Dealer North

♠ AQ7

♥ AKQJ

♦ QJ10987

♣ –

♠ KJ1086

♥ 5432

♦ –

♣ KQJ10

♠ 95432

♥ –

♦ 65432

♣ 432

 

♠ –

♥ 109876

♦ AK

♣ A98765

Dealer North     East West Vulnerable

Lead  ♣K

Contract 7♥

Jack’s bridge columns can be found at the back of Saturday’s magazine section of the Yorkshire Post.

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM – How to play 7 HEARTS:

1. On ♣K lead, throw ♦7 from dummy (1^st KEY PLAY) and win ♣A. It is important to keep ♠Q and ♠7 intact in dummy as you need to trump both of them in hand to reduce declarer’s trump holding to three hearts.
2. Play ♥6 to dummy’s ♥J
3. Play ♠A from dummy throwing ♦K
4. Play ♠Q from dummy, trumping in hand with ♥7
5. Play ♥8 to dummy’s ♥Q
6. Play ♠7 from dummy trumping in hand with ♥9
7. Play ♥10 from hand to dummy’s ♥K
8. Declarer now has no trumps left in hand (trumped two spades and drawn three rounds of trumps).
9. Draw the last trump by playing ♥A from dummy and …….

10.2^nd KEY PLAY – declarer’s hand has no trumps left so DISCARD ♦A

11.Now with trumps drawn and diamonds unblocked, dummy’s ♦QJ1098 are all winners!

12.Well played.

The key was to be able to discard ♦AK to unblock the suit. One honour (♦K) goes on dummy’s ♠A and the other (♦A) goes on dummy’s long trump (♥A).

To enable this declarer must trump two losing spades in hand to make sure dummy had one more trump than declarer.