A Delightful Butchering


J 10 3
J 9
4
A K Q 8 7 4 2
8 6 4 2 9 7
5 2 A Q 10 7 6 3
K 8 7 6 10 5 3 2
9 6 3 5
A K Q 5
K 8 4
A Q J 9 Contract: 6 NO
J 10 Opening lead: 2 of spades

Talk about entries! How does one go down in a six no hand with 12 top winners? There's even a potential for a squeeze against East here. It won't pan out, but the alert declarer would take it into account, without risk of a diamond hook: you run your spades, sluffing a heart, then run your clubs. On the 11th trick, if East held the K of diamonds in addition to A of hearts, he'd have to keep that ace and blank his K of diamonds, as you hold the K of hearts and A Q of diamonds. When he sluffs a diamond, you throw away the useless K of hearts and bingo. All 13 tricks. Only East doesn't have the K of diamonds, and there is no squeeze.
Still, you want to run your 12 winners in apple-pie order. Don't bounce back and forth. Run your spades, sluffing a heart, run your clubs. That's 11, no? And you've got the A of diamonds to go.
This declarer couldn't seem to focus on one suit or one hand and bounced back and forth between clubs and spades so much that he soon had no entry to those mahvelous clubs! Opening lead a spade to the Q. In itself, not harmful, but there's no reason not to cash the J and have a clean swipe at four spades. I might even say it doesn't augur well. Next came the J 10 of clubs. Since you've got 9 clubs, meaning there are only 4 out, and the top five clubs, you can overtake the 10, no? Again, he wasn't dead yet, since he had an entry in a spade honor. But again, it doesn't augur well. Declarer doesn't seem to know which suit to attack. But now he went to the 10 of spades and he's going to run his lovely clubs, right? Wrong! After going to the 10 of spades, he led the J to the K! And now he has no entry to the clubs! Down three.
I tell you, these instances of fiddling around so often presage a butchered hand. First you count. Enough top winners? If not, you want to look to suits you can develop before you wipe out entries or stoppers in the other suits. You've got enough top winners? Okay, is an overtrick available? Or two? Without danger? If so, you'd better go for that overtrick in matchpoints. If not, if you cannot lose the lead without danger, then you'd better take your winners. Let's finish off spades. That's four tricks. And now go finish off 7 clubs, knowing we have access to the A of diamonds, as we may or may not make it difficult for the defense to find discards. You will beat everyone not in that contract, beat anyone who didn't get as favorable an opening lead as you did (i.e., had the squeeze worked), beat everyone who misplays, beat anyone risking danger for an overtrick that doesn't jell, and tie the rest. Not bad work for one hand. The bidding was skillful, maneuvering declarer into the one protecting the heart suit against 2 quick losers. And then ka-boom! Down three.
It was a beautiful destruction of a lovely contract. Could he have destroyed it any quicker? No, it looks to me as though he couldn't have done it quicker. Two club leads to wipe out any entries to dummy in that suit, and then three spade leads to wipe out entries there. Mahvelous.