7 Your play depends on how good

7 Your play depends on how good your opponent is

ª Q J 7

¨ K 9 8 4

§ 10 7 4 3

ª K 4 3 ª 10 9 6 5

¨ A Q J 6 5 3 ¨ 10 2

§ - § J 8 5

ª A 8 2

¨ 7

§ A K Q 9 6 2

South plays 3NT after West bid strongly. West led ¨A and followed with ¨Q.

Declarer cannot duck this as he has no safe discard on the third diamond so wins and discards ª2. When ¨10 drops from East it raises an interesting conundrum – do you play for West to hold ©A K and ªK as well as his ¨A Q J or do you play to establish the diamond trick while you still have control? The analysis needs some thought but at the table you have to play fairly quickly, otherwise West may wake up.

If West is a top quality player you will go down if you play a third diamond and discard ª8 if clubs are 3-0. The expert will play a spade (you cannot have four spades as you did not bid them. At first sight it seems irrelevant how the clubs break – you will always make six tricks. But clubs are your communication suit to dummy so if ªA is removed you will have no re-entry to hand. Your winning clubs will be stranded or the winning diamond in dummy will be lost. Your best chance will be to run your clubs and hope for a defensive mix-up – very unlikely.

But if West is an average player he will not think through the hand and will return a diamond giving you nine easy tricks.

If West has all the outstanding strength as shown, the “correct” way to play the hand is to run six club tricks reducing West to the following end position:

ª Q J

¨ 9 8

§ --

ª K 4 ª 10 9 6

¨ J 6 ¨ --

§ - § --

ª A 8

¨ --

§ 2

Since North has a diamond stopper, this is not a four loser strip-squeeze – West only has three winners and a heart will leave no doubt – if West bares his ªK declarer still will not go wrong playing a heart – West must win and then can only cash two more tricks before conceding.

If East’s ¨10 had not dropped then the strip squeeze would be the only hope.