Eight Ever, Nine Never?

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

Yes, I'm going to talk about keeping the same number as dummy in a moment. But first I want to take up the "Eight Ever, Nine Never" maxim. If you get a club opening lead here, you're not making more than four, and there's not much you can do about it. But of the six declarers who were held to 4, only two got a club opening lead. The others got favorable leads but finessed into the Q of spades, second round.

I wince when I see declarers finessing into a queen with 9 trump. It's not that they're always wrong, of course, but it seems that they're wrong a lot more often than right, though to be sure, my proclivity for wincing may make such cases stick in the memory more. In any event, as I have pointed out often, your peers will go overwhelmingly for the drop. Here the two who got a club opening lead and were destined to lose a diamond and two clubs went for the drop along with eleven others who make 5 on the hand or 6. So that's four finessing and 11 going for the drop, and I think you'll find that often.

Making 6? Well, you might guess how that was done by the category here. West leads the A of diamonds and continues the suit, declarer sluffing a club on the K, of course. Then declarer runs several rounds of spades, picking up the Q, a club to the A (at trick six for one declarer, at trick 7 for another), back to spades until he has no more at which point he runs his hearts, sluffing another club on the long heart. Sluffing another club? Long heart? One defender sluffed a heart at trick 8, the other at trick 9, each by chance exactly two tricks after declarer had led from dummy to the A of clubs. Each defender, of course, held onto that K of clubs which went on the 4th heart.

Am I suggesting that East should have figured his partner for the Q of clubs because declarer didn't take the finesse? Yes, sorta. But that's not my strongest argument. Rather the most obvious argument is that East can see that only he can protect the fourth round of hearts. Only you! West can't possibly do so, and the fact that declarer led to the A of clubs without a finesse should have been frosting on the cake, I might say.

And there's just one more point to be made, which is that just supposing declarer did have the Queen of clubs, that he had declined a finesse, and now held Q of clubs and 5 of hearts opposite K 9 of hearts. Yes, East is squeezed at that point, and there's no shame in that.

But when you're not squeezed, you don't want to play squeezed, which is to say, you wanna guard the suit you can and turn the task of guarding the other suit over to your partner, if you can. And if you can't, your partner can't guard that suit, you can congratulate declarer on his squeeze. Capiche? Keep the same number as dummy (by and large).