A Mish-Mash

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

Declarer took the opening lead in dummy with the Ace, came to the A of spades, West playing the 9! ! ! !. Declarer cashed a second round of hearts and ruffed a third, lost a club to East's K, and then, drat the luck, East would hafta lead a trump, inhibiting any more ruffs in dummy -- which means declarer is going to lose a heart, a club and one or two diamonds, depending on how he plays them.
Declarer won East's trump lead and cashed the third round, having no more in dummy. Now he led the 7 of hearts, sluffing a diamond in dummy! ? ! ? What for? A loser on a loser? (more on that later). He ruffed the heart return, sluffing a diamond in dummy and now proceeded to lead the Q of diamonds into the jaws of East's K. East returned a diamond, won by the A in dummy, followed by a ruff in the closed hand of a club from dummy, and the last trick was the 9 of diamonds into West's J.
Whew! What a lot of lessons there are on this hand, or at least with that declarer's line. First of all, since declarer would like to ruff two hearts in dummy, it would behoove him to prepare for the entry he'll need for the second ruff. The first is easy. You win the second round in the closed hand. But getting back?
Declarer had two means of having enough entries, though a tad ironically, since West favored him with the cockamamie play of the 9 of trump when he's got a higher trump than anything dummy is showing, that might not pay off here. Anyway, one way would be to ruff at trick 3 (i.e., win the heart lead in dummy, heart to the K and ruff a heart, using a trump lead to get back, for the second ruff. Declarer can then lose a club and get back, when a trump lead from East wouldn't faze him. And the second method is to lose that Q of clubs immeidately at trick 2. Now you can afford a trump lead from East, for you'll have a re-entry in a club ruff. I'll hafta sidestep how West might've handled that 9. Or to put it another way, when the 9 had been played, declarer would've done well to lose the club before ruffing a heart. It's true that East could then lead a trump, holding declarer to one ruff, but he might not if declarer doesn't announce that he's looking for a ruff. It's worth a chance. I've seen worse. And he only got one ruff anyway.
Loser on a loser. I've seen a number of players on OKBridge employing that term as if it were a clever, advanced play. And I often have the suspicion that they think they're saving a trick. After all, that's two losers going on one trick, no? Well, no. Regardless of which hand you're counting out losers from, that's only one loser from that hand. You've merely handed the lead over to the opposition and for all the disadvantages that brings and -- probably -- haven't done anything for your hand. (I'm going by the times I've seen the deliberate play of a loser from each hand, such as above, the 7 of hearts, sluffing the 4 of diamonds. And indeed, this was to prove costly for a reason to be given in the next paragraph.
How do you handle the holding of A low, low opposite Q 10 9? Such as here:
A 7 4
Q 10 9

The elementary play is to go to the A and come back to the Q 10, playing RHO for the K -- as you'd want to do if the closed hand's holding were Q 5 3. But you can enhance your chances of only one loser here if you lead toward the A 7 4, which should hold your losers to one if West has either missing honor or both, of course. You play the Q and if covered, you've already established a second winner by going up with the the Ace. If your lead rides to the K in East's hand, you regain the lead and take a simple finesse against the J with the 10 9 opposite the A little. But you've gotta take the second half of this double finesse to realize your 75% chance.
Now let's take a look at what this declarer did, as delineated above. Starting with this:
A 10 5 4
Q 9 6
Declarer sluffed the 4 of diamonds on his cockamamie loser-on-loser play and another diamond on East's heart lead that was ruffed in the closed hand. So his diamond holding looked like this:
A 10
Q 9 6

He still could've survived with only one diamnond loser by cashing the A and leading low to his Q, playing East for the K. Indeed, East would've conveniently played the K second round with his doubleton, being unable to duck, putting declarer (with Q 9) to a guess between playing his RHO for the K or for the J. But he mixed up the two methods of playing that holding, first wiping out the chances of the preferred way by cutting diamonds down to A 10, and then resorting to the method of leading the Q toward the Ace! And it just didn't work to mix the two methods up, though either would've worked if declarer played either method!
When I saw that the last diamond went to West's J, my first thought was that declarer had "rightly" led the Q toward the K and then chickened out of continuing with a finesse against the J. Declarers have been known to do that. But of course on closer examination, I saw that it wasn't a case of chickening out. He had a stiff Ace after pushing that valuable Q into East's grasping hand. And East could see it.