Roughly the Same

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

This was a rather interesting hand in terms of the results. Four people bid slam, two in hearts, two in clubs. The heart bidders made their slam while the club bidders went down. Yet the hands will play substantially the same. Oh, of course, the sequence can't be the same. If you're in hearts, you'll have to clear the heart suit before exploiting the club suit, and if in clubs . . well, you know the rest. But the winners will be pretty much the same, with the exception of one spade ruff. What was the difference that led the club bidders down the wrong lane?

I strongly suspect the difference was that the heart bidders knew they had to pick up that suit, while the club bidders didn't pay much heed to the value of that suit. In any event, in either contract, you've got to find two out of these three honors onsides: the king of clubs and the K and J of hearts. Anyway, lemme look at the club declarers.

I would think that with a spade opening lead, you'd unblock the diamonds, ruff a spade, pitch a spade on the king of diamonds and then have a go at it in clubs, picking up the king, and then hearts on your 75% chance that at least one of the honors will be onsides. The first declarer I looked at seemed to follow those same first four tricks -- except that he sluffed a heart and then ruffed a diamond. Whoa! What's the purpose of ruffing a diamond? It's not a suit you'd expect to set up. Well, anyway, he then proceeded to finesse the queen of hearts into the king and on a spade return let it ride to the queen of clubs, unblocking for his finesse. In any event, he could now lead clubs only once and so had to lose a trick to the king.

So the basic principle here is, you can't afford to ruff two spades in dummy! You may need two clubs to pick up the king and indeed do. This declarer substantially placed his marbles on a 50% heart finesse, instead of the 75% double hook.

The next club declarer did the same thing at trick four, sluffing a heart on the king of diamonds, actually harming his heart holding rather than enhancing it, since he now cannot finesse past the J if he first finesses the Q into the K. The rest of the hand played much the same, except that this declarer ruffed a second spade low, led the now bare queen of clubs, which was uncovered, of course, ruffed a diamond, laid down the ace of clubs and now went to the queen of hearts, losing the same two tricks.

[A year later] Isn't that hindsight-driven? If the heart honors were reversed and the K of clubs were doubleton, declarer would have come out smelling like a rose. Yeah, there's always a setting that'll vindicate a declarer's chosen line. I am sensitive to the charge of hindsight and recognize that at times I've been guilty of it. The winning line that looks so obvious doesn't look so obvious if we go back and look from what declarer knew (and could surmise). But here I'll have to plead not-guilty.

The club and heart suits are independent of each other. With four clubs outstanding, the likeliest distribution is 3-1 -- and even if 2-2 were slightly favored, it shouldn't be a surprise that the outstanding clubs split 3-1. So you're going to want the capability of leading clubs twice. As for hearts, they offer a classic double finessing position. Finessing the 10 first is favored since you might pick up both honors. But even if you finesse the Q into the K, you can come back and finesse the 10, picking up the J. Those who sluffed a heart on the K of diamonds so as to hold themselves to one simple heart finesse were actually making their chances less likely, since now they need one particular card to be sitting right, while before (sluffing a spade and picking up the K of clubs) they needed only one of two to be sitting right.

Well, I said above that what separated the club from the heart bidders (as I saw it) was that the latter knew they had to deal with the heart suit for only one loser, while those in clubs just didn't seem to recognize this.