Surprise!

	A Q 7 5
	K Q 7 3
	K 6 3 2
	3
8 2		J 10 9 6 4
10 8 4		5 2
Q J 10 9 5 4		8
6 5		K Q J 8 2
	K 3
	A J 9 6
	A 7
	A 10 9 7 4

An interesting hand, with a surprise squeeze (to me, anyway). One declarer went down 2 in 6 hearts, while another made 7! What went wrong? Opening lead the queen of diamonds, a heart went to the king, a spade back to the king, spade to the ace and a club thrown on the queen of spades -- ruffed by West, of course. That's what went wrong.

A count of winners, along with a recognition of stoppers, could have saved declarer from that folly. You've always got those three spade winners and the club control to throw a club on the third spade. What was the hurry? Declarer should count his winners, and in so doing just might be guided to a more productive path. You have 3 top spades, two top diamonds and a top club for six. That means you're going to have to pick up six heart winners.

It might seem that on a 4-3 club break, you could cash a 5th club, and not too rarely that will be the case on such distribution. But that's a nugatory possibility here, even aside from the club split. You're going to have to ruff two rounds of clubs to inhibit two club winners for the defense in the first place, and that brings you to 12 tricks right there if you can manage your trump right. (To put this another way, the 5th club goes on the 3rd spade winner in any event.)

Running three tricks in a side suit is reasonable enough when you have a glaring loser in another suit and must knock out the ace of trump. If the round on which you sluff the loser is ruffed, well, you figure that trick was a goner anyway, and at least you got a trump out of it. But here with clubs solidly stopped and the top 4 trump, there is certainly no need to take 3 spade leads and much risk, as this declarer found out.

Hence, trick two should be the ace of clubs and a low club ruffed, king of spades and a club ruffed. Since West is showing out on this lead, it doesn't matter whether you ruff high or low, though if West showed in, you'd want to ruff that lead high. Now you cash a high heart, overtake the next heart lead and cash the jack, drawing the last trump.

At this point, you've got two clubs. One can go on the long spades and you can lose the last one, making your contract -- except that a surprising squeeze develops, if you don't rush too quickly to cash those spades even yet, a squeeze, the next declarer found. Go to the king of diamonds and ruff a diamond.

Opening lead for the successful declarer was the 4 of hearts, the six winning the trick! At first I thought declarer had been advantaged by not having the ace of diamonds re-entry wiped out, but as just shown above, that's not the deciding factor. Ruffing the clubs quickly and saving the spades is. Ace of clubs, club ruffed, diamond to the ace, club ruffed high, king of hearts cashed, spade to the king, ace of hearts drawing the last trump, diamond to the king and a diamond back, ruffed. And East?

That was trick 10. At the end of that trick, East can hold either 2 spades and the king of clubs or 3 spades. He chose to make it the latter, allowing declarer to cash the 10 of clubs and finish off with two spade winners, saving for the very end what the losing declarer elected to attack at trick two.

Footnote: Since you're not running East out of diamonds, that third round ruff isn't important. The squeeze works just as well if you took an opening lead with the K of diamonds. At that later point, you could simply cash the A of diamonds and sluff a diamond on a trump lead. It's the same 10 tricks.