A Red Letter Day


K Q 8 5
6
Q J 5 4
A Q 9 8
7 4 2 10 6
K Q J 10 8 5 9 7 4 2
A 10 3 K 7
4 J 10 7 6 3
A J 9 5
A 3
9 8 6 2 Contract: 4 spades
K 5 2 Opening lead: 4 of clubs, K of hts

This was a red letter day for me vis-à-vis forcing. I was right in the middle of checking them over, moaning over the lack of viable examples, when I came across this unambiguous example where 7 declarers went down, two of them two tricks. There were further two unusual elements that added spice to the hand. One was that that's not your usual trump configuration on an effective forcing defense. I think primarily of a 5-3 holding (where one defender might hold 4 trump) and even a 6-2, if declarer has to lose the lead often enough. And the second spicey element is that the forcing potential was toally and unambiguously set up by declarer (though of course the defense then had to take advantage of the opportunity).
Question: how many stoppers do you have in hearts, and how many times do you have to lose the lead after the opening lead? The hand, of course, depends heavily on 3-2 spades and West holding at least one diamond honor (or the 10 doubleton). If you don't get that, well, your consolation is that neither did anyone else. But you don't want to bite off trouble before you have any reason to suppose it's there. Anyway, the answers to the above questions are respectively three (heart stoppers) and only two times do you have to recapture the lead. Which is pretty much to say that the hand should be a cakewalk -- unless declarer gets downright foolish.
You have three heart stoppers because you can ruff the second round in dummy and the third round in the closed hand, no? And yes, West has at least one diamond honor. Opening club lead, I would take in dummy, since it's obvious that if there's any hand you'll want to reach later, it'll be the closed one. Just about every declarer let the lead ride, however, though that's not to say that's what did them in. Run three spade leads, ending in the closed hand, of course, and lead low to the diamond honors, East winning the first round of course. Those who got a heart lead will probably get forced in dummy at that point, but you've got the K of clubs that'll let you lead toward your last diamond honor, and by golly whether West plays the ace of the 10, the diamonds are all set up. Knock out the ace of diamonds if necessary and claim.
Let me first give the two declarers who went down two on this basically simple hand. The first one (self-ranking Adv ++++) took the opening K of hearts lead and ruffed a heart! He ruffed a heart? But why? one wants to ask. You've always got that trick coming (unless you find a 4-1 spade split, and of course should take the second round of spades in the closed hand so as to take that ruff with a low spade on that split). But that's not just a trick you've always got coming. It's a heart stopper. It guards against a heart attack when you lose the lead in diamonds. He now cashed dummy's top spades and came to the closed hand with the J of spades. Dummy now has no more trump and declarer has just one more heart stopper and needs to knock out two diamond honors. He now led a diamond that went to the K of diamonds and a heart from East forced the last trump from declarer. He could have cashed out for down one, with an outside chance of making on 3-3 clubs if he'd recognized the danger. But he doesn't seem to have. He did cash two rounds of clubs, saw he wasn't getting a 3-3 club break, and led another diamond. The defense took that trick and cashed three rounds of hearts. Yeah, you wanna lead toward your honors. But when it means losing the last four tricks instead of the last three?
The second to go down two (self-ranking Adv ++) got a club opening lead, riding to the K, led to the Q of spades and back to the A, then cashed the A of hearts and ruffed with the K, back with the 8 to the Jack, now led a club to the Ace and then the J toward the K of diamonds, ducked a heart lead, ruffed the continuation with his last trump and now on a lead to the A of diamonds, the defense took the last three tricks. This is hardly an advanced player. It's not that he went down 2, but he wasn't moving directly on what he needed to do. Why's he foolin' with clubs? You might note that a 3-3 club split doesn't help you at all (unless you've misplayed it, as referred to above). What could you do with the fourth club if they did split 3-3? Sluff a heart you can ruff (no other ruff with dummy's fourth spade being possible) or the fourth round of diamonds, which will be a winner!
I'm not going through the play of the other five, the ones who not only went down one less trick but weren't quite so generous in their self-assessment. Lemme refer to them briefly:
Case 1: Club to the K, two spade leads, A of hearts, ruff a heart. This while they still need to wipe out two diamond honors.
Case 2: Club to the K, A of hearts, ruff a heart, now to trump and the diamonds. Declarer, of course, now has one heart stopper and two top diamonds to knock out.
Case 3: Same as 2.
Case 4: Same as 1.
Case 5: Same as 4.
They may not have been quite as generous in their self-assessment and indeed, one -- count 'em, one -- allowed that he was an Intermediate. The other four, three claimed to be Life Masters, one claimed Adv+++ and another Adv+ (in addition to being an LM). Oh, me.
It's such a simple hand with the spades 3-2 and the diamond honors split. Move directly on your target: draw trump, ending in the closed hand, lead toward your diamond honors (twice) and the hand falls in your lap. Plus 5.