Can be Made


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

This is a hand eminently amenable to deciding, "I'm going to account for every card in dummy!" And it would work. On that accounting, you dismiss the losing club, even without a club lead. You can't do anything about it, and can afford it. Which means you must ruff out those two low diamonds. If you don't ruff out two diamonds, then you aren't accounting for every card in dummy and won't have twelve winners. The only possible path to twelve winners without ruffing two diamonds in the closed hand (from declarer's viewpoint) is an A K tight in clubs, an awfully specialized holding that you don't want to bank on (particularly when 4-3 diamonds should do the trick for you), and which of course isn't there.
I have three printouts of this hand, two in hearts, one in spades, which are almost identical suits here. Every declarer went down. Two of them quickly took three rounds of trump, and what can one say? If you take three rounds of trump, you can't ruff two diamonds with one trump in the closed hand, can you? Oh, I didn't think of that! And as for the declarer who didn't cash three consecutive rounds of trump? Well, he made one of the strangest plays (the other two made a self-destructive play, but not a strange one: I see it all the time, i.e., drawing trump too soon for what you have to do with the suit). Playing in six hearts, declarer won the spade opening lead, cashed the Q of hearts and lost a club. Back came another heart, taken by the K. And now you don't have the entries to ruff two diamonds and draw trump. Indeed, declarer had wiped out dummy's top honors, so ruffing two diamonds in the closed hand would make the 10 of hearts high! Obviously there wasn't anything approaching a count of winners or losers here or any planning.
On West's return of a heart, declarer had been given another chance. It looks to me as though a spade follow-up would have beat the contract. I at first thought that winning with the 9 would have saved the day, then said, No, that won't do it and then (when I remembered declarer had lost a club and hence had a club re-entry) that that would do it. Win with the 9, A K of diamonds, ruff a diamond with the J, back with a spade, ruff a diamond with the ace, ruff a club, cash the K of hearts, drawing the last trump and claim.
Declarer's first mistake was cashing that Q of hearts. That's a key entry to dummy if you want to ruff two diamonds! Don't eat it up beforehand for no earthly purpose. Note how easily the hand plays if one simply sez, "I'm going to ruff two diamonds and obviously cannot ruff two of 'em if I have only one trump left. So I'd better get to it." Starting at trick 2, cash the A K of diamonds and ruff low. Now you can lose a club so as to create an entry by way of a second-round ruff, or you can lead a spade. When back in dummy, ruff the fourth round of diamonds high, cash the J of diamonds and now low to the K Q. Bingo.
It would be a mistake here to return to dummy with a trump after the first ruff. For then when you ruff a fourth diamond lead high, West sluffs a spade! Now the heart suit blocks and you have no re-entry to dummy. The best you could do would be to play the Q of clubs and hope West has the A K, which we can see he doesn't. No, you wanna use the spade re-entry first, and then you can use the trump re-entry, when it doesn't matter what West sluffs on the fourth round of diamonds. Draw trump and claim (conceding that club).
Of course the real mischief here is not that gratuitous cashing of the Q of hearts. That's merely an offshoot of the real problem, which is that declarer had no idea what he wanted to do with the hand. He hadn't counted winners, hadn't counted losers and how he could get rid of a few. He just started laying down cards.
Ah! Suddenly I had a comic-strip light bulb moment! Why not ruff two clubs in dummy rather than two diamonds in the closed hand? (I.e., after losing a club and getting a heart back.) Let that trump lead ride to the Jack -- what a gift from West -- ruff a club low, back with a spade, ruff a club with the King, cash the A K of diamonds, ruff a diamond low, cash the A of trump and claim. This obviates the need for the fourth round of diamonds and since declarer had lost a club, he has set up for that line.
Unfortunately, one who makes the gratuitous cashing of the Q of hearts at trick two and can't bring himself to chance the 9 of trump on West's return isn't likely to be a declarer working out another path to his contract. But he might have recovered. By winning the heart return with the K, this declarer didn't try either way of bring this baby home.

In any event, I will leave this here in Entries, for that's really what it's about (well, along with counting winners), starting with declarer's first gratuitous cashing of the Q of hearts. DON'T * CASH * TOP * WINNERS* BEFORE * YOU'VE * DONE * YOUR * HOUSEKEEPING * EXCEPT * FOR * GOOD * REASON! By Housekeeping I mean all the tidying up of the hand you must do before cashing out: unblock suits, ruff in the short hand, take finesses, rectify the count, the works.
You've got to take care of those two low diamonds. Losing a club so as to ruff two clubs in dummy works only because West didn't return a second spade. But declarer can make without a defensive goof by hopping on those diamonds quickly, ruffing the third round low, back with a spade, ruffing the fourth round high (necessarily when East shows in with the last diamond on the hand), cash a trump honor and then back to the K Q. This way we don't give West a chance for a devastating return, and give up the club at trick 13.