Dan Korbel is blogging the CNTC as he plays on team Molson.  He brought up this hand from earlier today:

Dummy: KJTx / AKQJ / - / Txxxx

Declarer: Q / T987xx / AKJ / Jxx

Righty is known to have AKQ of clubs and Ace of spades.

Lefty is known to have at least one club.

The contract is 3NT, the defense is perfect, the cards are lying as poorly as possible, would you care to declare or defend?

If you could forbid a certain lead, would you make the same choice?  What lead would you forbid?

I'm really bad at postmorteming.  I tend to express a strong opinion without double-checking my analysis.  I did so today over on Dan and Susie's blog.

When I first saw the hand, I counted 3 Spades, 4 Hearts, and 2 Clubs and didn't see any way the opponents could stop you.  Then I noted that if Righty has 5 Spades or more, they can keep leading spades at you and set up 2 Spades and 3 Clubs before you're able to set up your 2 Club tricks.  So unless you can forbid a Spade lead, you want to defend.

Then I considered the possibility of a Club lead and a Diamond switch.  I briefly thought that was fatal (assuming Righty has 5 Spades,) then saw a way to overcome it.

After a Club lead and a Diamond switch, if you just bang down the Queen of Spades, you're going down.  The defense will duck and you will lose the tempo race (the normal continuation would be to cross in Hearts and play another Spade.  Righty will now win and play another Spade, get in with a Club and play another Spade, setting up his long Spade while he still has a Club entry.)  If you go after Clubs instead, of course your opponents will instead set up their diamond suit while they retain the Ace of Spades and you'll be down 2.

The key is to cash all but one of dummy's hearts before exiting to your Queen of Spades.  Why?  Because now if the opponents try to take the lead in the tempo race by ducking the first Spade, you can switch back to Diamonds, unblocking that pesky Heart from dummy, and score 6 Hearts, 2 Diamonds, and a Spade. 

I hope I've gotten this right.  Let me know if I've made a fool of myself.  I'll double-check it tomorrow when I'm fresher.

Edit: I caught one mistake I've made already.  You don't have to make the all-but-one-heart play BEFORE you bang down the Queen of Spades, you can do it afterward and you're still okay.