Tough Luck


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

Tough luck. There's just no escaping losing a trick to the A of hearts and then another in clubs. And yet, two declarers pulled that contract home. One, with a diamond opening lead, did it by stripping his hands of diamonds and spades before throwing the lead to West on a heart lead. A brave try, but West has an obvious exit with a club through the J. West can't know, this, of course. Declarer could have the 10 of clubs, in which case West would have been truly thrown-in with no chance to avoid letting declarer escape a club loser.
But lookee here. West, apparently paying little heed to declarer's stripping the hands of spades and diamonds, now led a spade (!), allowing declarer to ruff in dummy and sluff a club from the closed hand. Declarer had ruffed a diamond in the closed hand and so was demonstrably out in both hands, but West had no such proof about spades. And his partner should have helped by playing the 5, then 4, indicating an even number of spades. Still . . . West should probably have figured that his only hope was to find his partner with the Q 10 of clubs sitting over the J.
The other defensive pair had a better chance with that ace of hearts opening lead. Declarer won the spade shift at trick two and now ran hearts, well, four of 'em, while the defenders discarded -- well, here it is: West threw 4 diamonds on those four heart leads! I don't know why anyone would save spades when dummy began with 4 trump and only two spades and declarer could presumably ruff out any spade losers, but West sure did. Not one spade discard as he absolutely rushed to bring his diamond holding down to a singleton! And what was East doing? Well, after all, he's got one more diamond than dummy, so there shouldn't be any trouble, right? Wrong. East followed to one more round of hearts than West did, of course, but as soon as he got his chance, out went two diamonds! Not kidding. Each defender absolutely rushed to discard diamonds, West with a bit of overkill, sluffing not only down to one less than dummy showed, but still one more diamond discard. East just got down to one less and then went to a spade discard.
Need I mention that by cashing the A of diamonds and ruffing the 5, declarer has a winner in the 10 of diamonds, on which goes a club? So there's no club finesse.
Keep the same number as dummy holds. No, this isn't adduced as an etched-in-stone 11th Commandmant. Like second hand low, cover an honor, etc., nothing beats common sense. There are bound to be cases where it would be unwise to abide by a maxim. But I think you'll find it a highly useful maxim to pay some attention to. This, I believe, is the first case I've come across where both defenders made sure they didn't have dummy's number in a side suit.