So for starters, we can place a lot of the cards here. West's play of the queen of clubs - which is nice defence in itself - is to create a tenace over our J with his AT so that his partner can play a club through. That gives West 13 points in the minors and he had the jack of hearts as well, so he shouldn't have the king of spades or he would have been able to make a strong bid on the first round - overcalling 1NT or doubling 1C. For the two-level takeout double with Jx in hearts though, West surely guarantees 4 spades, probably with the jack, but probably not 5 because he didn't overcall on the first round (we would be talking about a 5-2-3-3 shape, pass then takeout X seems like a weird choice). West is therefore very likely 4-2-3-4 or 4-2-4-3, with East 3-2-5-3 or 3-2-6-2 and having the king of spades, the jack of diamonds and nothing else. If East gives even count on the first round that helps, but even if he doesn't, we should assume he is 3-2-6-2 as there are no possible problems for the defence if he is 3-2-5-3. We therefore assume the hand looks something like this, the actual deal:



At first glance the contract still seems like it has no play. You've lost a diamond and you have two club losers and a spade loser, none of which you can get rid of. And indeed, Deep Finesse will tell you the contract cannot be made.

But wait wait, this is a pokers forum, we will try to bring teh sick expert bluffs. Let's swing over inside East's brain and see how the position looks to him. His partner's switch to the Q in clubs is tough for East to read. It's very natural for him to guess that his partner led from QJ9x or QJTx, holding the ace of spades instead of the ace of clubs. This makes plenty of sense to East, who envisages a position something like this:



Alarm bells are ringing in East's mind. Declarer can run the 8 of spades to West's ace. Even if West has QJTx in clubs and can set up a trick leading from his hand, he now has no entry to cash the trick. That diamond ace is dead and communication has been cut in clubs. Declarer can now set up a spade trick in peace. It won't matter if East covers the eight with the ten. Declarer will force out East's king and then discard a club loser on his own newly minted master spade. Making 4. Note that the same mechanism operates regardless of whether East has the T - declarer can just have that instead of the 9.

Can East do something about this? Can you see where this is going? When declarer leads the 8, East must fly up with the king and play a club himself, setting up his partner's club trick before the entry is knocked out. Now declarer cannot escape going one down.

So there you have the bluff: lead the 8 of spades from dummy, pretending that you have the holding East fears. Having his expert read "confirmed" by you trying to sneak the 8 past him, East should hopefully fly up with the king. You produce the ace and East spends the rest of the night trying to figure out how he could have known he was getting tarped.

This hand was sourced from the player sitting East. During play of the hand, he had already worked out that he was going to go up with the king if declarer had played the eight of spades. Declarer didn't find the play, and after the hand East realised that he had dodged a bullet and that an elite declarer could have figured out to bluff. Like I said, to my knowledge, so far only one person has looked at this problem and found the answer without prompting.

Eventually at the table, 2S passed out and I made 6 when pard shows up with

xx
xxxxx
Q
AKxxx

I'm not sure who is to blame to miss the game on this. I feel like it's probably on me, but I'm not sure if I'm just resulting.