Think Ahead!

I was playing a team match on BBO when the following hand came up:

2D: Strange idea of a vulnerable weak 2, even for a 3rd hand opening
3H: Transfer
4S: I expect partner to have some points on this bidding, and I have a great hand in support of spades.

A club lead and a club continuation on winning the spade ace easily beats the contract, but the lead at my table was the spade ace followed by the spade jack.

What you should be thinking as declarer:
We appear to be a trick short. The only hope seems to be to eliminate the diamonds and throw an opp in with the third heart, hoping that whoever wins has to underlead the CA or give a ruff-sluff.

What you should be thinking as defender:
If I win the third heart I am going to be endplayed... unblock! unblock!

Declarer has to make it as hard as possible for the defender to find the unblock. When playing the hearts, play low to the Ace first and then low to the King. Since defender doesn't know what's in the closed hand, it may not occur to him to play second hand high to unblock. It's all too easy for him to figure it out if you play King then Ace of hearts.

Is that all? No, there is something else you can do. Play the top hearts first (in the mentioned order) before eliminating the diamonds! Not so easy for the defender to see what's coming at trick 4 itself. A decent defender will think 2-3 tricks in advance, but it takes a pretty good defender to think several tricks ahead.

For the record, I eliminated the diamonds, cashed Ace then King of hearts and the defender forgot to unblock his HQ. Game made. Funnily enough, game was made at the other table as well, with a similar lack of unblock (on a different auction and a diamond lead). Both guilty defenders called themselves experts.

Cheers,
SP.