Tricky

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

Not an easy hand for novices and other assorted neophytes. Still, an experienced player with a dollop of common sense should be able to bring this home. Let's count: three top spades, three top hearts, three top diamonds. That's nine. And we have an 8-card club suit with 3 of the top 4 honors, which will yield 3 club winners on any 3-2 split, which declarer has here. Well, there's blockage and then there's a lack of common sense, to wit:

Declarer gets a diamond lead, lets it ride to her Q of diamonds and cashes his A of spades. Whoa! She has exactly two certain leads to the closed hand and chose to wipe them out at tricks one & two. Make sense?

I hope not to you. Let's look at the suits. The spade suit is blocked and the heart suit is partially blocked, while the diamond suit offers communication. I.e., you can go from one hand to the other in diamonds. Now if you have two entries to dummy in diamonds, and one entry to the closed hand and you get a diamond lead, don't you think you might take the lead in dummy, where there are two entries rather than in the closed hand where there is only one, the upshot being that we would then have an entry to each hand after taking that diamond lead in dumnmy.

Then unblock the spade suit, take your club finesse if you must, do not block the club suit by leading the J into East's K, for now you have A Q of clubs in dummy and how are you going to get to the closed hand's clubs? Actually, when you're missing both the K and 10 on this 8-card holding, it's unlikely though not mathematically impossible, that you will pick up the K and realize 8 club winners. Indeed, you only need 3!

So declarer might have considered winning that diamond lead in dummy and plunking down the A, then Q of clubs. If the Q holds, everyone following, we would continue the suit while we have entries to the closed hand, though we see that East would be forced to play his king on the second round. Now you would have winners to burn: 4 clubs and 3 in each other suits, which comes to 13. Hm-m-m-m. I guess you have only one trick to burn, since you can't pick up 13 winners when they have one, but the rest of the hand should be a cakewalk. You'll have a redundant winner, which means that somewhere in the subsequent play of the hand, you'll be sluffing a winner on a winner.

The declarer who let that opening lead ride to the Q of diamonds (and who tells us she's a Bronze Life Master), and who cashed the A of spades as mentioned above at trick two now blocked the club suit by finessing the J into the K! Now came a heart to the Q -- and declarer is locked in dummy! She cashed the top clubs, one top diamond, then two top spades, then lost a spade to East's 10, the setting trick, of course, and then East led a heart, allowing declarer to cash two top hearts in the closed hand, plus an established club.