Entries, Again


A 8 3 2
Q
K Q 9
A K 10 9 2
K 10 6 Q 9 5
K 8 3 2 10 9 6 5
J 5 3 10 8 6
Q 6 3 7 5 4
J 7 4
A J 7 4
A 7 4 2 Opening lead: 3 of diamonds
J 8 Contract: 6 no, 6 clubs

It's an awfully ambitious slam here. Well, you can't make it on a spade lead, though to be sure, you could if the K of hearts were onsides. However, you've got good luck in clubs and good luck in diamonds. It's just a bit much to say, well it woulda made with an onsides king of hearts! You mean it woulda made with good luck in three suits. Yeah, right! But of the four declarers who went down in 6 no, none got a spade lead! They all managed to butcher the hand on their own steam.
The first thing declarer has got to do is notice the scarcity of entries. As with an earlier hand, it's not so much to count your entries as to note in what hand you must preserve them. And then preserve them. Every one of the four who went down got a diamond lead. Now you absolutely must take that in dummy and then take the heart hook. It's one of those finesses where it hardly matters whether it works or not (barring a spade opening lead). You've got two winners in the suit whether the king is onsides or not, or whether the queen is covered or not (except with a doubleton K, where a defender must certainly cover).
If declarer will preserve the A of diamonds entry, he will take the opening lead in dummy, run the Q of hearts into the K (one West player didn't take it for some reason), regain the lead, cash his heart winners, then his diamond and take the club hook for his contract.
Of the four who went down, three rather lazily let the diamond lead ride around to the ace. Now they cannot make the contract. Their only certain entry remaining is the A of hearts -- which you can't use as an entry because it means chewing up the card that promotes the 12th winner (i.e., the Q of hearts). And the fourth? He took the opening lead with the K of of diamonds, Q of hearts to the K on his left, diamond to the A, two hearts were cashed, the J of clubs led. Whew! A cover would have queered the contract. Declarer forgot to cash out his diamonds. No, wait. What am I saying. He queered the contract when he let the second diamond lead ride to the A. In a hurry to cash his heart? Well, a simple count would have shown that he can't possibly get more than 5 club winners, can't possibly get more than 4 diamond winners, and 2 heart winners and one spade. So if diamonds don't split 3-3, he can't make his contract. Far from being forgetful of the need to unblock the suit and cash out, that should have been foremost in his plans. But he wound up on the same trashheap as the guys who let the first lead ride to the ace.
One pair was in six clubs. Going down, of course. The problem with clubs is that you can't cash out the 4th diamond until trump are out, and you can't take the club hook without using up your sole entry (you still would have to push the Q of hearts through), and so you have no entry to the 4th diamond winner after trump are drawn. This illustrates one of the reasons why No Trump Slams are often more feasible than a trump slam, to wit: you can cash your winners in the order you want in no trump. But in a trump slam, you quite often don't have that luxury.