Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  8th March 2020

Playing Match Point Pairs ©King is led plan your play

Dealer South Both  Vul.

                                    ♠          A K 8

                                    ♥          A 10 9 3

                                    ♦          8 7 2

                                    ♣          A 10 9

            ♠          9 7                                ♠          10 3

            ♥          K Q 6                            ♥          J 8 4 2

            ♦          10 9 4 3                        ♦          K Q J

            ♣          6 4 3 2                          ♣          Q J 7 5

                                    ♠          Q J 6 5 4 2

                                    ♥          7 5

                                    ♦          A 6 5

                                    ♣          K 8

On the surface it looks like you have 3 losers 1 Heart and 2  Diamonds. So where can you get an overtrick?

Well maybe you can take advantage of the lead and eventually your 10 or 9 of Hearts could become high.

With this in mind you draw trumps in two rounds. You now return to hand via the Club King in order to lead up to the remaining 1093 of Hearts West takes his Queen which seems to suggest that East has the Jack (defenders usually play the highest card necessary when following suit so this Queen suggests no Jack. West makes his best switch to a Diamond your Achilles heel. You win with the Ace and enter dummy with a top club You now play ©10 and when East kindly covers you can ruff high and now be able to return to dummy with the last ©8 and chuck one of the  losing Diamonds on the now established Heart left in dummy.

You made 6 Trumps, 2 Hearts, 1 Diamond and 2 Clubs  for a very good match point score.

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