Dealer North. Love All.

                                    ♠          K Q 10 8 3

                                    ♥          10 6 2

                                    ♦          A 8

                                    ♣         7 6 4

            ♠          7 5 4                                       ♠          J 9

            ♥          Q J 8 4                                   ♥          9 5 3

            ♦          K 6 4                                       ♦          Q J 5

            ♣         A Q 9                                      ♣         10 8 5 3 2

                                    ♠          A 6 2

                                    ♥          A K 7

                                    ♦          10 9 7 3 2

                                    ♣         K J

 On our hand this week an important decision needs to be made at trick One.

 At trick 1 declarer can count 3 Spade winners, 2 Heart winners and 1 Diamond winner so needs to generate 3 more.

 If the spades break no worse than 3:2 or the Jack is a singleton then 2 more tricks will come from the Spade suit. So then we would need 1 more .

The club suit might provide one more if we guess the clubs correctly assuming East has one club honour.

However, the tenth trick could come from the suit that has been lead and it is a no cost play to try dummy’s 10 at trick 1 just in case West has led from QJXX.

 When you try dummy’s Ten. it holds the trick. You then cash out the spades and bring home 9 tricks.

Now that you can see all four hands, if you had not made this decision at trick 1 then the contract will go down as both Club honours sit over the KJ and the defenders will surely get their clubs going.

(NB West dumped the Diamond King so that he was not end-played and would then give declarer an overtrick if he had to lead from his AQ of Clubs if declarer had thrown him in with a Diamond at trick 10).

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