Entries, Again


K
A Q 8
A K 8 4 2
A 7 4 2
J 7 5 9 8 6 2
7 6 5 J 4 3 2
10 9 5 Q 7 6
J 8 6 3 10 5
A Q 10 4 3
K 10 9
J 3 Opening lead: 7 of hearts
K Q 9 Contract: 7 no trump

Declarer let the opening lead ride around to his king, cashed the Q, then K of clubs, and . . . . and . . . . and do you see what I see? Declarer has exactly three entries to the closed hand, outside of overtaking the K of spades, which he cannot afford to do, and he absolutely rushed to cash out those entries. Not one of those entries had to be cashed, not even the K of hearts on opening lead where declarer had no control over the suit led. And this is a penchant I see demonstrated time and time again. Not just wiping out communication, not carelessly doing it in mid-hand where a tough choice has to be made, but doing it at one's first opportunity to do so. I'll never understand why this is so common.
Now declarer cannot make the hand, an awfully lucky grand slam potential wiped out because of a hurry to wipe out his communication. This hand could as easily have been entered under Communication, Housekeeping, and Development. They do tend to overlap, I admit. For they all point in the same direction: set up your winners, test the uncertainties before cashing out top winners for no purpose whatsoever.
My first thought was that without that lucky break in spades, you can't make the hand, and that therefore, a 3-3 club break can't help you. Then it occurred to me that a stiff queen of diamonds would make a 3-3 club break very rewarding. Then it occurred to me that the J of spades could fall too short, which is to say the other defender would control the 5th round of the suit with the 9, meaning again that 3-3 clubs would do it. And then the next morning after, I visualized a squeeze in that circumstance, with the long spades in the same hand as the long clubs. Such a defender, needing 5 spades and 4 clubs, wouldn't be able to stand 5 red-suit leads, cutting him down to 8 cards. Yes, I am aware that it's a lot easier to see all these possibilities when you have the leisure to mull over the hand, and I've admitted that the possible squeeze didn't occur until the next morning. Nevertheless, the testing of these possibilities all point in the same direction: don't wipe out your communication without good reason.
So: since the spade suit is key to the making of this hand, or possibly the spades and clubs combined, one would think the first order of business would be not just the unblocking of the spade suit, but testing it out to the third round to see how the defensive spades are falling. That's not hindsight, for heaven's sake. That's going after the cards that might make the hand. As for diamonds, the fall of a stiff Q is totally improbable, but you can take one round of the suit just for laughs, if you'd like. And as for clubs, they'll wait. You don't know that you need 3-3 clubs, and even if you do, you want to delay the testing until all other possibilities have been exhausted.
Hence: with two top hearts in dummy and one in the closed hand, one would think your inclination, even before you got your mind in gear, would be to win that opening lead in dummy and thus have an entry to each hand in hearts alone. Oh, there'll be hands where you can see at a glance that you're going to need all the entries to dummy you can find, in which case you wouldn't follow any "rule" to win in the hand with two honors. But here it should be clear at a glance that you're not hurting for entries to dummy.
So I would take the opening lead in dummy, cash the K of spades, come to the closed hand with a club (or heart), and cash the A Q of spades. On this hand it's all over. But I want to show how you keep all possibilities open. If the J of spades doesn't fall, you cash the A of diamonds. If the Q falls, you're still alive, and need only 3-3 clubs and need something else very much, which is communication. You come to the J of diamonds, go back to dummy with the Q of hearts, cash the A of diamonds, sluffing a spade, finish off hearts, come to the closed hand with a club, and much like the squeeze described above, will have your contract on either 3-3 clubs or if the long spades lie with the long clubs.
If the J of spades falls too short, you finish off the diamonds and hearts, come to the closed hand with the clubs and again you have your contract on either 3-3 clubs or a black-suit squeeze. If the J of spades lies in the long hand and you don't get that improbable stiff Q of diamonds, you're dead in the water. No squeeze. No 3-3 break in clubs would help. And so it goes.
But wait! Couldn't there be a 3-suit squeeze against West, who holds a singleton heart on 4-1-4-4 distribution, including the J of spades. He discards clubs on heart leads, giving up the suit, and now declarer runs his clubs, discarding a spade, and comes to the closed hand at trick 10 on that now all-important K of hearts (so willfully played at trick one), so that the closed hand holds two diamonds and a spade opposite A K 8 in diamonds (East holding only two of 'em) and West can't guard both that last spade and the third round of diamonds.
Oh, but this hand is getting too complicated. I hope it is clear that stiff queens and squeezes aside, for those of us who can't always get our mind in gear for all these possibilities in the moderate haste of play, it's a simple hand that requires only keeping your entries and communication intact insofar as you can. Unblock and test the suit that so obviously just might hold the key to 13 tricks, and if it doesn't and the J doesn't fall or falls too short, cash out all winners in suits not envisioned part of a squeeze, i.e., all hearts and clubs on a possible spade-diamond squeeze (where the K of hearts will be the last of these cards cashed) or all hearts and diamonds on a spade-club squeeze and it's now out of your hands. (The spade-diamond squeeze depends not only on 3-3 clubs, but on diamonds not being 3-3, the long diamonds lying with the long spades. The spade-club squeeze depends on the spade J falling too short, the long spades here lying with the long clubs. At least as I see it. But the hand that a soi-disant advanced player butchered because of unnecessarily cashing out entries has become too much to pursue further. If a reader can prove me wrong on those allegations, so be it.)