This curious hand comes a “A bridge to Inspired Play” by Julian Laderman and highlights the “occasional drawback” of counting winners and losers.

On this hand we seem to have just 4 winners (Ace King of trump and two minor suit Aces) We also have 4 losers (Three top Spades and a trump)

However, having escaped a Spade lead, which would have rendered the contract impossible, we now have a second chance.

We will attempt to make Two top trumps, 2 Minor suit aces and the remaining six tricks from cross ruffing the Minor Suits.

With this in mind, we win the first trump trick and   cash our other three original  top winners and then let the cross trumping begin. At the eleventh hour if West ruffs in the club we just pitch one of the losing Spades from dummy. Whatever happens, either a Spade loser goes or a trump loser goes and 10 tricks materializes out of thin air.

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