Should It Make?


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

Should this make? Well, certainly if you guess the diamond queen right. That's not arguable. One club goes on the ace of spades, and you lose one club. But forgetting that, assuming that declarer goes for the drop and finds he must lose a trick to the queen of diamonds, should it make? And the answer is . . . it depends on the opening lead (and follow-up). I printed out only two lines of play here, one where declarer makes and shouldn't by the opening lead, the other where declarer goes down but should make with the opening lead he got. To explain:
The killing opening lead is the king of spades, to be followed with the queen when West gets in on the third round of trump. If there's no jack of spades on the table, then the jack of spades cannot be a threat card. West's forcing declarer to ruff the jack of spades is the exact equivalent of declarer leading his last diamond, getting the queen of spades on his left and playing the jack under it. That, declarer won't do, of course. He'd keep the jack for a winner. And West should make sure declarer does play the jack under his queen by leading the suit.
However, this defender, after getting off to his best opening lead, now made his blunder of the day, surely, going from 84% to 13. Declarer took the opening lead, sluffing a club, came to the ace of diamonds, back to the king, back to the queen of hearts, a low heart to the A K ruffed. Ruffed! C'mon, Mr. West. You don't want to ruff if you're getting garbage (by and large). (Go to the the previous example for the opposite mistake where a declarer didn't think an opponent's ace was worthy of ruffing.) Declarer doesn't play the ace or king on West's ruff. He plays the 8, and East has that 8 covered. Whether West would have led the queen of spades, queering the sqeeze and the contract, or declarer would have discovered the squeeze without the jack being wiped off the board is anyone's guess, but with that defense, who needs a squeeze? Declarer ducks on the ruff, and later sluffs a second club on the fourth round of hearts and claims.
The other declarer got the 6 of hearts opening lead, and now even missing the queen of diamonds, he can make his contract, being able to handle any lead when West gets his queen of diamonds. Say he allows West the trick on the third round of diamonds and gets a spade lead. He wins, sluffing a club, cashes the top hearts to see if the suit is splitting evenly, enters his hand with either the ace of clubs or a heart ruff, and runs his diamonds. At trick 11, he would be facing something like this:

J
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----
K 5
Q
---- immaterial
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Q 10
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2
9 7

And on the last diamond, West will be squeezed and forced to yield a trick in either clubs or to the jack of spades. What did this declarer do? Win the opening lead in the closed hand, diamond to king, back to ace, another heart lead not ruffed, of course, then the jack of diamonds to the queen, and a club lead back, a gutsy lead from Q 10, no? I dare say most of us would have led the apparently safe king of spades.
The club lead was won in the closed hand, a heart to the king, spade ace, ruff the J of spades. The jack of spades! Declarer took care to wipe his own threat card off dummy, and now he can't make the hand without a defensive error, which didn't happen. Declarer runs two more diamonds, on the last of which West discards his last spade to hold onto the Q 10 of clubs, and thereby lands the last trick for down one. Tough.