Board 3 was a textbook play hand.

 

The bidding was fairly straightforward. West opened 1H being the higher ranked of two 5-card suits. East responded 1S and West rebid 2D. At this point East could settle for 4H on the known 5-3 fit or tried a very hoggish 3NT which would end the bidding in totally the wrong contract. The best choice is 3C, a 'fourth suit forcing' bid to find out more information about the distribution of the West hand. This time West rebids the 5 card diamond suit and East has an easy 4H bid to end the auction in the best game contract.

 

If the West hand had been something like Sx/HAQJxx/DKxxx/CQJx the response to 3C would have been 3NT which is a better contract on these two hands.

 

Now for the play on the lead of C3 from North. We win the CA and do what? If the cards lie kindly we could win 12 tricks just losing a heart whilst bad breaks could threaten our contract especially if we get forced by repeated club leads.

 

It is normal good play to tackle the side suit before trying to draw trumps so at trick 2 we finesse the DJ which wins. Continuing with this plan we cross to a top spade and finesse the DQ. This time although it wins, North is out of diamonds and gets a ruff with a small heart and continues clubs, which we ruff.

 

Now it is time to take stock of the situation. We know that the diamonds don't run, so we will have to ruff one in dummy to set up our 5th card. The good news is that there are only 4 trumps missing, so the danger of being forced off is much reduced. To maximise our chances in trumps, we can cross to dummy and try a heart finesse. As expected it loses to North who again plays another club for us to ruff.  

 

Again we have a count up - dummy still has 2 hearts and so do we. The defenders have 2 hearts between them. Therefore we cash the AH hoping to drop both missing trumps. This time North is left with the HK but there is nothing he can do to beat the contract as long as we continue with the DA. North can ruff the DA but we make the rest by ruffing the 4th diamond in dummy and discarding the last one on a top spade so that we make 4H for the loss of only 3 trump tricks.

 

After the 2nd diamond was ruffed and a club continued, which we ruffed, there was an alternative line of play available. With only 4 trumps missing, we could have cashed the HA, noting that neither honour drops and then continued with the DA allowing the defenders to make both of the missing heart honours, however they broke. That would have made the contract, but given no chance of an overtrick if the hearts had been 3 with North and 2 with South. What we mustn't do is play HA and another round which would allow North to draw a third round and defeat the contract.

 

Anyone who played the hand by starting to draw trumps, would have found that the contract was unmakeable, and they would have done  well to make 9 tricks. Try it yourself, and you'll  see what I mean.

 

The board was played 12 times and only 3 pairs managed 10 tricks (in fact one made 11!) so careful play would have been rewarded with an excellent score.