On this hand West leads the Spade King and first thoughts should be to hold the first trick up but with 10XXX  in your hand you have a partial secondary stop and you really need to get your Clubs going. Also if you adhere to the Rule of Seven. You have 6 spades between your hand and dummy so 7 – 6 means you can hold up one round but here we are playing Mps’s and overtricks are important so don’t bother to hold up but take the Ace..

We take the first trick with dummy’s Ace and start on Clubs. We do not bother to finesse clubs on the first round but prefer to play for the trumps to be 2:2 or a singleton Honour appearing at trick Two.. When no honour appears at trick two, at trick three we are relieved to see the suit breaking 2:2. East gets in with the King and has no Spades and gets off lead with a Diamond (leading around to dummy’s weakness).

We now cash all the remaining clubs . On dummy’s 5^th Club we should throw a Spade. Surely if West had the Heart Ace as well as six Spades he would have overcalled our 1NT bid. We now turn our attention to Hearts. playing a high Heart to displace The Ace. As expected, East turns up with the Ace and gets off lead with another Diamond.

We are now sailing high and make 2 more Hearts tricks.

By this time we have amassed 1 Spade, 2 Hearts, 2 Diamonds and 4 clubs for a huge 90% Match Point score.

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

Have you tried ATVing yet ?