Counting Our Tricks And The Opponents Discards

You Open 2 No-trump (20-21 points) and partner raises To 6 No-trump

My Hand:

Kxx
AQx  
Qxx
AKQx 

Partner's Hand:

AQx
xxx
AKJx
xxx

The lead is Jack of clubs. 

Lets see, we have 3 Spades-1 Heart- 4 Diamonds - 3 Clubs, 11 sure tricks. The 12th trick must come from our 4th club or the heart finesse. If the heart king is on our right it will still be there later, so lets run off some tricks and see what we can learn.

We cash a 2nd high Club, right hand opponent discarding a Spade. Now 4 rounds of Diamonds each opponent following to 3 and we all discard a low Heart on the 4th round. Now we cash 3 rounds of Spades ending in dummy as LHO sheds a club. This is the 4 card end position dummy has:

0
xxx
0
x

and you have

0
AQ
0
Ax

We know that LHO started with 2 Spades, 3 Diamonds, 5 Clubs, thus 3 Hearts, having discarded 1 Heart and 1 Club, their last 4 cards must be 2 Clubs and 2 Hearts. It now does not matter where the King of Hearts is, we simply play a Club to our A and throw LHO in with the 4th round of Clubs. Knowing that they must now return a Heart into our AQ for the 12th trick, Making 6NT!

The complete hand:

Careful counting has allowed us to make our slam without having to take the losing heart finness!  

Grandmaster Fred Hamilton is available for group on individual lessons at FREDDYNOTRUMP@YAHOO.COM  Or 702-804-5342