This is a lovely hand for pinning if you understand the reason you are pinning Key cards.

After winning the first trick you take stock and appear to have only 5 Winners (1 Spade, 2 Heart and 2 Clubs). On the loser front you have 1 Spade, 1 Heart 2 Diamonds.

You have escaped a Diamond lead so immediately dump a Diamond on a second high Club.

 How to play the trumps ?  Because East bid 1NT East is marked with the Spade King. What if East has precisely  two Spades (king and a small one?) This would mean that West’s singleton is the Jack. With this in mind you play dummy’s Queen covered by the King and Ace and Lo Behold up pops West’s Jack -you have pinned the Jack and promoted your Ten to draw the last small trump.

You now turn your attention to the Heart suit hoping East has a Doubleton Queen highly unlikely considering he has already turned up with a Doubleton Spade and he opened 1NT. When you play the first round of Hearts West drops the 8 and if you believe this to be West’s lowest card you can now play West to have doubleton 108 of Hearts. Therefore let’s play dummy’s Jack and finesse East and pin our second card. To do this we will have to enter dummy with a trump. After entering dummy with a trump we play dummy’s Jack, East card of the play and now promoted dummy’s Heart 9. Its now a matter of cashing the 9 trumping a Club to get back to enjoy the established Hearts.

We have amassed. 5 trumps (from one pinning, 5 Hearts from a second pining, 2 Clubs and 1 Club ruffed thereby obtaining all 13  tricks for a huge top score.)

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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