Plan your play in 4© after ªJ is led won by East who switches to §Q

  Dealer South. Both Vul

                                    ♠          Q 9 6 3

                                    ♥          K J 8 4 3

                                    ♦          Q

                                    ♣         10 9 5

            ♠          J 10 4 2                                  ♠          A 7 5

            ♥          Q 6 2                                       ♥          A

            ♦          9 8 7 3                                    ♦          10 5 4 2

            ♣         K 4                                          ♣         Q J 7 6 2

                                    ♠          K 8

                                    ♥          10 9 7 5

                                    ♦          A K J 6

                                    ♣         A 8 3

“Always” and “never” are really bad words when teaching and to say you “always draw trumps straight away” would be terrible on this hand

After taking the Ace at trick one, East switches to §Queen.

After the first two tricks you do a tally of winners and you have 1 Club, 4 Diamonds, 2 Spades with lots of potential from Trumps.

However on the losers tally you now have two possible club losers plus the two aces.

If you start to draw trumps the opponents will be sure to get their 2  clubs and 2 Aces and you will immediately go one down. So what to do about losers?

Before tackling trumps you must unblock the Diamond Queen then come back to hand to play two more top Diamonds DUMPING the CLUB LOSERS. Now it is safe to start on trumps and you play the Heart Jack from hand and let it run. The finesse being successful you now make 11 tricks.

You make 2 Spades, 4 trumps 4 Diamonds and 1 Club.

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 )