This month your goal is to land a vulnerable slam. The scoring is IMPs, and, as is always the case at this form of scoring, don't worry about overtricks. Just make your bid!

AUCTION
SOUTH	WEST	NORTH	EAST
1	Pass	2	Pass
3N	Pass	6N	Pass
Pass	Pass

West leads the 4. Plan the play.

Solution

There are ten tricks off the top--3 spades, 1 heart, 2 diamonds, and 4 clubs. The diamond suit may provide up to two additional tricks; the heart finesse might also provide an additional trick. The best technique is to win the club lead in dummy and take an immediate heart finesse. You do this because the way you should properly attack diamonds depends on whether or not you need three or four tricks in the suit.

If the heart finesse loses, you will need FOUR diamond tricks, but if it wins, only THREE diamond tricks are needed.

Let's assume the heart finesse loses and a heart is returned, how do you play the diamonds?

You are going to have to find West with no worse than queen third, but make sure you lead a low diamond toward the jack. DON'T start with the king; if you do, and West has the stiff Q as shown below, you can no longer pick up the suit. By leading toward the jack, when the Q appears on your left, you will remain with K9 (after cashing the J to make sure West wasn't falsecarding with QT) and be able to finesse against East's T. Note that if East has the stiff Q, you cannot take four tricks in the suit.

The full deal:

Now, back to the point where you finessed the Q. What if it wins? Now how do you play the diamond suit? This, of course, is a much different situation than before, because you only need THREE diamond tricks now.

The proper safety play is to lead the 3 to the ACE, then (assuming no honor has appeared) lead the 2 to the 9 (again, assuming East plays low). This allows you to pick up three diamond tricks 100% of the time--not bad!

Let's look at some possible East-West holdings to see why this safety play works.

In this case, after leading to the A and low toward the 9, East will play low, and the 9 will hold the trick. Had you started with the K, East would win two tricks in the suit. Of course, leading low to the jack (losing to the Q), followed by cashing the A, then finessing against East's T works in this instance. But what if the layout is as below?

Full deal No. 2:

This time, starting with K will drop East's singleton Q and allow you to take 3 tricks, but if you finesse the J first, West must still make his T. The safety play, of course, works anytime the Q is singleton.

One final example is given below.

Full deal No. 3:

In this instance, declarer cannot really go wrong. Still, notice how the safety play works. By starting with the A, and then leading toward the 9, you note that East started with the stiff 6. So, rise with the K and lead up to the J.

The Official Encyclpedia of Bridge provides a very useful and comprehensive section on how to play various suit combinations. This includes proper technique for taking the maximum number of tricks in a suit, as well as how to "safely" take the NEEDED number of tricks in a suit.

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