BRIDGE NOTES: You will not believe it

Today's illustration from actual play is an extra ordinary hand from all points of view - bidding, play and defense. It shows the fascination of this game of Bridge that has such countless card combinations. Sometimes the distributions are so weird that players just cannot cope up with normal bidding sequences. They are often caught in their own fear complexes which trigger at times a horrid bidding sequence that often ends in disaster as is revealed in our illustration today where an uncalled for unusual bidding sequence started between north south as under:-
The bidding is amusingly startling wherein it seems both partners are competing against each other with each trying to play the contract himself. After this extra ordinary bidding ended, west led the 5H and the following dummy appeared before east who held; This becomes a problem in defense with east when declarer after winning the heart queen plays astonishingly from hand the 5S with west playing the 6S and east winning with 7S. This is it. East ponders at the declarers' play. The question for you my readers is that as east what do you play next?
For the ordinary player this would be a happy break and without thinking much he would return most likely either 8S or a low safe club. Those who are serious players of Bridge would try to reason why declarer is giving up such a cheap trick so early. Naturally the logical answer would be that he is trying to rectify the count for a successful squeeze. Obviously in visualising the declarer's hand they would not be placing him with all 3 top spade honours for otherwise leading a low spade is foolhardy being against all odds. So they would give him at most AKX in spades. Clearly the declarer lacks the doubleton diamond for otherwise a safety play in diamonds was a better way to rectify the count. This leaves the declarer with a likely single diamond. Declarer is looking for a squeeze in either both red suits or clubs and diamonds. Most likely his distribution in hearts and clubs would be A K QX and AK Q XX. If such is the situation the writing is clearly on the wall to foresee that west would get squeezed when he comes down to 4 cards being unable to retain the heart stopper as well as the 4th diamond.
So like all alert defenders of squeeze play what would you do in such a case? Think as did the actual east who played the 10D to break the squeeze of the declarer forcing him to play out his diamonds early. If you played 10D, well done. Of course the declare in this particular case had a happy ending still for you will not believe it, his hand was:

=======================

North             South

=======================

3D                  3NT

4D                  4NT

5D                  5NT

6D                  6NT

=======================

=======================

North              East

=======================

Dummy            J10987

432                  10

832                 105

AKQ763           J10643

2                     -

=======================

========

     AK5

    AKQJ

       -

  AKQ985

========