Dealer North. Both Vul.

                                    ♠          J 10 4 2

                                    ©         4 3

                                    ¨         K 8 2

                                    §         A K 6 5

            ♠          Q 8 3                                       ♠          A 9 7

            ©         Q J 9 8                                   ©         10 7 2

            ¨         Q J 5 3                                   ¨         9 7 6 4

            §         Q 3                                          §         J 8 4

                                    ♠          K 6 5

                                    ©         A K 6 5

                                    ¨         A 10

                                    §         10 9 7 2

Sometimes it is best to be born lucky. However once you are born lucky you must take full advantage and on this hand you can make the contract .

After you get lucky in winning the first trick with the Diamond Ten (who can blame West for leading his 4^th best) you can now count a tally of 7 winners from, 3 Diamonds, 2 Clubs and 2 Hearts so you now need two more. On the surface you might think of going after Clubs the longest suit between the two hands BUT this will only produce 1 extra trick and you need two, so you will need to go after Spades and hope for a good break in the Spade suit (NB with both your hand and the dummy being balanced there is a good chance that the opponents suits will be balanced too and the Spades hopefully will break  3:3). 

With all this in mind at trick two you play a low spade towards dummy’s Jack Ten and when West plays low East wins the trick with the Ace and plays back another Diamond. You now play another Spade and when the spades break 3:3 you will have established two extra tricks for your contract.

You eventually make. 2 Spades, 2 Hearts, 3 Diamonds and 2 Clubs.

(NB if the first spade is ducked by West and the Jack brings down the Ace you could switch tactics and now go after a club for your 9^th trick instead of relying on Spades breaking 3:3 here J)

You can also view  watch the following movie to see how the hand pans out. (You need bridgvu.exe programme  and it is available free from   http://www.haroldschogger.com/videos.html or BridgeBase programme on your machine already to view it )