A designed hand

How do you feel as defender when facing a hand that's designed for declarer to land his/her contract? I found it many times and holding quite a bunch of high cards, I was threw in every time I won a trick. But this case, I was in dummy and saw my partner bring home the contract. Here are the complete distribution. For your information, the hand was shuffled manually.

	Dummy
	♠ J 9 7 6 2
	♥ Q 8 7 2
	♦ 6 5
	♣ 10 6
West		East
♠ Q 5		♠ 10 8 4 3
♥ K 6 5		♥ 10 9 3
♦ K 10 8 3		♦ Q 7 4
♣ A 8 7 4		♣ J 5 2
	Declarer
	♠ A K
	♥ A J 4
	♦ A J 9 2
	♣ K Q 9 3

Contract 3NT.

How do you bring the contract if ♦3 is the opening lead? In executing any contract, you have to make a plan. When you find out a difficult situation, you need to make some assumptions of card and be optimistic.

Seven tricks are in sight, 2 from spade, 2 from heart, 1 from diamond and 2 from clubs. What is your assumption on this lay out? First, west should have many high points so that east cannot attack you. Here are the assumptions: ♥ K should be with west (max 3 cards) as well as ♣ K. But the ♣ J shall be with east. Because your 4th club is too small then you need to pray the ♠ Q to drop in second round. Otherwise you need a defensive error.

So, you win ♦ Q with Ace and play two rounds of spade and see west's ♠ Q drop. Then play ♥ A and small heart (♥ J also okay, but I prefer small one). Best defense west plays small and declarer win ♥ Q and cash the ♠ J for a heart discard, west will have difficulties in finding discard. If west discard his "meaningless" club, he presents the contract to declarer. Next play the ♣ 10 for a finesse. West can't escape from end play.

First question: Why small heart at trick 4? By playing small heart you are intending to play the queen from dummy. If you play the jack, then you are not confidence enough to overtake it. If west play low on ♥ J and you play small from dummy, you bound to fail with best defense. Can you see it?

Second question: can you fulfill the contract without diamond lead? I leave it to you.