The auction:
This was a surprisingly decent auction for this game. North made an inverted minor suit raise and after south showed a balanced hand with stoppers in the majors north bid a quantitative 4NT which was accepted.
With only 18 HCPs, no substantive spot cards and no 5 card suit, this invitation was very aggressive. North knows that south has a balanced hand with a maximum of 14 HCPs otherwise south would have bid a suit at his second turn or would have opened notrump with 15 or more. In my experience, a combined 32 HCPs between two balanced hands does not make a good slam.
The play:
As you can see this does not look promising.
There are 9 top tricks. 1S, 2H, 4D & 2C. There could be two more tricks in clubs if the Q is onside and they break 3-3 or there is some other friendly lie of the suit and there is another trick available in spades on a finesse. This is asking a lot but in this BBO format it pays to play to make, as one does in team games.
I took the club finesse at trick 2 and it, of course, lost. I won the club return in dummy to preserve the hand entry as dummy has the spade entry (communications are so important) and paused to think. If clubs break and the spade finesse works that would be 11 tricks and maybe a squeeze will develop for trick 12. There’s no hurry to find out about clubs yet and, besides, I kept the King as it might provide a needed entry later. I cashed the queen of diamonds, noting that west started with a singleton. Next the spade finesse worked (yay!) and I cashed dummy’s diamonds.
Here's where the fun begins.
West could afford to pitch a heart on the third diamond but was squeezed in 3 suits on the fourth. He pitched a club. Now I knew the fourth club would be good and I was up to 11 tricks. I entered my hand with the club K, went back to dummy with a spade and played the last club. West was squeezed again, this time by the suit he unguarded the first time.
This is known as a progressive or repeating squeeze where one opponent is squeezed in three suits and then in the other two suits.
If west had discarded a spade or a heart on the last diamond, the squeeze would still work:
On a spade discard; cash the spade ace, come to hand with the club king and play the spade queen squeezing west in clubs and hearts. On a heart discard; cash heart ace, come to hand with the heart king and play the last heart squeezing west in clubs and spades.
Only 4 of 27 people made the slam. Squeezes work. Keep your options open and maybe one will develop for you.
