Hand of the week

Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday 18th July 2021

Plan your defence of their 3NT after you lead ♦King

<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 51);">23 </span></a><br/><br/>

Dealer: West Vuln: N/S

♠	Q 6
♥	A K J 6 4
♦	5 3
♣	A J 10 8

♠	A J 5 3
♥	7
♦	K Q 10 8 6 4
♣	7 5

	N
W		E
W		E
	S

♠	7 4 2
♥	Q 10 8 3
♦	9 7 2
♣	9 3 2

♠	K 10 9 8
♥	9 5 2
♦	A J
♣	K Q 6 4

W	N	E	S
1♦	1♥	Pass	1♠
Pass	2♦	Pass	3NT
End

MY partner lead the ♦K and I played the ♦3 at trick one which he should have read as giving the count.

Declarer proceeded to play one round of Hearts followed by 4winning clubs and then another Heart. When West showed out declarer nw played ♠Q and Wet not wanting to give anything away played back a Spade and now declarers was able to claim his contract by way of 2 Spades, 2 Hearts, 1 Diamond and 4 clubs.

Now let's rewind the trick 1. When partner leads the ♦K one is supposed to either unblock or show the count. When I followed suit with the 2 I am showing 3 . It is no good to my partner for me to have a singleton and declarer 4. With this in mind partner should play me for a three card Diamond suit, keep all his "now" winning Diamonds and the Spade Ace and now hold declarer to just 7 tricks with West able to take 1 Spade and 5 Diamond so defeating the contract eventually by 3.

The player who played this hand against me not only could not bid properly but then went onto to completely misplay the hand too.

In order to make 3NT you will need to get those lovely Hearts going in dummy. However you only have two entries outside the Heart suit and the opponent has already forced out the Club Ace so in reality you only have the the ♦K

Your Hearts are magnificent and overtricks are not important. Without dong any work at all you have 1 Spade winner, 2 Heart winners, 2 Diamonds and 1 Club. You only need to generate 3 more tricks. You can afford a Heart loser and still be OK.

With all this in mind, and a shortage of entries win the second club pleased to see the Jack being played and now you might have an extra Club winner too, you win second trick and play dummy's Ace of Hearts dropping your queen and being in right hand to continue playing hearts. East takes the second Heart and switches to Spades. Since you are playing IMPs, where making the contract is more important than any overtricks you take the Ace. You enter dummy with the Diamond King (your only entry) and play off all your established Hearts. You now just take your winners and make exactly 9 tricks. If you had been playing Match Point Pairs where overtricks are important at the 11th hour you might finesse the Diamond and then you will make 10 tricks.

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.com/movies.html )