Hand of the week, week commencing, Sunday  9th February 2020

Dealer South. Love All.

                                    ♠          J

                                    ♥          10 7 4 2

                                    ♦          K Q 10 9

                                    ♣          A J 5 4

            ♠          K Q 10 9 7 6                 ♠          8 5 3

            ♥          Q 9                               ♥          8 6 5 3

            ♦          A 3 2                            ♦          J 8 5

            ♣          7 6                                ♣          8 3 2

                                    ♠          A 4 2

                                    ♥          A K J

                                    ♦          7 6 4

                                    ♣          K Q 10 9

The hand this week is all about combining chances.

Initially you have 7 winners i.e. 4 Clubs, 1 Spade and 2 top Hearts. so you will need to find two more.

Firstly, you will need to try and cut communications between the two defenders and you do this by holding up the first two rounds of Spades winning the third round with the remaining lone Ace. 

You think of forcing out the Diamond Ace to set up three Diamond tricks and hope whoever has the Ace will have no more spades. BUT before doing this, it is a no cost play to test the Hearts – maybe the Queen is singleton and you will not have to touch the Diamonds at all.

You play the Heart Ace and a very interesting card falls- “the Nine”. Maybe West started with a doubleton Queen so without much ado plonk down the Ace and see what is going on. –  if no  Queen appears, you can still fall back on the Diamonds

When you play the second top Heart, West does indeed follow with the Queen, and you can now claim your contract with 4 Clubs, 4 Hearts and 1 Spade

(NB when this hand was played against me - I didn’t have to think this hard as West incorrectly led the 4^th highest Spade and dummy’s singleton Jack won the first trick OOPS!)

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