There are five cards with the opponents. You must hope they are split 3/2 and the Ace is with the doubleton then you can make three tricks. You should lead low towards one of your honours hoping that the Ace sits in front of that honour (You may have clues as to who might hold the Ace from the bidding or previous card play). If the opponents take their Ace you are home and dry...............but good players are likely to duck the first round saving their Ace to "kill" one of your big cards next time......................Assuming you win the first trick then you should play a small card from both hands hoping the Ace has to be played because it was a doubleton.................Playing the cards in this manner gives you the best chance of making three tricks from your heart suit.

South should avoid making an immediate response of 3NT. It takes away a lot of bidding space and leaves North no room to describe his hand. 3NT might not be the best contract. It is better to make the forcing bid of 2C (change of suit is forcing for one round). This enables North to rebid 2H if he holds five hearts . Therefore the best contract would be 4H not 3NT.

The complete bidding sequence for this hand was (1H, pass, 2C, pass, 2H, pass, 4H, pass, pass, pass.) Therefore enabling South to find the major fit rather than playing in 3NT.

The bid of 3H by South is a 'Forcing Bid'. It shows a hand with 13-18 points and 5 hearts. North must choose a game to bid (either 4H or 3NT) depending how many cards he holds in the heart  suit. In this example he has three cards in the heart suit so should bid 4H. Holding only two cards in the heart suit he would have bid 3NT.

Note if playing Transfers the bidding would have been as follows............1NT, Pass, 2D, Pass, 2H, Pass, 3NT, Pass, 4H, Pass, Pass, Pass.

"To pre-empt or not to pre-empt that is the question"

This hand was played ten times by East in a variety of contracts 3C, 4C, 5C and 3NT. On our table when West opened 3D, East bid 4C which was passed out. I wonder what East would bid if West does not open 3D......................Somebody suggested that if West passed East should open 3C or perhaps even "The Gambling 3NT"............East would be hoping that the opponents could not take too many tricks in defence before they could get in and run their long club suit and cash the Ace of Spades to give them nine tricks.

(The text book says that if your partner opens "The Gambling 3NT" you should only pass if you hold an honour card in three suits. Otherwise you should bid 4 clubs which can be left or converted to 4 Diamonds as appropriate.)

Defending 3NT N/S have four heart tricks and the AD, contract one off.............. but if South leads a Spade then West has nine top tricks contract making.

Playing in clubs there are the same four losers, (three hearts and a diamond) assuming the six of clubs is removed from the dummy.......that is again only nine tricks

Is West perhaps a little light to open 3D with just two Kings.....The 'Rule of 500' says that to pre-empt non-vulnerable you should see 6 tricks in own your hand, and to pre-empt vulnerable you should see seven tricks in your own hand.

If West does not bid is East too strong to open 3C or 3NT with the singleton AS as well as a long solid minor and would it in fact be better to open 1 Club............. or should it be 2 Clubs?

The ten times East played this hand it only went off twice giving N/S a positive score of 50 points. The best scores went to the players who played in 3NT making............. but as we can see that can go off one.

Much of the discussion I overheard was about pre-empts........................but was there a pre-empt there at all?......................Please send in your thoughts on this hand how you think the bidding should go and the final contract.