Dealer North Love All.                               

                                   ♠          K 3

                                    ♥          9 8 7

                                    ♦          J 9 7 2

                                    ♣         A Q 9 6

            ♠          10 7 5 4                                  ♠          Q 8 6

            ♥          J                                              ♥          K 5 4 3

            ♦          K Q 6 3                                   ♦          A 8 5

            ♣         10 7 5 2                                  ♣         K J 3

                                    ♠          A J 9 2

                                    ♥          A Q 10 6 2

                                    ♦          10 4

                                    ♣         8 4

After the lead and the bidding this hand becomes what is known as OPEN BOOK where you can work out exactly who has what- It is also sometimes called DOUBLE DUMMY being able to play out the hand as if you could see all four hands.

West’s lead suggests he has KQ of Diamonds (total 5 points). Dummy has 10 points and you, declarer, have 11 points accounting for 26 points and East opened 1NT (12-14 points ) so East is marked with all the remaining points after the lead.

Bearing all this in mind you now know that the Club finesse will fail but the Heart finesse will succeed (maybe even a deep finesse against East holding both the King and Jack)

So on a hand like this you will “have to be patient and wait for your tricks to come to you”.

You reject the club finesse at trick 3 and win dummy’s Ace and take a Heart finesse running the 9 which loses t West’s Jack who plays another club which st wins. You have now lost 4 tricks. East gets off lead with a trump to dummy’s 9.

You now finesse Spades because East must have the queen for his 1NT opening bid so here we have a 100% finesse. We now cash two more spades and ruff a spade in dummy with the 8 which is over-ruffed by East but that’s he last trick they take.

We eventually make 3 Spades, 4 trumps from the long hand and the Club Ace, losing 2 Diamonds, 2 Trumps and 1 Club – all good things come to those that wait J

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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