A suit combination that is deceptive

Peter De Vries, who was a novelist and editor, wrote, “The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but the combination is locked up in the safe.”

I felt a bit like that after checking the right way to play the club suit in today’s deal. If you needed three tricks, what would you do?

North might have opened the bidding with two aces and one king, but when he passed, and partner opened one no-trump, he used Stayman before jumping to game.

West, even though he knew four hearts were coming down in the dummy, had no reason to worry, given his strong sequence.

As declarer, I could see six top tricks: two spades, two hearts and two clubs. Two more winners were readily available from the diamonds, but what about trick nine? The opening lead strongly suggested that the hearts were not splitting 3-3. So what about clubs?

If the six missing cards were splitting 3-3, everything would work. If East had four including an honor, there was no chance. But what if West had four? What would East’s doubleton be? There were four possible low-doubletons, but six honor-doubletons. So I cashed the club ace, crossed to the club king (happy to see the queen appear) and led a third round toward dummy’s 10. Now I lost only two hearts, one diamond and one club.

I was feeling happy, but when I consulted the literature, I found that it is better to cash the king, then play low to dummy’s 10 — why?

I suppose this allows for West’s having five clubs.