Dealer South Both Vul

                                    ♠          A 8 6

                                    ♥          A 7 5 4

                                    ♦          J

                                    ♣         A 10 6 4 2

            ♠          J                                              ♠          10 9 4 3 2

            ♥          10 6                                        ♥          Q 9 8 2

            ♦          Q 10 7 4                                 ♦          K 9 5

            ♣         Q J 8 7 5 3                            ♣         K

                                    ♠          K Q 7 5

                                    ♥          K J 3

                                    ♦          A 8 6 3 2

                                    ♣         9

After a very brave auction you and partner get to 3NT.

An initial count of winners comes to just 7 -3 Spades, 2 Hearts 1 Diamond and 1 club. So you will need to generate two more before conceding 5 winners to the opponents.

With this in mind spades breaking and the Heart finesse seem to be your only solution with no extra tricks coming from either Minor.

The opponents lead a Club and you decide to duck the first  round won by East who promptly switches to ª3. You now know that East has no more clubs and has probably switched to 4^th highest of his longest suit. West produces the Jack and you win in dummy. From this switch you know, from the Rule of 11 that there are 8 cards higher than the card led between your hand , dummy and the other defender. Well you can see them all.

(NB If you do not understand the Rule of 11 completely you can still see that the only cards higher than the 3 must all be with East (ie the 10 9 and 4)

So you will ned to do a deep finesse against East. You will also need to finesse east for the missing Heart Queen. To do all this you need three entries to North but you only have two. Therefore you will have to rely on a defensive error by East and the best opportunity is do the the deep finesse in spades immediately otherwise later on he will certainly split his honours. With this in min d play another spade at trick 3 and when East plays low you finesse the 7. It holds.

You now cash one more spade followed by low Heart to to the Ace .and cash the top club (Don’t forget to do so) and then with hand on Heart take the Heart finesse and when it holds you have amassed 9 tricks by way of 4 spades, 3 Hearts and 2 Minor suit Aces.

Of course you stand no chance had East split his 109 at trick 3..

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

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