This is aHand:

In similar vein to Hand 2 you are defending 4♥ on this deal after an auction that tells you little about the opponents’ hands. Once more you have a routine lead of the ♣A and dummy looks as though it has been teleported in from Hand 2.

This time, however, the first trick proceeds in a different manner: ♣A  – ♣5 – ♣3 – ♣8. How do you defend now?

Well, you may want to cash the ♣K before the rats get at it but that would be an error. It’s hard to think of how declarer could dispose of a Club loser in hand or of Club losers from table, so there is probably no hurry to cash the ♣K.

What is the Club layout? Partner would encourage Clubs with either the ♣Q or with a doubleton Club so the evidence suggests that he has three low Clubs. If that were the case then cashing the ♣K is dangerous as it would set up dummy’s ♣J for a discard.

Best is to switch – and the obvious switch is to the ♦J, through dummy’s ♦Q. Partner follows to this trick with the ♦7, a suspiciously high card (or – from your perspective – a deliciously high card), which suggests that he has interest in Diamonds.

Declarer takes his ♦K, draws trumps and plays the ♣Q. Nope – you have him. You grab the ♣K and another Diamond lead pierces dummy’s ♦Q allowing the defense to pick up two Diamond tricks. The ♣J is a winner for East but he cannot make use of it.

One down.