Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday 18th June 2023

Dealer: North

Vuln: N/S

When this hand was played against me, declarer went after Spades and the hand fell apart as there were not enough tricks.

Let's now rewind and count our winners, look at entries and and see if we can generate extra tricks to bring home the contract.

After the lead, you now have 1 Spade winner, 2 Heart winners 2 Diamond winners and 1 club winner resulting in 6 winners without doing any work. Your best bet to produce the extra 3 tricks must therefore come from your long club suit. Between the two hands you have 8 clubs and as long as the clubs break no worse than 3:2 (68%) you will be able to generate 4 extra tricks from the clubs and you have sufficient entries to dummy to get back to the clubs once they are indeed established.

So at trick two having won the trick with your Diamond Queen now play Ace and another club pleased to see the clubs breaking kindly. The opponents now play another diamond which you win in dummy and now force out the remaining High Club. At this stage all the clubs in dummy have been established. East wins and comes off lead with a Spade. Presumable East has no more Diamonds. When East plays a spade and since your contract is no longer at risk you can try the Queen trying for two overtricks. West wins with the King and cashes his Diamond. Now you make just 9 tricks without ever putting your contract into jeopardy.