For Novices, Perhaps
|
 Q 7 5 |
|
 K 7 6 |
|  K 4 2 |
|  10 7 3 2 |
| 10 9 4 3 2 | |
K 8 6 |
|
| 8 | |
9 4 2 |
| A Q 9 5 |
| J 10 7 6 |
| Q J 4 | |
K 8 5 |
| A J |
|
| A Q J 10 5 3 |
| 8 3 |
Contract: 6 hearts |
|
A 9 6 |
Opening lead: Q of clubs |
This is a hand appropriate to hand to novices with, perhaps a few months play behind them. It's got just enough complexity to make it challenging for them, and not enough that they should find it too complex. There's a finessing position in spades and another in diamonds, not messing up the problem with a K J to lead to. Hearts are solid and so are clubs in the other direction of promising two losers you can't do anything about.
Aye, and there's one more "complexity" of sorts that is indicated by the category here: declarer has only one sure entry to dummy, but then, two entries if the A of diamonds is sitting right.
I don't know the self-claimed level of this player, though I wish now I'd looked it up. Anyway he took the opening lead with the A, cashed three rounds of trump, ending in dummy at which point he led a club! Yikes! He just played his last certain entry and he immediately hands the lead over to the opposition? Well, as luck would have it, he still has another entry, which he'll take advantage of, no?
Well, no. East took that club lead at trick 5 and settled the diamond suit for declarer by leading a diamond to his partner's Ace, followed by another diamond to the K. A new life for declarer, which he takes advantage of, no? Well, no. Hung up on those clubs, declarer led another club, getting a 3-3 split, which may or may not have been on his mind, but in any event, though he'd made dummy's 4th club the only one out, he of course had no entry to it.
After the second time declarer turned the lead in dummy over to the defense, declarer got a diamond lead, which he ruffed, declarer ran the rest of his trump, cashed the A of spades and then conceded a spade to the defense for down one. Oh, me.
This, I suppose, could go under FINESSING. Oh, how often contracts are kicked away through the postponing of a finesse until it cannot be taken! Fear of finessing? I would say so.