Hand of the week

Plan your play in 4♠ after the ♥9 is led.

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

Dealer: South Vuln: E/W

♠	Q J 7 5 3
♥	J 10
♦	Q 8
♣	9 8 5 2

♠	8 4
♥	9 6 5 4
♦	6 4 3
♣	A J 6 3

	N
W		E
W		E
	S

♠	K 10 6
♥	K 8 7
♦	K J 10 9 7
♣	7 4

♠	A 9 2
♥	A Q 3 2
♦	A 5 2
♣	K Q 10

W	N	E	S
			2NT
Pass	3♥¹	Pass	3♠
Pass	3NT	Pass	4♠
End

1. Transfer to Spades

This hand is all about counting winners and losers properly..

After the lead and the King hearts appearing at trick one you can now count 3 Heart winners, 1 Spade winner (only initially) and 1 Diamond. Therefore, you will have to find 5 more.

On the losers front you might have 1 Spade (hopefully no more) no Hearts now, 1 Diamond and 2 Clubs.

However you can chuck a Diamond loser in dummy on your third Heart winner in hand.

With all this in mind at trick 2 Play a Heart to dummy's Jack (so avoiding any blocking later and now play Ace and another spade hoping for spades to be 3:2- no point in finessing as one of the opponents might have the K10X and they will merely cover. or you might even run into a Heart ruff by the opponents. East plays the Spade king and East gets off lead with a club and when you insert the King West wins and plays a Heart and now you can chuck the losing Diamond away before going over to dummy to draw East's last trump. Now play the Club King, disappointed not to see the Jack fall. Now concede a Club to West and claim the rest.

You made 2 Clubs, 1 Diamond, 3 Hearts and 4 trumps.

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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