1. 

Answer to Hand of the week, week commencing

Sunday 5th September 2010

Plan your play in 3NT after the ♦K has been led.

 

		Dealer North	♠	A Q 10 5 4
		Both Vul	♥	A 6 5 3
		Lead ¨K	♦	—
			♣	A 9 8 7
	♠	K 9 7 2			♠	J 6
	♥	2			♥	K 10 9 8 7
	♦	K Q J 7 2			♦	10 9 6 3
	♣	10 6 4			♣	Q 5
			♠	8 3
			♥	Q J 4
			♦	A 8 5 4
			♣	K J 3 2

W	N	E	S
	1♠	NO	2♣
NO	2♥	NO	2NT
NO	3NT	NO	NO
NO

This hand came from supervised play and my advanced student Dr John Marks, formerly Chairman of the BMA, certainly excelled himself and pointed out to me the merits of the Rule of seven.

The Rule of seven works like this :- When you need to hold up your Ace in a No Trump contract you count the number of cards in the problem suit (here Diamonds) and subtract the total from Seven and that is the number of times you need to hold up before taking the Ace, and by doing this you will hopefully cut communications between the 2 defenders - I really didn’t think rule of seven would ever work when they had nine cards in the suit and you had a void in dummy but……….

Well, to cut a long story short he held up to the fourth round of Diamonds, finessed the Spade,  finessed Hearts into the safe hand and  when the Club queen came down onside he was able to claim 9 tricks by way of 2 Spades, 2 Hearts 1 Diamond and 4 clubs.                             

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