for missing 7 or 8 cards, for a singleton invites a lead in that suit. Here the odds aren't even against a singleton! Four cards are likelier to split 3-1 than 2-2! Good heavens, you can always take a second round finesse, if that's your shtik with 9 cards, though here, of course, you'd be warned that it wouldn't work and live to try a heart finesse for a 13th trick (i.e. in no trump: in spades, you go up second round, pitch a club on the A of diamonds, ruff a club, and now you can sluff a heart on an established club).
But lemme look at the two who butchered 7 spades and the choices of the two who went down in 7 no. Seven spades should always make, for heaven's sake. After drawing trump you test clubs and you're in the hand with the ace of diamonds if the suit doesn't break. Play the ace, sluffing a club, ruff a club and you're practically home free -- if you haven't squandered your entries. On a diamond lead, try the queen and ruff, saving the ace (though you won't need it to sluff a heart, since if clubs break, you'll have plenty of sluffs on the clubs). After ruffing the third round of clubs, you have access in the ace of hearts.
One spade declarer simply didn't see the value of those long clubs. Opening diamond lead, queen, king and ruffed. Four rounds of trump, sluffing a card in each side suit, heart to the ace, ace of diamonds sluffing a heart (!), jack of hearts to the king, top two clubs (at last) and now a club is lost to the queen. You've got to hit your best side suits soon after trump are drawn. Here declarer doesn't need to rely on either a heart finesse or an even break in clubs . . or he didn't need to initially.
The next declarer did even worse in a sense. He took the ace of diamonds on the opening lead, sluffing a heart! He substantially queered the hand at trick one. Well, of course, he could now have successfully finessed against the queen of hearts, if he gets a kick out of jeopardizing a simple contract, but he didn't and like his confrere, wound up losing a club.
Seven no is in a different boat. You don't gain anything by sluffing a club on the ace of diamonds. Counting winners, it would seem that when clubs don't break, declarer has 12 off the top and need only take a right guess in hearts. But neither declarer in 7 no went down for that reason. Here's what they did:
The first (playing from the North hand above) took a spade lead and ran the suit. I've referred to this ill-advised practice many times before. You've got to develop winners if you don't have enough off the top. You've got to see what breaks you need, what finesses offer the best hope, what tricks to lose to prepare for a squeeze (though not in grand slam, of course). If you run a balanced suit, you're very likely losing the entries to give you flexibility. If you run an unbalanced suit, you may be squeezing your opposite hand before the defense is squeezed. In either way, I find it an exceedingly unwise move. In running 7 spades (without knowing if clubs are splitting or not), declarer discarded 3 clubs, two diamonds and a heart. Now he cashed the king of clubs, the three aces left, led the jack of hearts, willy-nilly covered by his LHO (playing from the North hand, remember) who'd blanked the queen to keep the queen of clubs, and the last trick was the 8 of hearts going to a shrewd RHO who kept the 9.
Another: Two top spades, club to the ace, diamond ace sluffing the jack of clubs (a nice unblocking if the suit splits 2-2), heart 10 to the king (wiping out the finesse he needs and would have discovered he needed if he'd only taken a second round of clubs), now a run of the remaining 5 spade winners, sluffing a heart, a diamond and 3 clubs (he doesn't even know how the suit is splitting yet!), now a club to the king to get the bad news, the ace of hearts and the 10 of clubs to the queen. Down one.
It's a line of play one finds commonly: I wanna put off taking any chances until I no longer have any chance for my contract unless my opponents help me. Not a wise idea. Declarer may or may not have taken the heart hook the right way had he discovered that he needed it for a 13th trick. But he didn't even check clubs first while running all those spades. If the Q of clubs falls, declarer's on claim and can spare the opponents a lot of trouble. And if it doesn't fall, a heart finesse is his only hope. But he'd wiped out that possibility on a very careless line of play.
Seven no is not an obvious contract, as mentioned above. But when clubs don't split, you've simply got to look to that heart finesse. And give yourself a chance. Take advantage of your opponents' mistakes by all means. But I say again and again, it's a poor practice to count on opponents' mistakes when you have a viable line they cannot inhibit if their names are Eisenberg and Kantar.
I confess I looked to a possible squeeze when East holds the key cards, but nothing seemed to pan out. The trouble is that declarer has to run spades first, allowing East to discard after dummy plays. So I don't see any squeeze. The 9 of hearts for the 8 would seem to do it. Declarer would get down to the A J of hearts in dummy and the 10 of clubs, opposite the K 9 2 of hearts. If East kept his Q of clubs, he can have only 2 hearts, and declarer could run the suit. But if you're that good at reading the cards, why not take a simple heart finesse and be done with it? And besides, you don't have the 9!