Dealer South Love All

                             ♠        Q 10 5

                             ♥        J 8

                             ♦        7 6

                             ♣       A K J 7 4 3

          ♠        6 4 3                              ♠        9 7

          ♥        A Q 10 9 3                     ♥        7 6 4

          ♦        K Q 8 3                           ♦        J 10 9 2

          ♣       Q                                    ♣       10 9 8 2

                             ♠        A K J 8 2

                             ♥        K 5 2

                             ♦        A 5 4

                             ♣       6 5

In order get a better score than all the North Souths who are likely to play in 4ª you will have to get overtricks and the only suit that could harvest extra tricks is the Club Suit. However if the club finesse is wrong and East gets the lead then a Heart will come back and you run the risk of going down.

Initially you have 5 Spade tricks, 1 Heart trick (after the lead), 1 Diamond  trick and 2 clubs (so your contract is safe) . Where to go for the extra tricks? It  must be clubs but what if East gets the lead?

 You will have to make all or at least 3 Club tricks to get overtricks.

 With all this in mind at trick two you return to hand to play a club from hand and West inserts the Queen at trick 1. What do you make of that?

If West had a lower club surely he would have played it? So it must be a singleton and Clubs are breaking 4:1. So without a second’s hesitation you call for a low club from dummy because your Heart holding is now secure if you allow West to win the current trick.

West to his cost does not cash the Top Heart but tries to get the Diamond suit going and now you turn an average board into a massive top eventually winning 5 Spades, 1Heart, 1 Diamond and 5 Clubs

 (NB Had West correctly led the ©Queen (instead of the chosen Ten) from his original holding then you would not have had a chance to get all these overtricks and would have had to settle  for  10 tricks).

You can also watch the following movie to see how the hand pans htttp://www.haroldschogger.com/bridgevu.setup