¨10 Lead  plan your play in IMPS and Match Points

 You let the first trick come around to your hand and the king wins.

Which suit to go after ? Hearts or Clubs ? You have 7 Hearts but 8 Clubs. with a concentration of five cards in both suits.. In Hearts you have one trick in the bag so you would only be establishing 3 extra tricks, but in Clubs you will be establishing 4 extra assuming clubs break 3:2 .

 With this in mind we immediately knock out the Clubs Ace. After taking his Ace West perseveres a small  with Diamond and we try dummy’s Queen which holds.

Playing Imps where making the contract is King, we cash all our winners, 4 in Clubs, 3 in Spades plus the 2 Diamonds. That is now our contract. Playing Imps we are home so now we can risk the Heart finesse for two overtricks.

Because we have the contract in the bag by trick 10 (our 9 tricks) whether we are playing Imps or Mps we should go for the overtrick by taking the Heart finesse. (NB If at this stage we only had 8 tricks we would of course not risk the finesse but cash the Ace guaranteeing the contract but here we have the luxury of taking the finesse.

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

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