Dealer East Love All.

                                    ♠          K J 7 6 4

                                    ♥          10 8 6 4

                                    ♦          8

                                    ♣          Q 10 7

            ♠          —                                 ♠          Q 10 9 3

            ♥          J 7 3                             ♥          Q 9 5 2

            ♦          K 7 5 4                          ♦          Q J 3

            ♣          A K 9 6 5 4                    ♣          8 2

                                    ♠          A 8 5 2

                                    ♥          A K

                                    ♦          A 10 9 6 2

                                    ♣          J 3

W         N        E         S

                        NO       1¨                               

2§        DBL      NO       3ª       

4ª        NO       NO       NO

 When the trump suit breaks badly like this it looks like you will have two t rump losers as well as the two top clubs you have already lost.

However if you are patient you might still be able to get home if you can perform an endplay against poor East.

With this in mind, you will need to ruff diamonds twice and Hearts twice and hope East can follow suit.

So, after playing the Spade Ace and discovering the bad news you now play your second top Heart followed by Diamond Ace and the first diamond ruff in dummy relived to see East follow suit. You now ruff a Heart in hand with East still following suit. You now ruff one more Diamond (again East following suit) followed by ruffing dummy’s last heart and East still following suit.

At this point in time you know that East’s remaining three cards are Q109 of trump and all you have to do is play a Diamond from hand and discard dummy’s last club. Although West is winning with the Diamond King, partner has to ruff and now lead from his last two spades into the jaws of the KJ of spades in dummy.

You eventually made three trumps, 2 Hearts 1 Diamond. 2 Heart ruffs and 2 Diamond ruffs.

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