Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  1st March 2020

Plan your defence – what do you lead?

♠          —

                                    ♥          A Q 10

                                    ♦          K Q 10 5 2

                                    ♣          Q 10 8 6 2

            ♠          A 7 3                            ♠          K J 10 6 5 4 2

            ♥          7 5 2                             ♥          9 6 4

            ♦          9 4                                ♦          7

            ♣          K J 9 7 4                       ♣          A 3

                                    ♠          Q 9 8

                                    ♥          K J 8 3

                                    ♦          A J 8 6 3

                                    ♣          5

This hand comes from OK Bridge online website and my partner found an amazing well thought out lead. Assuming I had made a sensible 3ª opener she decided that she wanted to keep her Ace over declarer and underlead her A73 of Spades. I surprisingly won the first trick with the King and played back the Jack finessing declarer’s Queen. Declarer not unreasonably tried the Queen. Had she ducked then the suit was blocked but I still had an entry in Clubs.

We took the first 7 spade tricks and 2 Clubs defeating the contract by 5 . Perhaps North South should have got their act together and bid laydown 6¨ contract.

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