Dunbar Congress

I played in the Dunbar Congress today with Martin Stephen's dad Peter. Martin would have been playing, but he was busy running 26.2 miles along the side of a Loch, and costing me nearly sixty quid in the process... 

So, anyway, as I'm now sitting on a train home with nothing much else to do, here's a second post in 24 hours, specially for Jake. 

We didn't do spectacularly, although we were 10th in the pairs out of about 50, despite about three cold bottoms (at least one each, plus one bidding misunderstanding), with about 56%, which was not too bad. The teams doesn't use pre-dealt boards for some reason - I strongly suspect the reason is that Dunbar Bridge Club just doesn't have enough boards. Anway, between that and the fact I was rushing to get on a train, I don't remember much from the teams. Here's one interesting hand from the pairs. I'll give it first as a defensive problem:

None Vul.N Deal                ♠ K J 9 5 3                ♥ 9 7 3 2                ♦  Q                 ♣ Q 9 3 * * * * ♠  4 ♥  K Q 8 6  ♦  6 5 2 ♣ K T 6 5 2

W N E S -  1♠ - 2N(*) - 3♦(*) - 3♠(*) - 4♠

West showed a diamond singleton and a raise to 3 or more spades, East showed basically a strong no trump with 4 (or more) spades. You choose to lead a spade, presumably to try and prevent the opponents from ruffing, or because you like leading trumps, or because you once read somewhere that leading trumps is often effective when the trump suit is 4-4-4-1, which is at least possible on this auction, or because it just fell out of your hand. Anyway, for whatever reason, you lead a trump. Declarer wins the A, draws one more trump with the queen, partner following, and plays a club towards the queen. What do you do now?

Well, unless you went up with the club king and switched to heart, you just let this contract through.... 

None Vul.N Deal ♠ 6 2 ♥ A 4 ♦ K J T 9 8 7  ♣ J 7 4 ♠ K J 9 5 3 ♥ 9 7 3 2 ♦  Q  ♣ Q 9 3 * * * * ♠ A Q T 8 7  ♥ J T 5  ♦ A 4 3 ♣ A 8 ♠  4 ♥  K Q 8 6  ♦  6 5 2 ♣ K T 6 5 2

W N E S -  1♠ - 3♠ - 4♠ - - - -

If you lead any card that isn't a small heart, or if you let the queen of clubs hold, declarer is now cold for 10 tricks. Admittedly, this defence might have been easier to find if you'd found a different lead, and if you lead the K of hearts, you can just give partner a ruff on the third round to take it an easy one off. But given the suboptimal lead, should you recover later? Honestly, I don't know. It does seem like there are some layouts where switching to a small heart leaves you looking very silly (swap the red aces), but I'm not sure you give away anything more than an overtrick on those layouts. On the other hand, you are playing pairs.

Is this one of those hands where making the defence decide what to do early on, before they can signal to each other, or find out too much about your hand, is just winning play for declarer?