The opponents get off to their best lead and you now need to combine your best chances of making this contract.

Initially you have 4 Spade winners, 2 Diamonds and 1 club. If the Spades break no worse than 4:2 then an extra spade will be established so where to go for the 9^th trick ?

You could play for clubs to be 4:4. You could play for clubs to be 5:3 with the Heart Ace not being in the hand with 5 Hearts. Or you could merely take a simple Diamond finesse- low from dummy and finessing your Jack.

Instead of putting all your eggs in the finessing basket it is best to hold up for two rounds of Clubs before taking the third club. You take the third trick in dummy, and play a Heart from dummy up to your Queen. When this holds you now play out the Spades and when they break you claim 5 Spades, 1 Heart, 2 Diamonds and 1 Club.

(NB Had you gone for the Diamond finesse straight away you would go one off)

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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