South treated his hand as worth 18 points because of his two potentially valuable 10’s. We agree with his evaluation. That decision, however, led to a final contract that was far from cold.

South wanted to retain the lead in dummy for a spade finesse of his own in case East started with three spades to the king, so he played dummy’s jack at trick one. This was not necessarily the right play, although it was reasonable, and it was wrong on this deal. When East covered the jack with his singleton king, it promoted West’s trump holding into a certain trick. Declarer discovered this when he cashed the queen of spades.

His chances were extremely thin, but he kept trying to recover. He led a low club to dummy’s queen and then a diamond to his jack. Good guess! West’s low heart shift went to East’s queen and South’s ace. Declarer’s timing now was perfect. He cashed the king of clubs and the king of diamonds, followed by a diamond ruff in dummy. He discarded a heart on the ace of clubs and led a spade to his 10. He had nine tricks in the bag at this point — four spades, one heart, one diamond, and three clubs. He led his last diamond and West was not able to prevent dummy’s eight of spades from taking the tenth trick for declarer. Beautifully done!