Dealer West Both Vul.

                                    ♠          9 6 4 3

                                    ♥          Q 6 5

                                    ♦          A 10 8 6 3

                                    ♣         3

            ♠          2                                              ♠          A J 7 5

            ♥          7 3                                          ♥          K J 10

            ♦          K J 9 5                                    ♦          Q 4 2

            ♣         J 10 9 5 4 2                           ♣         Q 8 7

                                    ♠          K Q 10 8

                                    ♥          A 9 8 4 2

                                    ♦          7

                                    ♣         A K 6

At trick 1 you drop the Spade Ten as its a no cost play and might muddy the waters for East.

Initially you have 4 tricks – 2 Clubs, 1 Diamond and 1 Heart.

As long as the trumps are no worse than 3:2 you should be able to generate 2 more trump tricks bringing the total to 6. The first trick now increases your trick tally to tow more bringing total to 8.  You will need to ruff a club in dummy and hope the spades divided 3:2.

With all this in  mind, after winning the with the Ace you immediately ruff a club and play the Heart Queen from dummy which East covers. You win this trick and play a second trump to find trumps breaking kindly. East plays his last trump before  getting off lead with a club which you are now able to win with your carefully preserved King.

You now cash a top Spade to discover that East did in fact start off with four. You go over to dummy with the Diamond ace and take the marked finesse of the Spade Jack.

You now make 3 Spades, 3 Hearts, 1 Diamond, 2 Clubs and 1 club ruffed in dummy the short hand.

You can now see the effects of your false card at trick 1 in discouraging East from playing another Spade. Perhaps East should have trusted his partner more and just returned a spade at trick 2 and the contract goes down. Also if the opposition takes out the Diamond ace earlier then there will no longer be the entry to dummy to take the marked Spade finesse.

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

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