Bridge is a thinking game. Without giving a close thought to the possible sources that can provide that extra trick that you need for the making of your tight contract bid, one would always be a loser. For those who play first and think later, Bridge becomes a game of anguish and regrets. But the successful Bridge player is the one who keep his wits about, gives his moves a deep thought first by meticulous planning with enough foresight to anticipate how the defence can hold his tracks.
It is, therefore, emphasised time and again that one should pause enough at the first trick to plan his subsequent moves. Let us illustrate by example. NS are in 4S on the following hand with this bidding.
The opening lead is 5S. As south how do you plan to make 4S? When you first view the dummy immediately you should count your possible losers, which appear to be 5, with 3 hearts and 2 diamonds. This hand therefore, calls for planning and timing with the aid of which you could possibly cut your losers to 3. For that to happen, what distributions of the opponents do you aim for to make your life easy.
A favourable distribution in hearts and diamonds would be nice if both the ace of hearts and the king of diamonds lie favourably for you. But Bridge like life is not a bed of roses all the time. Like in life one faces adversity with courage, so should one take up the Bridge challenge and find all possible measures to overcome the un-favourable odds and obstacles that block your path of success.
A little more thought on the problem would give a ray of light and hope. For there is a very tempting club suit lying in the dummy that can be utilised to cut down your losers, provided the missing trumps in the first place are divided 2-1. You must be still wondering if you have not seen the light of the solution as yet as to how could 2-1 distribution in trumps be so relevant for the solution to this problem. Can you visualise its relevance? One thing is certain.
That the club suit handling is the key to the problem. For you see if some how you are able to establish 2 club tricks for yourself by giving up the 2 top clubs or a successful ruffling finesse, you can find a parking space for discarding 2 of your losers in diamonds and hearts. Here again the timing is of the essence in the play of the hand. The player in a hurry may miss out on this, thinking that he has got everything worked out if he just lets the clubs be taken first to run their course. For do you see the snag in communication? For the clubs to run, you need to have enough entries in the dummy to play clubs twice and then enjoy the remaining clubs for your discard of the red suit losers.
You play should proceed by winning the opening spade lead in dummy with the jack and then lead the queen of clubs from dummy to take a ruffling finesse. If east plays the KC, you will ruff; but if he plays low, you discard 3D allowing west to win a club honour. When west leads another trump (the best defence) win in dummy with the queen and now lead another club intending to ruff if east plays the remaining club honour or to discard a heart if he plays low.
It does not matter if west has both club honours. At most he can cash AH leaving KH good and your QD discarded on the good clubs. Ah yes! I know some of you will still ask as to where is the 3rd Entry in dummy to cash the good clubs. Well, did you play carefully on the Q and J of spades? Yes, you needed to un-block the 7 and 8 of spades preserving that vital deuce to give you the life sustaining entry in dummy for the contract.

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 North         South
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   QJ3     AK 109872
   743          K 52
   865          AQ 3
QJ 109             -
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