Sometimes Opps get to a perfectly reasonable contract which
ought to make easily, but Declarer fumbles the ball. You need to make
certain you punish them in such circumstances. Take this hand, on which you are North, Love All, Dealer West.
North 
6
K865432
K953
8
Bidding
West North East South1
3
(w) 4
All Pass
You try the lead of the
8 and Dummy puts down
South (Partner)
??
??
??
??East (Dummy) ________ West (Declarer) K1093 | |
?? Q109 | |
?? Q1084 | |
?? AQ |_________|
?? North 6
K865432
K953
8
EW shrug off your weak jump overcall and bid to game. Declarer wins the first trick with Dummy's Ace of Clubs(Partner plays a discouraging 6) and leads a small Spade to his Ace, Partner playing low. He now continues with a small Spade to Dummy's King, and then the
9, which Partner takes with the Queen. Partner cashes the
Ace, on which you encourage with the 3, but then switches to the Diamond 6. After some thought, Declarer plays low (the 2) and you take your King. Now what?
It should be clear at this point that Opps have dropped the ball, in that given your 3
WJO, the sensible thing would be to play
Partner for length in Spades rather than the other way around, So you must take advantage of that slip and take this contract off if possible.
What is the likely distribution of the other hands? Firstly Partner has 3 Spades and it's looking like they have a singleton Diamond or something like Jxx (You can see the 3, 4, and 5 between your hand and Dummy and Declarer played the 2 on the first Diamond trick, so Partner has played their lowest Diamond). Since Declarer must have the Diamond Ace to justify their opening bid, that leaves them with probably 2 of them (A2) and Partner with J76. That in turn means Partner has 6 Clubs not including the King (which must be with Declarer). Partner is unlikely to have 5 Clubs, because there are too many Clubs missing if the 6
was
not an echo, showing an even number). That in turn means that Declarer started with
AJxxx,
Jx,
A2,
K???.
Looking at it from another viewpoint: It is
possible that Partner started with
AJ and simply switched to a Diamond to avoid endplaying you with the Ace of Hearts (expecting you to have 6 and therefore Declarer to have 2), but it's much
more likely that Partner has switch because the Ace of Hearts was his only card in the suit. In any case, you can tell that if Declarer did indeed start with a singleton Heart, 2 Diamonds and 5 Clubs, there's nothing you can do to beat this contract (because Dummy's Hearts are going away on the long Clubs or any losing Clubs Declarer has are going away on the
Q10, because Partner's Jack will fall under the Queen).
The bottom line here is that all indications are that when winning the
King, you should try to cash the King of Hearts rather then returning a Diamond. Declarer here had started with
AJxxx, !HJx,
A2,
KJ103, and Partner with
Q42,
A,
J76,
976542, and this was the
only chance to make the
King. Returning a Diamond, placing Partner with either the
King or the Diamond Ace, simply doesn't take account of the bidding or the play to trick 1 (If Declarer was somehow missing the
King, he would
surely have finessed the Queen on trick 1 since he is never going to have a chance to discard it on anything from his hand).
