My Favorite Misplay

	Q J 5 3
	A 10 8 6
	K J
	A K 10
9 6 4		K 10 7 2
J 9 5		3 2
Q 9 5 3 2		8 6
7 5		J 6 4 3 2
	A 8
	K Q 7 4
	A 10 7 4		Contract: 6 no trump
	Q 9 8		Opening lead: 9 of spades

I had to glom onto this declarer's line of play, because it illustrates a mistake I've been warning against for some time now, and that is to run your best suit immediately upon getting the lead. I deem it exceedingly unwise (by and large). The purpose, almost surely, is to induce a dumb discard from the opponents. But I can tell you that it'll do declarer harm about 10 or 20 times for every time it brings that dumb discard. If your suit is unbalanced, you're going to have to make some discards from the short hand, and some of them may be very painful to make as you in essence squeeze yourself. And if the suit is balanced, such as the heart suit above, wherein you don't need to decide on discards, there's a good chance that you'll be throwing away the suit that offers good communication between your two hands.

Some played this hand in hearts, some in no trump, and of course the trump contract would offer slightly different opportunities though the principle would be much the same. But here I want to discuss the no trump contract. When dummy comes down, declarer sees an opportunity for four heart winners (barring a bad break), three clubs, two spades and thus a need for three diamond winners. The spade suit offers two winners whether the finesse wins or not, though a losing finesse would change the dynamic in that declarer would then have to get his diamond hook right.

It's a funny thing about that two-way finesse for the queen in the diamond suit. Though guessing right in a two-way situation is often the difference between making and going down, here it doesn't matter which way you finesse! You can never get four diamond winners, and you've always got three whichever way you go. Well, that is, you've always got three provided you have all suits stopped and good communication between your hands.

Here the spade hook is not only on but is delivered to declarer on the opening lead! So a simple count would have shown declarer that with three clubs, two spades and four hearts, he needs only three diamond winners, and as just mentioned, it doesn't even matter which way he goes if he'll just get to those diamonds. Pick one way or the other. Indeed, even if choosing right would have been the differerence between making and going down and there's no other suit where you can get a 12th winner, you'll still almost surely be better off taking that finesse early, both so that you have communication if the suit is blocked, as here, and so that you don't wipe out stoppers first and go down more than one.

So here's what this declarer did after the queen of spades was covered and the king captured by declarer. He simply ran his heart suit. Yep, all four rounds. The spade suit now offers communication only to dummy, while the club suit offers only one entry to the closed hand. Which means -- ah, you saw it coming -- if declarer comes to the queen of clubs to take the diamond hook through the K J, he has no more entries to the closed hand when the finesse works. Well, actually, he still has an entry, but it's a very expensive entry. Like over a thousand points? Which is just what happened. He could, of course, have finessed the other way, guaranteeing three diamond winners regardless of the location of the queen. But that wasn't on his mind. Yep, he came to the queen of clubs, finessed the jack of diamonds, cashed the top clubs and the top spade and then overtook his king of diamonds with the ace.

Not a good idea. You wanna cash those two cards separately, no? So this declarer had only two diamond winners. The 7 of diamonds now went to the queen and the last trick was a spade lead to East's 10. Down one.