Hunting for a Squeeze

Spade led, won in hand. A diamond towards dummy drew the ace from LHO. A club came back, won with the jack.

I cashed the KQ of diamonds, LHO discarding a heart on the queen. A club to the queen drew the ace from LHO. Finally, a spade came back, to the queen.



I have 5 of the remaining 6 tricks. There's a heart finesse there, but I stopped and tried to puzzle out a possible squeeze. (What didn't occur to me is that, if there's a squeeze on, that would mean that the finesse is on, too. Alas.) I'm still not good at puzzling out squeezes, mostly because my counting isn't all that great. I knew what suits RHO had played, so I counted out RHO's distribution as I cashed the club and spade winners, ending by cashing the ace of hearts. When the jack of diamonds didn't fall, I ran a heart to the king.

Turns out west had 5 hearts to the queen, so there was nothing there. I guess the point here is that I at least thought about things, and had count. I'm still missing some of the basics, though.