Losing the Plot...

[OliverC]

No Trump hands can be difficult, I'd be the first to acknowledge that the following hand is not totally straightforward, but sometimes you just have to do your best and hope the cards are okay for you. The main thing is not to panic on a tough hand, but to try to figure out what is going on.

EW Game, Dealer West

You are North and the bidding has gone

Bidding
West     North     East     South
No         1         2       No(1)
No         X            No        3 (2)
No         3NT(3)    All Pass

(1) 0-7 any shape
(2) In case you're wondering about the "fast" 3 , I didn't want to "bag" the NT Declarership in case Partner was strong balanced (as here) and also didn't want to Pass 2NT-3 and leave Partner stranded when there was a better Heart contract available.
(3)

West Leads the King and this is what you can see:

South (Dummy)
  85
  J987
  92
  Q10753

  King led.

North
  AJ10
  AKQ10
  AQ106
  J2

This might be a tough contact, to be sure, but Partner has pretty much what they promised (not very much LOL). Firstly, what do you do over the King of Spades? It's pretty much essential to take this trick, because it guarantees you 2 Spade tricks. Missing the 10, you might duck it, because it will force West to switch to another suit, but here there's no real advantage to be gained and potentially a lot of disadvantages (You might gain only 1 Spade trick rather than 2, for example).

Having taken the first Spade trick, how do you plan the play?

Firstly it's clear you are unlikely come to 9 tricks unless you make something of the Clubs (2 Spades, 4 and 3 Diamonds would do it, but making 3 Diamond tricks relies on gaining 2 entries to Dummy, and you have only one certain entry in the Jack of Hearts. The Spades are likely to be at least 6-2 if not 7-1, so you are definitely going to struggle on this hand if East has one of the Club honours unless you can persuade them to take it immediately when the Spades are 6-2. The good news is that if East has 6-card Spades, they are unlikely to have much length in Clubs, so if they have a Club honour, they may well take it immediately.

We can test the waters without committing ourselves to anything by playing off the top 2 Hearts in our hand. If Opps follow to both tricks, we can even play a 3rd round, retaining the Jack in Dummy as our needed entry. On the AK both opps follow small, and on the Queen, East shows up with 3 Hearts, and West discards a Club. That means East has at least 9 cards in the Majors, and so is unlikely to have much in the way of Clubs.

Now when we lead the Jack of Clubs, East plays the 9 and West wins with the King and fires a Spade through. If East takes the Queen of Spades and returns another one, West will show out so we know the Spades were 6-2.

Now we try a small Club to Dummy's 10. East shows out and discards a Spade. It doesn't matter if West wins this trick or ducks. Either way we still have an entry to Dummy in Hearts if we need it. 4 Hearts, 2 Spades and a Club is 7 tricks, so we just need 2 Diamond tricks (since clearly we're never going to get more than 1 Club trick.

Now, therefore, we have to make the assumption that West has the King. If East has the King, we can never make 9 tricks, because as soon as they win, a flood of Spades will follow. We've no need to try the finesse of the 10, because we only need two Diamond tricks to make our contract.

So if West ducks the second Club, we abandon Clubs and try the finesse of the Queen of Diamonds. If West takes the second Club, we win inevitable return with the Queen, and claim our 9 tricks when the Queen holds. East had the Jack of Diamonds and 6 Spades, and West was 4-5 in the Minors with all of the outstanding Minor suit honours apart from the Jack.


What actually happened...
At the table, Declarer tried ducking at trick 1. East switched to a Diamond and  Declarer took West King with the Ace. Declarer now tried the Jack of Clubs. West won with the Ace and returned a Spade. Declarer held up again and East cleared the Spades. In full panic mode now, Declarer played 4 rounds of Hearts instead on concentrating on the Clubs, and once in Dummy tried the finesse of the 10, losing to East's Jack. and 2 more Spades followed, for -2.

The moral of this take is not to panic. Count your tricks and concentrate on trying to establish tricks because you start compromising your ability to move between the hands. The 4th round of Hearts before you've established a Club trick was clearly wrong here, especially once you've given up a Spade trick, because 4 Hearts, a Spade and 3 Diamonds is not enough for your contract. You absolutely have to make a Club trick as well, even if West does have KJx(x) in Diamonds.

This was not the time to try ducking at trick 1, because the chances of West not having a top Club are almost zero, given the bidding, and it's too easy for East to switch to something else. Moreover, there a significant chance that East will turn up with 7 Spades (at this vulnerability, anyway), in which case ducking definitely gives away a trick to no advantage.