A Useful Aphorism


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

There is an old aphorism in bridge that goes like this: your play should be consistent with your bidding. That is to say, once you're settled in a contract, you must play as if your bidding has been sound and you are going to make. Oh, there are bound to be times when your partner overbids like crazy and you can tell at a glance that you're going down. Nevertheless, this is a very sound aphorism, by and large. You must picture the cards distributed in just such a manner as will allow you to bring that contract home. One declarer could have profited greatly by heeding that aphorism here.
Only two people were in slam here, and for good reason. It's an awfully ambitious slam, requiring more luck than the cards are wont to offer. One of the pairs was sitting at the top of the scroll, down two, the other at the bottom, with a top score for their direction. They got the same opening lead, and given that this is a slam without a lot of exchanging the lead between declarer and the defense, you can suspect that one declarer simply exploited that lead where the other didn't.
The king of diamonds. You know, you might consider ducking that trick. True, on a 4-1 diamond break, you might see a diamond continuation ruffed for down one before you get started, and indeed, the successful declarer did find a better line than ducking it. I only say you might consider letting the king hold for a moment. Remember, you've got to be thinking that the cards are just right for you, and on a 4-1 diamond split, it looks to me as though you can't make whatever you do.
The successful declarer went up, took three rounds of trump, ending in the closed hand, and led a low diamond, drawing the Q from West, which settled that contract. Well, almost. Declarer can ruff only one heart, and hence must sluff two on the long diamond and hence can sluff only two clubs, so he's still dependent on the club hook. But West led a club there, East going up, and now declarer was on claim.
The other declarer? He also took that king of diamonds lead, took three rounds of trump -- and here they parted. His trump leads were the K, then the Q and then a trump to the ace! Oh, please. You lead toward your honors (by and large). So when you can end up in either hand upon the completion of drawing trump, you must decide before the first round of trump which hand you want to finish in.
But couldn't there be a 4-1 trump break, the four held by West, meaning we could finesse the ten on the third round and pick up his holding? No. Remember, you're picturing the cards as being consistent with your bidding. If you have to run all your trump to pick up West's four-card holding, you're not going to make this slam. So you don't picture that holding. You must wind up after three rounds in the closed hand, as did the declarer above, so as to lead toward the second highest diamond with West marked for holding the highest (marked, but not certainly holding it).
The hand is that simple. A lucky make if you're in six, but it's there.

It's there on the king of diamonds opening lead. But what about a heart lead? My first thought was that you couldn't make on a heart lead. But if you follow the above aphorism and put all the cards you want in the hands where you'd like to have them, you can even make on a heart lead, thus: ruff, Q of clubs, low to the 10 if not covered, diamond to the A J, duck if West splits his honors. Now you can handle another heart lead, draw trump and then take the finesse against the second honor.
Suppose West continues diamonds. You'll win -- and note one difference from the actual hand above. You must finish drawing trump with the ace! That would then be your only entry to dummy with all trump out. You have no more diamonds in the closed hand. You have only three trump in dummy after using one on the opening lead. So you decide before drawing trump that you need to finish in dummy.

Above I said that you must duck split honors on that diamond lead. This isn't like an opening diamond lead, where you can duck or win and later lead toward the jack, for in that case you'll have a trump left after the opponents' trump are drawn, and thus an entry to the diamonds by way of a heart ruff. Here, with a heart opening lead, you can't win the first round of diamonds, figuring on later leading toward the jack. For if you do it when all trump are out, you have no more trump left in dummy and can be set with another heart lead. And if you do it before all trump are out, a heart lead will have the same effect, for it will cut dummy down to fewer trump than East holds and you won't have access to the long diamonds with trump drawn.