A Twofer

Outside of Trump

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

Declarer took the opening lead in the closed hand, and let's see. We have 7 clubs, three spades, two diamonds and a heart for 13 winners, no? So how come this declarer was down two? It's no trump. You can't take those top winners away from declarer. The problem is that he can take them away from himself!

After winning with the A of hearts, declarer cashed the 10 of clubs and went to dummy with a club continuation, and uh . . hm--m-mm. How's he going to get to those spade winners? And of course, the answer is that he's not going to! Declarer now has 10 winners -- and would have been held to 10 had West not made a beeline to discard hearts, i.e., except the Q. The other three hearts were West's first discards. To be sure, when you're beating a makable 7 no contract, one doesn't wanna be too picking about missing a third trick. Still, it's a little curious that West made a beeline to discard those cards, saving 10 7 5 in diamonds?

In one day I came across two hands where countable winners for the contract were kicked away from a failure to cash a winner in a hand to which declarer would later have no access to. Here is the other one: