Dealer East Love All

                                     ♠          9

                                    ♥          A 10 6 3 2

                                    ♦          A K J 6 2

                                    ♣          K J

            ♠          J 7 5 3                          ♠          10 2

            ♥          K Q                              ♥          J 9 5

            ♦          Q 9 5 4 3                      ♦          —

            ♣          8 2                                ♣          A Q 10 9 7 5 4 3

                                    ♠          A K Q 8 6 4

                                    ♥          8 7 4

                                    ♦          10 8 7

                                    ♣          6

When my partner played this hand on OKBridge he was somewhat careless and had not counted his winners and losers carefully.

After winning the second trick with a ruff you take stock and without any work at all you have 6 winners ie 3 Spades, 1 Heart and 2 Diamonds only.

If the spades break nicely you will get three more Spades and another should come from Diamonds.

On the losers front you have 1 possible trump (maybe two if 5:0 break) 2 Hearts 1 club and 1 Diamond.

The only way to get rid of the Heart losers is to set up the Diamond suit and appreciate that  your intermediates are good (J10876)

With all this in mind. You trump the second tricks and draw three rounds of trumps disappointed to see the 4:1 break. and then start on Diamonds. When you lead the Ten West covers and East discards. Since you do not want to cut yourself off from dummy you should now play a low Diamond to your 8 and West is entitled to his 9. Now however you will be able to overtake the Diamond and dump your Heart losers  and West can have his trump Jack whenever he likes.

You make 5 trumps, 1Heart and 4 Diamonds losing just 1 trump, 1 Diamond  and 1 Club.

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