Dealer North. NS Vul

                                    ♠          10

                                    ♥          A J 9 5

                                    ♦          K J 3 2

                                    ♣         A Q 8 2

            ♠          K J 9 8                                    ♠          Q 7 3 2

            ♥          Q 7 4 3                                   ♥          —

            ♦          Q 7                                          ♦          10 6 5

            ♣         10 9 3                                     ♣         K J 7 6 5 4

                                    ♠          A 6 5 4

                                    ♥          K 10 8 6 2

                                    ♦          A 9 8 4

                                    ♣         —

Our hand this week comes from the quarter finals of the EBU silver plate where both declarers managed to go off in 6©

I was sitting East and doubled for a safe Club lead rather than anything else.

If declarer can get the trump suit sorted then 12 tricks should materialize. Declarer should not think that I am doubling on Good hearts because I would not want to give the position away so his first thoughts should be that West is more likely to hold the Heart queen but can he cope if the Hearts break 4:0

If you get the Hearts right you can now count  5 Hearts eventually, 1 Spade, 1 Club and if you get lucky in Diamonds, 4 Diamonds so where does the other trick come from?

You will have to ruff a Club in dummy the short hand but then if the Hearts do break badly you will no longer be able to pick up the Queen of trumps through lack of entries.

So let’s replay our trick count   as ONLY 4 trump tricks from dummy, 4 Diamonds and 2 Aces and generate two extra tricks by ruffing clubs twice in hand and doing a “dummy reversal”.

So without much ado we win the Club Ace and ruff a Club. We now cash the Heart king revealing the unfortunate trump break, We now ruff a second Club before taking a trump marked finesse. We now come back to hand via the Spade Ace to finesse trumps again before drawing the last trump.

You now come back to hand with the Diamond Ace ready to finesse the Diamond Jack but the suit breaks kindly for you without any other due concerns

You have made 4 trumps (from the short hand) 4 Diamonds , 2 Aces and 2 club ruffs for an extremely well played board.

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

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