After a long, but very standard auction, South finds himself in six spades with a finesse position available in each side suit. The good news is that the spot cards in the side suits are such that there is some hope that one or more of them might be established for discards.
West, on lead after hearing all four suits bid naturally by the opponents, made the best lead of the four of spades. He was fairly certain that nothing would be "given away" by leading a trump.
Declarer won cheaply and played a second spade. East discarding a small diamond. Declarer allowed the last trump to remain outstanding. It was time to decide on which side suit to work on.
The club suit offered a "two-way" finesse for the queen. It would be best to leave that for last when more information might be available. There was nothing to gain from the diamond finesse. If it worked it would save a trick but there was no other advantage to taking it. The lead was currently in the closed hand and the heart finesse offered a couple of possibilities. If it lost, declarer could win any return, cash the ace and trump a heart. Then, if the other heart honor fell, the fourth heart would be established for a diamond discard.
To that end, declarer led a small heart to the queen. East played the king and led the eight of diamonds. This might be a very good false-card (normally, the return of a high spot card denies an honor card in the suit), but declarer wasn't going to try to find out. He played the ace of diamonds and led a heart to the ace and returned a heart to trump. Both defenders followed and the jack did not appear.
The club finesse was the last opportunity to set up a trick for a diamond discard. So far he knew that West held three spades, three hearts, and one diamond. He knew that East held one spade, three hearts and two diamonds. The king of hearts had been in the East hand and the king of diamonds was presumably with West. With nothing else to go on, declarer decided to play East for the queen of clubs. He based this decision on the fact that East had a greater number of unknown cards than West did. This is an admittedly thin reason because the difference was one, but it is better than no reason at all.
A trump to the queen extracted the last outstanding spade. The ace of club was cashed (in case the queen was lurking singleton) and a small club was led toward the closed hand. The queen appeared from East and declarer was able to negotiate the rest of the tricks for a well played small slam.
There was nothing fancy about the play. No coups or end
plays. But 90% of the hands you will face will come down to
simply playing the cards in the order that is to your best
advantage.
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