Talk about Blocked Suits!


A K 10 9 2
Q J
A K J 9 3
9
8 7 6 5 J 4 3
4 2 10 9 8 5 3
10 5 4 Q 8 2
Q J 10 8 5 3
Q
A K 7 6 Vul: No one
7 6 Contract: 6 NT
A K 7 6 4 2 Opening lead: Q of clubs

The first thing that would strike any declarer is the blocking in the major suits. On top of that, with a club lead, which just about everyone was getting with that sequence in West's hand, declarer no longer has access to the closed hand by way of clubs. So the trick here, after counting up your winners and potential winners, is to sort out the blockage -- and what shouldn't be unblocked, which indeed was the undoing of more than one declarer.
As the cards lie, the hand is a piece of cake for 13 tricks (which a few pulled in) by virtue of the J of spades falling short. One must first unblock the hearts, then come to the closed hand with the queen of spades, unblocking that suit, cash your top hearts and the club, sluffing diamonds, and then return to dummy by way of a diamond. Picking up five spades, four hearts, two-two.
But that's not the way we play bridge, of course, looking at the defensive hands before making a decision. With that in mind, the diamond hook doesn't seem ill-advised, indeed looks to be the most promising choice. If it holds, that's your twelfth trick right there. Even if it doesn't work, you still have plenty of opportunity to make your contract. You should be able to handle just about any return. On a heart return, I would come to the Q of spades and now go back to the diamond suit. I'm going to give up a heart winner (my only return to the closed hand now is by way of overtaking a second heart lead), because I want to test both diamonds and spades for splitting nicely. If I choose to unblock the hearts and come to the Q of spades to cash two more hearts and the K of clubs, I've gotta sluff three cards from dummy, and I may be sluffing from the wrong suit.
That's why I'm giving up one heart winner. I'll test diamonds, and if they don't split nicely, then try spades. I think that gives me a better chance than sticking to four heart winners. Trying two or even three different ways if you can in sequence, without hurting your chances if the first (or second) doesn't pan out, will tend to work better than putting all your eggs in one basket. Obviously, both diamonds and spades split benignly and I have the opportunity for five spade winners, four diamonds, three hearts and two clubs, which adds up to 14, and since the defense has one, means 12 winners come floating home.
No, I wouldn't be ashamed of missing that overtrick. I wish I had the play of declarers who did get 13 tricks, but it looks to me as though they must have risked too much for that off-chance. Lemme see: four hearts, 3 spades, two diamonds and two clubs (if the J of spades doesn't fall). I don't see how they could recover and pick up a 12th trick if the J hadn't fallen.
Here is what a few declarers did. The first one I have is a declarer who went down three. On a hand cold for 13 on a right guess, and certainly should make 6! I started over this declarer's play: same opening lead, heart to the queen, A of spades. That was enough for me. A of spades, chewing up the queen? That doesn't just cut out the Q of spades as a winner. That also inhibits dropping the jack, so three tricks are thrown away on that useless play. So I went no further.
Next one. Q of clubs, taken by declarer, queen of spades! Nope, nope, nope. Now your only entry back to the closed hand is by way of overtaking a heart honor. You wanna cash them first before coming to the Q of spades. However, you don't want to run all your hearts just yet, since that might set up a heart winner on a 5-2 split, which is there. Anyway, this declarer went on (after all, if he picks up 5 spade tricks, he can afford to give up a heart winner). Now the diamond hook into East, a heart back to the jack, cash four more spade tricks. He's right there, now, isn't he? On the long spades, he sluffed four clubs and . . . Hm-m-mm. I can't figure out why he's down one, which is not the first time the result doesn't jibe with the play. At trick 11, he leads the queen of hearts and the record stops. But the funny thing is, he can't lose a trick if he tries, not in OKBridge where you can't revoke. In the closed hand he holds A K of hearts and the K of clubs. Even if he could duck overtaking (which he can't, since he sluffed the last low heart), his diamonds would all be high (he'd cashed the A K, sluffing the 7 of hearts). I can only presume that declarer claimed for down one and the defense allowed this to stand.
Here's another: Club opening, diamond to J and Q, heart to the J. Declarer actually has a lot of communication at this point and should certainly have made with both spades and diamonds behaving nicely. Declarer needed only to unblock hearts, come to the Q of spades, cash the second club honor, then the top hearts and back to dummy by way of the second diamond honor. And you can't even guess wrong about which suit to sluff on the second round of clubs and 3rd and 4th round of hearts! [That was written long ago before I decided sacrificing one heart winner to be able to test diamonds and spades sequentially offers a better chance. I note that I said "You can't even guess wrong", which is true, but lucky.] Either suit will work. There's another way to play the hand, i.e., by giving up a heart winner to test both diamonds and spades, so that you need only find that one of 'em works. Hence, on the shift to a heart, unblock spades, go back to diamonds and run 'em, sluffing clubs. Now cash two spades, sluffing another club and a low heart. You don't even need luck in spades, since the closed hand will at that point have only A K of hearts and K of clubs. But when the jack falls, you can take the rest of the tricks in dummy.
How did this declarer go wrong? He started out running diamonds, throwing three clubs. Do you see the problem there? Running diamonds would have been okay if he'd only unblocked the spade suit. Now after running diamonds, his only entries to the closed hand are the Q of spades, and overtaking a heart winner. If he goes to the queen of spades, his only entry back is the Q of hearts, meaning he now has no entry to the top two hearts. So the hand is all screwed up at that point of running diamonds out to the fifth round. Declarer fixed himself by now coming to the queen of spades. Actually, he could have survived at that point, because of the favorable lie in spades, by leading to the Q of hearts. It at least offered some hope, and indeed would have worked out. But instead of leading to the Q of hearts to cash the spades, he chewed up the Q of hearts by leading the A K of hearts, which offered virtually no hope that the 7 of hearts would be a winner. Wrong again. East saved spades, though the J would fall under the A K, and threw hearts, allowing the 7 of hearts to be a winner. But declarer was still looking at the 7 of clubs, and no, that wasn't destined to be a winner. West saved the J of clubs for the setting trick. Unfortunately, I find I don't have any other declarers going down, and the hand has now gone to electronic heaven. Well, it's an interesting hand, anyway.