Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  22nd September 2019

Dealer North. Both Vul.

                                    ♠          A K Q 9 4

                                    ♥          9 8 2

                                    ♦          7 6

                                    ♣         K 5 2

            ♠          J 6 5 2                                    ♠          10 8

            ♥          5 3                                          ♥          A 10 6

            ♦          A J                                          ♦          Q 5 4 3

            ♣         A J 8 7 6                                ♣         10 9 4 3

                                    ♠          7 3

                                    ♥          K Q J 7 4

                                    ♦          K 10 9 8 2

                                    ♣         Q

Plan your play after the kind opponents lead two Aces and then switch to a top Heart and another

whne the opponents are kind you must still be careful or you will go one down here. The most important aspect of this hand is counting your winners.

After three tricks you need the rest.

You have 3 Spades 4 Hearts and 2 Kings so you need one more.

in your haste you might draw trumps and then go after Spades. Whne the spades don’t break you will go one down.

Now let’s rewind. Needing to only generate one more trick instead of relying on the Spades to break lets go for a better option and ruff a Diamond in dummy before drawing and trumps.

So after winning third trick in hand play King and another diamond ruffing in dummy . Although the Diamonds haven’t broken, West is now out of trumps. You have established the extra trick and now you can finish drawing trumps, so trump a low club to get back to hand and draw the remaining trump.

Go over to the Spades and cash then and the master club and claim the rest

You made 3 Spades, 3 Hearts, 1 Diamond, 1 Diamond ruffed in the short hand, and 1 club ruffed in hand.

Maybe West should learn from this and make a passive trump lead and delight when partner switches to a Diamond OOPS

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