Declarer Play - 5D Example

Here's a hand that came up today.
The contract is 5♦ and the opening lead is the Q♠

 Dummy:
♠A4
♥AQJ76
♦2
♣AQ742

Declarer:
♠K76
♥82
♦AKJT9853
♣-

Before reading further what do you need to do as declarer?

Since I am in a trump contract I will start with counting my losers. I will look at my hand (since I have more trump than dummy) to see where my losers are:
♠ 1 loser
♥ 1 loser
♦ 1 loser
♣ 0 losers

How do you get rid of your losers? Think of ALL the possibilities.

To get rid of your ♠ loser you can do 2 things. You can either play the A♠, then the K♠ and then another ♠ and trump that ♠ in dummy OR Option 2 would be to throw the ♠ away on the A♣. Either way you get rid of that loser.

To get rid of your ♥ loser you can do 2 things. You can either finesse for the K♥ OR you can throw away the 2♥ on the A♣.

To get rid of your ♦ loser you can either finesse the Q♦ OR you can play the A♦ and the K♦ and hope the Q♦ drops.

If you saw other ways to get rid of losers you are WAY too advanced for this blog!

Now obviously it would be nice to throw away both our ♠ loser and our ♥ loser on the A♣ but we can't do that. If we throw away our ♠ loser then we can only try to finesse the ♥ .

Another thing to keep in mind is that this is a team game. We HAVE to make our contract. We don't care about getting overtricks. Keeping that in mind I'd say the safest thing to do is to win the K♠ and play the A♦ and the K♦ . If the Q♦ falls I will make my contract. If the Q♦ doesn't fall then I will for sure be able to throw away my ♠ loser on the A♣. I can still try the ♥ finesse but even if that loses I make my contract.