Watch them Entries


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

It looks like an awfully tenuous contract, depending not only on declarer's clear vision but an onsides K of diamonds, 3-2 spades and hearts no worse than 4-2. But it would appear it can be made if declarer will keep his eye on the ball and ask (himself) where his winners are coming from. With that firmly in mind, he will see what he has to do to set up dummy, to wit:
Win the opening lead in the closed hand, take two heart tricks and ruff the third round. When West shows out, declarer knows he must do so again, so he takes the diamond hook and ruffs another heart, cashes the closed hand's last spade and goes to the A of diamonds to draw the last trump, cash the last heart and then the ace of clubs, conceding a club trick at the end.
The defense got off to its most effective lead. Without it, you might have thought of a crossruff. Let's see how it stacks up with that lead, and the presumption that when you lose a club trick you'll see another spade. You have two top hearts, two top diamonds (you don't know it for a fact yet, but you've gotta get that finesse right on any line of attack) and one club for five. So you need 7 spade winners. If you get two spade leads, that's two tricks and you have four trump left, for a maximum of 6 trump winners. Won't do. And from that, I don't believe there is any way of making the hand other than outlined above.
But without a spade lead, let's see how the hand stacks up: Call it a heart lead. You have 5 side-suit winners as outlined above and even assuming a shift to spades when you lose a club, that still leaves you with 7 spade winners provided you can cash your remaining six all separately. Hence the first thing to do is to duck a club. That gives you an extra entry over cashing the ace and losing a club. Whatever the defense leads, you'll want to cash out the hearts, ruff, diamond hook, cash the ace, ruff a heart, ruff a diamond (or club) low, ruff a heart, ruff a club (or diamond) low and when the third round of clubs goes through, you're home free. You have only high trump left.
The one thing you don't want to do is to ruff a club high before getting that third-round diamond ruff low. East can sluff a diamond on the fourth round of clubs in that event. A little curiously, East just happens not to have a trump above the 6 you might be trumping with, but you couldn't know that and wouldn't want to plan on it. The closed hand's trump are all high. Of dummy's three spot cards, one goes on a (presumed) trump lead, one goes on the third round of clubs, one on the third round of diamonds. You can now ruff the fourth round of clubs with that imperious queen.