Hand of the week, week commencing,

  Dealer North. Both Vul.

                                    ♠          Q 8 6

                                    ♥          A 7 4

                                    ♦          6 5

                                    ♣         Q J 9 8 6

            ♠          10 9 3                                     ♠          5 4

            ♥          K 6 2                                       ♥          J 10 9 8 3

            ♦          K J 10 3 2                              ♦          Q 4

            ♣         3 2                                           ♣         K 10 7 5

                                    ♠          A K J 7 2

                                    ♥          Q 5

                                    ♦          A 9 8 7

                                    ♣         A 4

I think that this is a really good hand for counting both winners and losers and generating extra tricks.

After the lead and a successful finesse of the club Queen your count of winners is now 2 Clubs, 1 Diamond, 1 Heart and 4 Spades, totalling 8 .

On the losers count you have 1 Heart 1 Diamond totalling just two.

However you cannot do everything here. If you try and ruff 2 Diamonds in dummy you are sure to be overtrumped. You can trump one Diamond to bring your tally to 9 and as long as the trumps break your tally of trump tricks goes up to 5.

Therefore before drawing trumps you will need to ruff a Diamond in dummy, the short hand.

After winning the fist trick, immediately play Ace and another Diamond noting the fall of East’s Queen on the second round.

East gets off lead with a  Heart and you try the Queen to be beaten by West’s King and you win in dummy with the Ace of Hearts. You now come back to hand with a trump in order to trump a Diamond. Since East played the Queen of Diamonds on the second round, it looks like we must ruff the Diamond with dummy’s Queen to avoid the embarrassment of being over-ruffed.

As expected East discards on this trick. Now we come back with a trump to draw the remaining trumps.

However it cannot cost to play off all the trumps before playing the winning club Jack. The opponents are not helpful and keep their clubs and we make just the ten tricks from

5 trumps 2 Red Aces, 2 Clubs and 1 Diamond ruff in dummy the short hand..

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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