After leading the top of your sequence you win the first trick with partner following suit with the 7. Presumably partner is encouraging when he follows with the 7. You now cash a second top Heart and partner follows with the 5. What now? Does partner have the Club Ace ? Does partner have the Diamond King. If partner had AQ of clubs it is correct to switch to a Club at trick three. How are we going to solve these questions ? Well the easiest way to solve this dilemma is to play the Diamond Ace and see if partner encourages or discourages. If he has the King he will certainly encourage and if he doesn’t he will play low and you can still switch to a club then. So at trick three you play the Diamond Ace. Partner encourages with the 7 and you can play another Diamond and take the contract one off. If you err and play a Club declarer will get home discarding  a losing Diamond on dummy’s Club King after drawing two rounds of trumps. If allowed declarer can make 8 Spades and 2 Clubs.

(NB If you and your partner are playing suit preference signals then at trick two partner can play the Heart Ten to ask for a Diamond switch at trick three confirming he has a good card in Diamonds rather than Clubs)

You can also watch the following movie to see how the hand pans out. To view this programme you will need  to download htttp://www.haroldschogger.com/bridgevu.setup

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

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