4 3 2
	8 3
	A J 10 9 8 3 2
	J
10 8 6		Q 9 5
K 10 6		9 7 5 2
K 6		Q 5 4
9 8 6 4 2		A Q 10
	A K J 7
	A Q J 4
	7
	K 7 5 3

South	West	North	East
1	Pass	1	Pass
1	Pass	2	Pass
2 NT	Pass	3	Pass
3 NT	All	pass

Opening lead a club to the ace, queen of clubs ducked, 10 of clubs ducked (throwing diamonds from dummy), a shift to spades made the jack a surprise winner. Well, lemme see: I've got three spade winners, a club and diamond and I can develop a second heart winner in perfect safety for 7 altogether. So I laid down the ace, queen of hearts, losing to West, who returned a club, East sluffing a heart. That was trick 6. I now hit spades and was pleased to find a 3-3 split for 8 winners, cashed my jack of hearts, and at this point, I was looking at the 4 of hearts and 7 diamonds opposite A J of diamonds.

Well, I figured there wasn't any chance that both had bared a diamond honor (I hadn't been counting hearts carefully, but should have) and anyway, figured my only hope lay in hearts and yes the four held, as it turned out that both were holding a guarded diamond honor.

East is the goat, of course. Out comes a discard from that four-card suit at his first chance. To be sure, if he'd discarded a spade (when the jack of spades holds, he should be able to see that the Q isn't going to be a winner), he would need discards on the run of the spades, which is to say, he's gonna have to choose between diamonds and hearts eventually. So how does he know which to pitch?

Well, I wouldn't call this quite as obvious as some other cases. It's kinda tough to blank a queen while you save a 9-high suit, but it's also tough to let a beatable contract slip to the opponents. Anyway, discarding the spade early allows East to wait, look and reflect until trick ten when declarer cashes his fourth spade -- that's four tricks later than when he did shorten his heart suit. East will have three cards at the end of trick 10. Does he want to keep two hearts and blank his queen of diamonds? Or throw a heart and keep a guard to the diamond queen? The heart bid alone should probably have guided East. But he has a double-check: if West played low-high on the first two spade leads, that marks him for an odd number, meaning declarer has 4 spades, four clubs (which have been played), four hearts (on the bidding), leaving a singleton diamond, (which might have been surmised by declarer's disinclination to go after that lovely suit).

The guarded queen of diamonds can't do much for the defense at that point -- unless, yes, of course, if declarer's singleton diamond is the king. But then in that case, East is squeezed (a squeeze that could have been broken up by an early diamond lead), and that's not his problem. Not then. He must guard the suit only he can guard -- which is hearts and hope his partner can protect the second round of diamonds. There's no percentage in protecting the second round of diamonds, which his partner might be guarding and giving up a guard in a suit his partner cannot possibly be protecting.

So the principal point is not that someone should have led a diamond earlier (they're all a little easier to see later and declarer didn't have a stiff king anyway) but that East should be very careful of his four-card suit, one that declarer bid, and discard useless cards until push comes to shove, at which point the hand may have been clarified, as it would have been here.