Hand of the week

Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday 28th August 2022

Playing Match Points Plan your play in 4♠

If you would like to play this hand out then click here

Dealer: East Vuln: E/W

♠	A K 9 8
♥	6
♦	K Q 10 3
♣	Q 10 5 3

♠	-
♥	A K Q 9 5 4 3
♦	9 6 2
♣	A J 4

	N
W		E
W		E
	S

♠	6 3
♥	J 8 2
♦	J 8 7 5 4
♣	9 8 6

♠	Q J 10 7 5 4 2
♥	10 7
♦	A
♣	K 7 2

W	N	E	S
		Pass	3♠
4♥	4♠	End

Without doing any work whatsoever you have 7 winners in spades, 3 winners in Diamonds.

Can you possibly make 12 trick despite having 2 Aces missing?

In order to achieve this you are going to have to hold your cards to your chest and not reveal enough about your hand for the defence to prevail.

Your first mission is to try and steal a club winner after drawing trumps.

You ruff the second Heart and draw one round of trumps discovering the trump suit breaking 2:0. Rather than draw the last trump now and give the opposition a chance to signal one another, play a club towards the Queen. You expect West to hold the Ace and now most Wests will play low (after all aren't we all taught second hand plays low when defending.)

West indeed plays low and your queen in dummy wins the trick. Now you can draw the last trump, cash the "Unknown" (as far as West was concerned) Diamond Ace in hand then return to dummy via a top trump and now chuck your remaining 2 Club losers on dummy's KQ of Diamonds.

You made 7 Spades, 1 Heart ruff and 3 Diamonds through your psychological play against West, losing just the first trick.

You can also play out the following hand to see how the hand pans out. (You need bridgvu.exe programme and it is available free from http://www.haroldschogger.com/movies.html )

alternatively watch the film of the hand being played out by going to www.haroldschogger.com/movies2.htm

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