Eliminating a Suit by Leading it

Sometimes you can simply lead a suit enough times to eliminate it from the defender's hand. For example, you are in 6NT, and Lefty has opened the bidding with a weak two in hearts.

AKQ
432
AKQ
AKQJ

432
AQ9
432
5432

You want to cash your winners, so that the last three cards in your hand and dummy are hearts.

--
432
--
--

--
AQ9
--
--

So you can cash all of your winners in the dummy. That will probably eliminate all of the side cards in Lefty's hand, except in the unlikely case that Lefty started with a 4-card spade suit, 4-card diamond suit, or 5-card club suit. So you can lead towards your AQ9 of hearts.

This is a standard endplay situation. You play the 9 if Righty plays low. Lefty can no doubt win, but Lefty is endplayed into leading into your AQ of hearts. If Righty plays the J or 10, your spots are good enough that you can cover this with the queen. Lefty can probably win with his king, but now Lefty has to lead into your A9.

You know Lefty won't, for example, cash a spade, because Lefty started with (say) only three spades and doesn't have any more.

Eliminating a Suit by Squeezing

The second way to eliminate excess winners and exit cards is to squeeze them out. Hopefully you know this too. For this hand, Righty overcalled 1, showing some points. Righty then leads the K.

AJ
43
AKQ
AKQJ109

65432
AQ43
432
2

It seems very likely that Lefty has the K, so you decide to play the hand that way. You win the spade lead with your ace, then cash all of your minor suit winners. There are only three cards left.

Lefty has to save the Q, to protect against the jack. If Righty saves Kx in hearts, you can lead your spade, endplaying Lefty. If Righty keeps just the singleton K, then Righty can keep a winner in the side suit (or even an exit card to Lefty's hand). In this case, it will not work to lead a spade. However, assuming you can read the situation, you can play your A and drop the K, making your Q good.

So, you can always get an extra trick, if Lefty has the king of hearts, and if you read the situation correctly.

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Squeeze-Trim-Endplay Introduction