♠          A Q 9 4

                                    ♥          A 7 5 3

                                    ♦          J 10 6

                                    ♣          A 2

            ♠          K 8 7 3 2                                   ♠          J 6 5

            ♥          K Q J                            ♥          10 8 6

            ♦          Q 8 3 2                         ♦          K 9 7 5 4

            ♣          7                                  ♣          10 5

                                    ♠          10

                                    ♥          9 4 2

                                    ♦          A

                                    ♣          K Q J 9 8 6 4 3

Our hand this week demonstrates that if there is only one way to make your contract then you have to go for it

Initially you have 8 Club winners. 1 Diamond and 2 Major suit Aces totalling 11 so you need to generate 1 more. Normally taking a finesse when there is no loser in a suit is the equivalent of turning wine into water.

Here however although you have no Spade losers you will have to rely on the spade finesse to dump a Heart loser and risk going two down.

So after winning the first trick, enter your hand with a Diamond. just in case the Diamond KQ might fall in 2 rounds. When this doesn’t happen you now cash one top trump staying in hand before taking the spade finesse. Had the finesse failed you would still need trump ace to get back to the dummy.

With the spade finesse working, you now draw last trump and play Spade Ace chucking a Heart loser away.

Now you make 12 tricks losing just one Heart.

You can also play out the following hand  to see how the hand pans out. (You need bridgvu.exe programme  and it is available free from   http://www.haroldschogger.videoes.html or BridgeBase programme on your machine already to view it )

alternatively watch the film of the hand being played out by going to www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm