Hand of the week

Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday 23rd January 2022

Plan your defence after partner leads ♠5 and declarer plays low from dummy at trick 1

If you would like to play this hand out then click here

Dealer: East Vuln: E/W

♠	A 10 3
♥	A 7 6
♦	K Q 8
♣	J 10 3 2

♠	Q 9 8 5 4
♥	8 5
♦	6 5 3
♣	A Q 5

	N
W		E
W		E
	S

♠	K 7 2
♥	10 3
♦	A 10 7 4 2
♣	9 8 6

♠	J 6
♥	K Q J 9 4 2
♦	J 9
♣	K 7 4

W	N	E	S
		Pass	1♥
Pass	2♣	Pass	2♥
Pass	4♥	End

Partner seems to have led from either the Jack or Queen of Spades and now there is no future in playing back a Spade.

Do we need active defence or passive defence?

The Diamond will not go away and you will need to keep your Diamond Ace over dummy's KQ.

All that is left is to switch to Clubs and hope partner has KQ or better still AQ.

With this in mind pay the ♣8 (2nd from bad suit) and you get "lucky" when partner returns up with AQ. Now the defence takes 2 Clubs 1 Diamond and 1 Spade.

When this hand was played against me East played a Passive trump back and now declarer was able to finesse the Spade and throw 2 Clubs away on an established Diamond and an established Spade and make his contract.

It seems that Active defence was the answer.

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 )

alternatively watch the film of the hand being played out by going to www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm

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