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Updated  16th August 2026

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 Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  5th June   2022

Playing Match Point pairs how would you play your 3NT contract after the 7 lead?

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

Dealer: West Love All

 
A
A Q 7 4
10 8 6 4
K J 9 4
 
K 10 9 8
K 10 9 3 2
J 5 2
7
  N  
W   E
 
  S  
Q J 4
J 6 5
9 7
Q 8 6 5 2
 
7 6 5 3 2
8
A K Q 3
A 10 3
 
W N E S
Pass 1 Pass 1
Pass 2 Pass 2
Pass 3 Pass 3NT
End      

What do you make of that lead? It seems West has led top of Nothing and East "must have" the club queen. So at trick 1, you let the lead come around to your 10 with East following suit with the 8 at trick 1.

You have escaped a Spade lead.

Needing as many overtricks as possible you take stock - without doing any work at all, you have 7 more winners- 2 Clubs, 3 Diamonds, 2 Major Suit Aces.

If the Diamonds break no worse than 3:2 or the Jack falls singleton you now have 9 tricks. You need to keep the two hands fluid.

So at trick, as you are now in the correct hand to take take the Heart finesse. Let's do that and it is successful. Having initially assessed East to hold missing Club queen now play the 9 ready to let it run. It wins and now you can cash out for 11 tricks making two overtricks for a good Match Point score and never putting your contract at risk

You made 4 clubs, 4 Diamonds, 2 Hearts and 1 Spade.

It seems that West didn't want to give anything away and that's why he led a club. Seems he chose the wrong minor suit lead J

 

  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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