From                   3rd November, Board 17

                                          None Vul            Hands Rotated

West dutifully leads the Spade Ten, won by Dummy’s Queen.

You can count six tricks in the majors, and the remainder will be sought from Dummy’s minors.  One snag is that Dummy is perilously short of entries, all the more so if the defense holds up once in Diamonds and once in Clubs.  But maybe Clubs are 3-3 so you lead a low Club from Dummy at Trick 2 and East’s Ace appears.  What next?

SOLUTION

It seems unlikely that East would play the Ace on the first round of Clubs unless it were singleton, especially as she has no obvious and urgent shift that needs to be made.  If you trust that logic, then you should unblock the ♣Q, setting up a finesse position in Clubs and scoring 9 tricks altogether.  This being matchpoints, you’ll want more than 9 of course.

So, East wins the ♣A with you unblocking, and shifts to the Heart Nine.  This might be a tricky false-card, but it’s probably not.  You win the ♥A, and lead a Diamond, won by East.  Predictably, a Heart comes back and you take that with your King.  Is it time to grab your 9 tricks (with the aid of the Club finesse)?  Not necessarily!  You cash your Spade winners, coming down to a 5-card ending.  West must hold on to all four Clubs and one other card.  If that card is the ♥Q then you can eke out four more tricks.  You run the Club Seven (it doesn’t help West to cover with the Eight), then throw in West with a Heart.  West is now end-played in Hearts.

In this line of play, East never scores her second Diamond.  But if she had cashed it earlier then the end-play would have been unnecessary, the Diamonds would provide the extra trick instead.
 

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