I have played more than 500 deals of ACBL Instant Matchpoints since coming back from my medical interruption—attempting to scrape off rust. I encountered the theme here for the first hand during my most recent session. Here’s a format where you can judge for yourself what is the trick. 

Opening Lead: ♦10

Well, that lead could be from  ♦Q109…, so we rise with the ♦J and it holds. Have you developed a plan?  Seven heart tricks, two spade tricks, and three diamond tricks add to twelve. We have a finesse in spades for thirteen. 

Can you see more deeply than that? Draw trumps. Play the Ace and see that West shows out. Hearts break 0-4 so we’ll lose a trick there and will win eleven tricks with the spade finesse for twelve. 

What’s your plan?

Continue with the ♥K and ♥Q. On the top trumps, West discards in order:  ♠3, ♦4, ♠4. Then before giving up the trump trick to East, play the ♦A and ♦K, dumping a club from dummy.  East shows out on the third diamond. Return to dummy with a club ruff. Then play one of your equals, say the ♥8, to give East his trump trick. East returns the ♣A, which you trump in dummy; West follows. Have you refined your plan, which started out as taking the spade finesse for the twelfth trick?

I confess it was only here that I saw the solution. Did you beat me to it?

Answer comes next, so finish your thinking. 

Solution:  I see that W hold the diamonds. If I play the tricks in the right order, W will be squeezed, not being able to hold onto the diamond guard and three spades. If he holds the ♠Q, so that the finesse will work, we don’t need the finesse, because W holding onto a diamond must have a doubleton in Spades. If it includes the ♠Q, it will drop on the lead of the second spade from my hand. If the ♠Q doesn’t drop when you lead at trick twelve towards the ♠KJ, then play the Ace from dummy and hope East, whom we now know must hold the ♠Q, holds it doubleton.  

Play as follows. Trump the ♣A in dummy and run all but one of the hearts. That takes us through trick nine; we’ve played six hearts from dummy and three diamonds, totaling nine. The position is now:

Play the last heart from dummy and discard the ♣J. What is West to do? To hold the ♦Q, West must discard a spade. (Need I say that if West discards the ♦Q, our deuce will win a trick, on which we can discard the potentially losing spade?) And we know that West now holds a doubleton. After we play the ♠A and lead a spade to dummy, if West doesn’t play the ♠Q, he doesn’t have it, so we play the ♠K, hoping to drop the ♠Q from East. 

Squeeze experts call this a “show-up squeeze,” because it forces the mystery card, here the ♠Q, to show up if the targeted player, here W, holds it. 

I had gotten this far with my analysis when my partner, VocalJazz, pointed out that the East hand isn't immaterial, as I had initially thought. He guards the ♣J and West guards the diamond deuce. That’s a double squeeze, no need for me to get into show-up squeezes.  

On the lead of the last heart at trick ten, East discards a spade, holding the ♣Q, to protect against the ♣J.  South discards the now-useless ♣J.  Now West must hold his diamond and discards a spade. Both East and West now hold doubleton spades and the ♠Q will drop on the second round of the suit. Place ♠A, return to hand to ♠K and North’s ♠J will win the last trick. 

If West held four clubs and retained one higher than the ♣J along with his diamond guard, he will have unguarded the ♠Q already. The double squeeze won't work, but the show-up squeeze still does. 

What happened on the real deal? I figured out the squeeze only when East was to play after winning his high trump. I was armed and ready. East returned a spade into the ♠KJ and my need to squeeze disappeared. (Disappointed I wasn't to be able to squeeze, but I’m taking credit for spotting it.) West held the ♠Q, so those who had planned no more than to take the spade finesse for the twelfth trick succeeded.

Eight pairs made 6♥, all of us bidding only four. Of the other seven, no one played as I show here. Two, like me, received a spade return by East when he won his long trump, so we don’t know whether those declarers thought about the squeeze. That leaves five who took the spade finesse early in the play, succeeding and making six.

I wish only that East had held the doubleton ♠Q, then I would have beaten all who took the spade finesse.

When I conceived this column, I thought the theme too easy for our readers. Maybe so, but it did not occur to the any of the five players who had the opportunity to play for the squeeze.