by Bobby Wolff

"People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them."

-- Anatole France

Consider the play in five diamonds on the lead of the top spade. You appear to have one heart and at least one club to lose.

You could cross to the heart ace and simply take a club finesse for the contract. However, another possibility is to win the spade and play the ace and a second heart -- trying to duck the heart into West so that you can establish the suit without letting East on lead for the fatal club shift. If you follow that line, you might duck the first heart if West follows with the king.

An alternative approach that has a lot to recommend it is to play West for all three spade honors. Instead of requiring the heart king to be well-placed, try winning the first spade, crossing to the heart ace, then leading the spade 10 and discarding your heart loser. West wins and can do little but play a trump back. You win in dummy, ruff a heart high, go back to a trump to ruff another heart high, and use the diamond nine as the entry to dummy to cash the three heart winners to pitch club losers. You end up scoring one spade, six diamonds and four heart tricks.

If the spade jack turns up in East, you can always fall back on West's having the bare heart king left. If that is not so, then the defenders will win, play clubs, and you are little worse off than before.