Say hearts are trumps and you’re trying to set up extra length winners from clubs. You’ll play ace and another club; on regaining the lead, you’ll get to dummy and ruff a third round of clubs. Assuming a 3-2 split, you’ve set up three length winners. You needed two dummy entries: one to ruff the third club and a second to get back to enjoy the long cards. Now take this similarish suit:

Same scenario: hearts are trumps and you’re trying to set up dummy’s clubs. You could play ace and another club in which case you are treating the position as identical to (a).Effectively wasting ♣ A as an entry.

Or you could duck the first round of clubs. You regain the lead and now lead over to ♣ A to ruff the third club. This way you’ll only need one entry to enjoy the long clubs.

The very useful entry-saving motto is: if you have to lose a trick in a suit, lose the first round.

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