Count Your Winners

K J 4 2
A
J 10 9 6 5
Q 6 4
6 3 10 9
J 10 6 2 Q 9 7 3
K 8 7 2 A Q 3
K J 2 A 9 7 3
A Q 8 7 5
K 8 5 4
4 Contract: 4 spades
10 8 5 Opening lead: 6 of spades

This hand appeared in the Scheinwold-Stewart column on Okbridge and involved a pairs event for bridge journalists. You get a trump lead. Now count your winners. One participant won in dummy, cashed the ace of hearts, came to the closed hand with a trump and sluffed a club on the king of hearts! That's a rather remarkable play for a bridge journalist who is supposed to know something about bridge. Sluffing a club in dummy does nothing for his hand, and indeed actually weakens it.
In some circummstances, of course, it's a good idea to shorten a suit in dummy. A lovely idea. But here both of dummy's trump are already committed to ruffing hearts! So what does shorting the club suit do anyway? You don't get a ruff if there are no trump in dummy. Of course, declarer might have gotten a club ruff out of it, but that would mean one less heart ruff, so the point isn't that he can't get a club ruff but that he can't increase his winners by such a play. The clubs are such that whoever attacks the suit loses a trick (well, the defense can cash the king of clubs without harm). But when a guard to the queen is sluffed, now the defense can attack clubs with impunity -- and alacrity -- and would probably be happy to continue the suit even to the third round, giving that ruff. For that's a trick declarer is always getting, and now declarer doesn't have the entries for a 10th winner and will wind up losing two clubs, a heart and a diamond.
Count your winners! As on my first hand, so on this one, ruffs are not automatic, and declarer was in fact lucky to get a 2-2 trump break. Well, let's count our winners here. We have seven spade winners, provided we get two heart ruffs. The immediate trump lead could have held him to six spade winners on a 3-1 split. So he should lose a diamond at trick three for communication purposes after cashing his ace of hearts . He can stand a second round of trump from the opponents, whereupon he can ruff a heart, ruff a diamond, ruff a heart.
That's what he should do for 7 spade winners. However, that's not really what he should do. Adding 7 spade winners to two in hearts only brings us to nine. And that's not good enough for the contract. So where is the 10th winner coming from? Well, it could come from West holding A K of clubs. Unlikely? Certainly. And in fact, there is a better possibility. Do you see it? I bet you do.
And that is the diamond suit. At trick two (not trick 3 after cashing the ace of hearts), declarer should lose a diamond and go for a 4-3 split, which is far likelier than A K of clubs with West. What! Lose a trick when they might cash three club tricks and beat me by trick four! Well, there are several answers to that objection: they may not find the club attack if they do have that potential (say, East has A J 9 3 and fears to underlead his ace); the cards may be such that they can't run three club tricks (the actual case) and lastly, do you have a better plan?
Hence, win the trump lead, lead a diamond and hold your breath. On a second trump lead, win in dummy, ruff a diamond, ace of hearts, ruff a diamond, and if everyone follows, you're in clover. Ruff a heart, ruff the fourth diamond, cash king of hearts, sluffing a club, ruff a heart, cash a diamond for your 10th winner. You now have 2 clubs in each hand and willingly surrender them.