When you need, try hard to find

Bob Hope said, “A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove you don’t need it.”

A bridge table is a place where you need tricks to win money — or matchpoints or international match points. In this six-no-trump deal, how many dummy entries did South need? From where did he get them?

South’s sequence showed a balanced 22-plus to 24 points. North plunged into six no-trump. This contract, unusually, would have been better played by North, when a heart lead around to the queen would have been beneficial. Here, though, after the heart-jack lead was covered by the queen, king and ace, South’s back was against the bank’s wall.

Declarer had only eight top tricks: two spades, one heart, four diamonds and one club. He needed to find four more winners without losing the lead; otherwise, the defenders would have run the heart suit. So, the club finesse had to be winning. But here South needed to take that finesse twice, then, after dropping East’s club king under his ace, get into the dummy to cash the last two clubs. From where was declarer going to get those three dummy entries?

They had to come from diamonds: the ace, jack and four. South cashed his diamond king, then led the diamond seven to dummy’s jack. If the diamonds had broken 4-1, declarer would have needed East to have king-singleton or -doubleton in clubs. Here, though, South took a club finesse, led the diamond queen to dummy’s ace, took a second club finesse, cashed the club ace, played the diamond three to dummy’s four and claimed.