Assume you reach three notrump as shown and West leads the ten of spades. When you play low from dummy, East signals with the eight, and you win the trick with the king. This gives you eight sure winners, and the question is what to play at trick two (remembering, of course, that you can see only the North-South cards).

There are two lines of play that stand out. One is to lead the queen of hearts, discarding a diamond from dummy; the other is to lead the eight of diamonds, planning to finesse.

Actually, one of these plays is demonstrably right, and the other is demonstrably wrong. Nevertheless, it’s easy to make the wrong play — which is to lead a diamond instead of a heart at trick two.

The great attraction of the diamond lead is that you plan to finesse into the nondangerous hand, East, who cannot advantageously return a spade. However, this reasoning is unsound, since if the diamond loses to East, he will presumably return a heart. If West has the ace, he will win and return a spade through dummy’s Q-5, and down you go.

You should conclude, therefore, that the contract cannot be made unless East has the heart ace, and on that basis, you should simply lead the heart queen at trick two.

In the actual deal, if you lead a diamond at trick two, West plays the queen, and the contract is defeated whatever you do next.

The bottom line is that no matter how the diamonds are divided, the contract fails if West has the ace of hearts, and you should proceed accordingly.

Tomorrow >> Famous Hand.

— Steve Becker