Initially you have 8 winners – 6 Clubs and 2 Major suit Aces. You can generate extra tricks from Ruffing Spades in the short hand and even ruffing a Diamond in the short hand but if you do that you would not be able to draw any trumps as you would need three of your four trumps in dummy for ruffing purposes and the defence might see through this plan and attack trumps whenever they get in and you might even end up one down. You also need to protect your Diamond King. With regards to the Diamond position West is the safe hand and East is the danger hand.

With all this in mind we have to decide how to play that lovely looking Heart suit in dummy. We could take a simple Heart finesse, or we could take a ruffing finesse. If we take the simple finesse and it loses to the danger hand we could be sunk. If we take a ruffing finesse and it loses then it will lose to the safe hand. The advantage of this line is that eventually all dummy’s Diamonds can be established and we will not need to ruff anything.

So after winning the first trick you should immediately play Ace and another Heart ready to do a ruffing finesse. When the King pops up you now ruff, and draw two rounds of trumps ending in dummy. When you now play the winning Heart the suit breaks 3:3 and you can claim with 6 trumps, 5 Hearts 1 spade and just 1 spade ruffed in the short hand.

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