Wed21 Play

This one is adapted from Wednesday 25 May X-Club computer deals. You may recognise it but that is not relevant here.

You are declarer in 4S and the lead is the four of diamonds. When you play low from dummy, East produces the king. How will you continue?
This is the set up:

A852
J93
T73
KQ4

KQJ964
Q7
AJ86
A

This is a familiar theme if you think about it. Simply look at your LOSERS and see what you can do to reduce or eliminate them. You have ONE diamond loser that has been established by the defence from the opening lead, and you have two heart losers. Can you find a way to avoid a DIAMOND loser? The answer is an unequivocal NO. Can you find a way of avoiding one or both HEART losers? Again, it should be fairly obvious should it not? You have a singleton ace of clubs in your hand and KQ4 in dummy. Therefore, once you take the singleton ace you can dispose of both your heart losers on dummy's king and queen. That will leave you with only diamonds, and after East's king was played at trick one, you will lose only to the queen which is presumably with West. Yes, this is one case where the terrible lead of the ace of hearts from Axx would have given the defenders the first two tricks, as long as West would know to lead another to East's king, but the sensible lead is definitely a diamond.

Many declarers still failed to make twelve tricks on a diamond lead so there is still a lot to learn about declarer play. Let me just go through it: Win the diamond ace when East plays the king, draw trumps with king and queen, cash club ace, lead another trump to dummy's ace, then cash king and queen of clubs, discarding your LOSING hearts. Then play on diamonds, losing just one trick, to the queen.