Dealer North. Both Vul.

                                    ♠          K Q 10 4

                                    ♥          A 4 3

                                    ♦          K 7 2

                                    ♣          Q 9 4

            ♠          9                                              ♠          A 7 5

            ♥          K Q J 7 2                                  ♥          10 8 5

            ♦          Q 10 5 3                                   ♦          J 9 8 6 4

            ♣          10 5 2                                       ♣          6 3

                                    ♠          J 8 6 3 2

                                    ♥          9 6

                                    ♦          A

                                    ♣          A K J 8 7

Initially we have 7 winners by way of 1 Heart, 2 Diamonds and 4 clubs.

Once we knock out the Trump Ace and the clubs break reasonably favourable we should must another 5 winners.

Now we look on the losers count and realise that after the Heart lead, they have a potential Heart trick and of course the Ace of Trumps.

From the cradle we are taught ”Always draw trumps” but always is a very dangerous word, especially here. Since we do not have control of the trump suit (i.e. we do not have the Ace) we need to DELAY DRAWING TRUMPS for the VERY GOOD REASON that we need to DUMP A HEART LOSER first.

With this in mind we win the first trick, come back to hand with the Diamond, re-enter dummy with the Club Queen and quickly dump the Heart loser from our hand. Now and only now can we play a trump. West wins and plays a Club. Fortunately everybody follows and we make the rest of the tricks.

We made 4 trumps, 1 Heart, 2 Diamonds and 5 clubs, (not needing to trump anything 😊 ourselves).

Perhpas we should have bid a slam 😊

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.videoes.html or BridgeBase programme on your machine already to view it )

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