§Queen led won by East and club returned plan your play

  Dealer West. Love All

                                    ♠          K 2

                                    ♥          K Q J

                                    ♦          A 10 9 8 5 3

                                    ♣         9 7

            ♠          Q 3                                          ♠          J 9 5 4

            ♥          8 7 5 3 2                                 ♥          4

            ♦          K J 4 2                                    ♦          Q 7 6

            ♣         Q 4                                          ♣         A J 6 3 2

                                    ♠          A 10 8 7 6

                                    ♥          A 10 9 6

                                    ♦          —

                                    ♣         K 10 8 5

The hand this week I dedicate to all my beloved students “who love to ruff or dare I say even cross ruff” when most of the time they should not be doing so.

Most of the time you ruff, you only get extra tricks if you ruff in the short hand.

Most of the time you ruff, you have already counted these tricks as winners when you assessed your hand when dummy went down initially!.

This week however I will let you cross ruff to your heart’s content.

North showed good hearts support if only three and gave South the choice in playing either 4ª or 4©  and South wisely opted to play in Hearts knowing partner had ruffing values in spades and he certainly had ruffing values in Diamonds.

After the club lead won by East with the Ace you can count 8 winners, 2 Spades, 4 trumps 1 Club and 1 Diamond.

You therefore need 2 more- setting up Dummy’s Diamonds takes a lot of effort and then you would have to rely on trumps breaking well.

However if you could make all your trumps separately we can now count the hand as 2 top spades, 7 separate trumps 1 Diamond and 1 club  giving us an overtrick.

Now when you embark on a cross ruff like this its correct to cash out all your outside top winners first. If you left this to the end and began the cross ruffing first it might give the opposition a chance to chuck the cards in that suit.

So without much ado after winning the club you cash two top Spades and the Diamond ace and then start cross ruffing Spades  and Diamonds and bring home 11 tricks.

NB The opposition, not unreasonably, led the unbid suit but if West had led a trump declarer would probably be a trick short.

You can also watch the following movie to see how the hand pans out. To view this programme you will need  to download htttp://www.haroldschogger.com/bridgevu.setup

  alternatively watch the film www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm

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