My parents had a problem. As a child, I took sports too seriously and, to make matters worse, I was bad at them. For some reason, they thought teaching me golf was a good idea. For those unaware, golf seems like it should be simple, but managing to consistently hit the ball where it should go is incredibly difficult.

After one particularly poor swing saw my ball sail way right into the deep woods, I tossed my club in anger. My father, never one to offer conciliation, said "You're not good enough to throw your clubs." After considering throwing my next club in his direction, I decided he was probably right.

In golf and bridge, you can't think about the bad things: whether it's a bad swing/play or a bad overall score.

In bridge, you need to be happy for the small accomplishments along the way. Think about the good things you did or thought about. Did you count out the distribution? Did you realize that declarer couldn’t hold a certain card based on the bidding? That’s great! Enjoy those moments rather than focusing on the mistakes (and there will be a lot of them).

On this deal. Do as much work as you can. We’ll go through it together and I’ll show where you need to take a break.

The auction:

Both Vul, East deals

West	North	East	South (YOU)
		2	2
Pass	4	All Pass

West leads the J, low from dummy, and East plays the Q. What is your plan here?

I hope you opted to win this trick. Sometimes it’s right to hold up to sever communication, but here we know hearts are split 1-6 from the auction. We should win the ace.

We count our losers: one in spades, two in hearts, and potentially one in clubs. If we make a good guess in clubs, we’ll make it. In order to make a good guess, we should try to find out more information. There’s no good reason to avoid drawing trumps here. You play a low spade from your hand and West wins the ace. It would be nice if West would lead a diamond or a club for us, but West exits with another trump, East following. Good defenders won’t play new suits to help us out.

Alright. Now you need to make the rest of the plan. Do we finesse East for the club Q? West? Play diamonds first? What deductions can you make?

Let’s see. We know East started with 6 hearts including the KQ and two spades. Can East have either missing queen for their preempt? Sure. Might they have neither queen? KQ10986 is a great suit, even at this vulnerability, so it’s possible. Good to think about, though, if you considered it.

If your thought process stopped here, that’s ok. But, we want to push ourselves: What about West? Well West has only 3 cards in the majors. With 10 cards in the minors, West is much more likely (all else being equal) to have either missing honor since they have more clubs and diamonds than East does.

With that thought, we might be able to finesse West in either diamonds or clubs. The problem is that if we lose a finesse, East will win and take their two hearts. What about finessing through East? West can’t cash hearts. That means that you could finesse clubs into West and if that loses, you could still take a diamond finesse as a backup. Another good thought! Of course, if both finesses lose, you’ll go down 2 instead of down one. Head spinning yet?

What about combining chances in a safer manner? You can play the ace and king of diamonds and see if the Q appears. If not, you can ruff a diamond. Now you’ll know most of East’s shape. East may follow to 2 or 3 diamonds, revealing up to 11 cards in their hand. You could take a finesse through West knowing that East has only two clubs, but…

There’s no reason to take a finesse at this point. You’re going to lose two hearts eventually. Look what happens if you lose them now (after ruffing the diamond):

Vul:Both Dlr: E	J10 43 A102
108 97654		K10986 Q8
	K2 75 KJ3

.

East will have to lead either a 4^th heart (giving up a ruff/sluff) or lead a club to allow you to win three club tricks, regardless of who holds the queen. This elimination endplay is a very difficult play to find, but the key idea is that when you have a guess, you want to see if you can make your opponents lead a suit for you.

You might even have found this without trying diamonds first (that's pretty good!). It would work to make your contract, the issue is that a defender holds Qx, you could be making an overtrick.

However far you got in your plan, enjoy it. Then try and get more of it next time!

Here's the full deal:

Vul:Both Dlr: E	J1098 432 AJ4 A102
A6 J 108654 97654		43 KQ10986 Q97 Q8
	KQ752 A75 K3 KJ3