Interesting 3N

Playing IMPS at our local game, I picked up this hand, AK74 AK3 95 AQT6, all vul. I opened 2N and partner bid 3C, Puppet Stayman, I bid 3D showing a 4 card major and partner bid 3N, ending the auction.

The opening lead was the 2 of Spades and this dummy hit, J6 754 AQ843 852. The opps were playing attitude leads, so I hopefully put up the J of Spades, but RHO played the Q, attitude huh? :) Since I did not want a Heart shift, and had a bunch of work to do, I won the A at trick 1 and led the 9 of Diamonds, planning to duck it. LHO put the 10 on this, but the original plan was still in force so I played low from dummy, the only possible way to set the Diamonds up. RHO overtook the Diamond with the J (?) to play the 9 of Spades, not a card I liked to see. Now was as good a time as any to try to cut some of their communications so I ducked this, and LHO overtook it with the 10 (interesting spots) and returned a small Spade (?). I pitched a Heart from board and RHO played the 8 of Spades, so I won the King. I now had an unexpected 3rd Spade, and might not need the Diamonds if something good happened in Clubs. Plus it was starting to look like LHO had made a very strange lead in Spades.

Wanting to find out about the Clubs, I led the 10 of Clubs out of my hand. I had the timing to save the Diamond decision now, and wanted to have some options if that suit did not pan out. LHO went into a serious tank over the 10 of Clubs, but finally played low, and RHO won the K. So I was pretty sure that LHO had the J and a few Clubs, made even more certain when RHO led the 6 of Spades (!) to my good 7, and LHO pitched a Heart. Why had he led a 3 card Spade suit, looked like he was probably 3334 or something like that, which gave me hope on this hand, even if the Diamond K was offside now.

I cashed the A and Q of Clubs from my hand, and sure enough the J did not appear, and RHO pitched a Heart, from his presumed 4 card holding. It certainly looked like I was right about the hand, which left LHO with 2 Hearts, 2 Diamond, and the J of Clubs, and RHO with 3 Hearts and 2 Diamonds. At this point, it didn't matter who had the K of Diamonds, easy matter to play 3 rounds of Hearts and claim when RHO was forced to win the 3rd Heart.

Turns out this was an easy hand with any kind of technique (duck an initial Diamond) since KTx were onside in LHO's hand and the K of Clubs was onside. But I thought it was still a neat technical hand for counting and extrapolating the opps hands to make it this way. And next time, the K of Diamonds will be in RHO's hand and this was the only way to make it