Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  13th October  2019

Dealer South both Vull.

                             ♠        A 10 9

                             ♥       K 6 4

                             ♦        9 7 5 2

                             ♣       A 4 2

          ♠        4 3                                  ♠        J 8 7 5 2

          ♥       Q 8 7 5 3 2                    ♥       9

          ♦        K Q 8                             ♦        A 4 3

          ♣       Q 10                               ♣       8 7 5 3

                             ♠        K Q 6

                             ♥       A J 10

                             ♦        J 10 6

                             ♣       K J 9 6

Having  escaped a Diamond lead, you have 8 tricks in the bag – 3 Spades, 3 Hearts and 2 Clubs - and it seems you need to finesse clubs or for something good to happen in Clubs.

You win first trick with Heart Ten and play a club to dummy’s Ace and West produces the Ten. What do you make of this? If this is a singleton then West has a shapely hand but didn’t overcall your 1NT bid so West cannot be too distributional and therefore is unlikely to have a singleton Club. Could this Club Ten be part of a Doubleton Q10. If so we can now get not just 9 tricks but 10.

With this in mind we now play a club to the Ace and West does indeed produce the Queen (NB you have not had a peek at his hand, you merely worked it out.

 You now make 10 tricks with 3 Spades, 3 Hearts and 4 clubs.

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