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Hand of the week, week commencing Sunday 10th June 2012

 Playing Match Point Pairs, Plan your play defence

against 4♥ to hold the contract to 10 tricks

Partner’s lead must be a serious singleton. What else can it be ? You can see the AKJ106 in dummy and since QX is the worst lead in bridge we will dismiss it as  the top of doubleton lead . Therefore we need to tell partner where our entry is, if he is able to get the lead so we can give him a Spade ruff. Surely he would not lead a singleton unless he had some control of the opponents’ trump suit.

So at trick one we will play a “meaningful” ♠ 2 to say our entry lies in the lower ranking suit when he obtains the lead,

After winning the first trick declarer tries to draw trumps but partner takes the first trick and duly switches to Clubs. We win dummy’s Jack with the Queen and furnish partner with a Spade ruff carefully telling partner to play another Club by again playing our lowest club possible, the 3. Declarer is however out of clubs and is able to ruff and  claim the rest of the tricks but we get a well above average score for holding the contract to 10 tricks. With any other defence declarer easily makes 11 tricks losing just the Heart Ace and the Club Ace.

You can also watch the following movie to see how the hand pans out. To view this programme you will need  to download htttp://www.haroldschogger.com/bridgevu.setup

  alternatively watch the film www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm