The "obvious" plan for the defence is to cash ♣A to have a look at dummy, then maybe cash ♣K and ♠A hoping to defeat the contract straight away.  Not a winning line as the cards lie, in fact, rather the opposite (click on Show All Hands to see the details).  The bidding has given away a couple of big clues about declarer's likely holding. 

Firstly, declarer has shown at least five clubs, and your club holding of AK97 could well be bad news for him.  Also, by leading a top club you are exposing your second top club to a "ruffing finesse" if dummy only has a singleton club (or even worse, a void).  As the cards lie, all is well and there are clearly two club losers off the top, so maybe you cash the second club.

But where do you look for the setting trick?  Tempting as it is, you should not lay down ♠A in hope rather than expectation.  You have 5 spades, partner has supported your spade overcall so must have at least 3, and dummy is now revealed to have another 4.  Do the sums... declarer can have at most one spade, and from the bidding is more likely than not to be void in spades.  Another consideration is that if declarer does have a loser in spades, it can't run away.  The only suit in dummy on which he could conceivably discard a loser is spades itself.  As the cards lie, the only continution that allows the contract to be made at this point is the ♠A, and passive defence (a club continuation or a red-suit switch) holds declarer to 9 tricks.

At our table, Bernard and Margaret Eddleston from Hitchin Bridge Club were defending.  Bernard was on lead, and (to my mind) correctly avoided a club lead from the bidding, selecting the ♠A instead hoping to hit partner's suit.  This looked to be an unlucky guess — don't forget, he hadn't seen dummy at that point.  I ruffed, immediately cashed ♦A, crossed to ♦K and threw my two heart losers on the established spades.

But with the diamonds breaking 3-1 and the clubs breaking 4-2, I had already blown the contract, and I was given no further favours from this experienced pair.  Their accurate defence from now on saddled me with an inescapable third club loser, as repeated forces in hearts and spades by the defence gave nothing away.

Can you spot where I went wrong?
 

As is often the case, it was right at the beginning...  I must cross to dummy without first drawing an additional round of trumps, that way I still have trumps to spare to ruff a losing club (high) and return to hand with a trump to draw the remaining trumps.  The excellent "Play it again" double-dummy facility in BridgeWebs demonstrates the winning line nicely.

And what's the real moral of the story?  Well, there are several. 

For the defender on lead, don't despair just because the opening lead doesn't work out, there may still be chances to defeat the contract. 

For declarer, if you get away with a fortunate lead at trick one, all the more reason to plan the play carefully and think long and hard before playing to trick two, especially if it looks like a key contract — there's plenty that can still go wrong.

And of course, the most obvious point of all... bridge is not played double-dummy.  Anyone can spot the killing defence to 5♦ seeing all four hands (a heart lead works rather well as it happens), but that's not the point.  When it comes to the opening lead, for example, you have to do your best from what you can see in your hand and infer from the bidding.

Perhaps in this case the best "blind" lead is in fact a trump, to protect that club holding of ♣AK97 which looks worth three tricks to the defence, but only if declarer is forced to lead clubs from hand repeatedly and no ruffs are available in dummy.  A good alternative suggested by Bernard afterwards is a top club at trick one to have a look, followed by a red suit switch at trick 2, which also works fine.

Finally, I'd suggest that anyone who came up with the lead of ♥Q at trick one must have seen this deal before... even Bernard couldn't come up with that one at the table.

Dave Simmons.  Oct/2016

In fact, there's a classic "no lose" opportunity for an elimination and endplay if the trumps break 2-2, which virtually guarantees the contract on any distribution of the other three suits (click on Show All Hands). Win the first trick in dummy and immediately ruff a diamond low (it's pretty unlikely that North would lead a singleton ♦K against a slam). Then draw trumps in two rounds, noting the even split in trumps... it's going well so far. Now eliminate the diamond suit by entering dummy twice with two top hearts and ruffing a diamond with two top trumps.

Return to dummy with the third top heart and lead the ♣10, letting it run when South doesn't cover. Even if North now wins with the ♣J (worst case), he is end-played, forced to lead another club into my ♣AQ or concede a ruff and discard in one of the red suits.

Fantasy bridge... well almost. At the table, I almost found that line. But I drew trumps before ruffing out the diamonds (it would have been galling if that first diamond ruff had been over-ruffed), so I only had enough entries in dummy to ruff out three rounds of diamonds and take the club finesses, a partial elimination.  And I cannot tell a lie... I have adjusted the deal slightly, for maximum effect. In reality it was South who had both club honours, not North, and my ♣10 was covered by ♣J and ♣Q for the twelfth trick.

So my elegant line gained nothing, as a simple double finesse would have worked all along!

I was left with the moral victory of being able to enter dummy by leading my carefully preserved low trump, ♠3, to dummy's ♠9, and repeating the club finesse for all 13 tricks.

On the night, two pairs bid the slam, and three pairs made all 13 tricks. Roger and I were the only pair to do both, so got an outright top. But how much more satisfying it would have been if the club honours had both been offside (as in the hand illustrated above), and we were the only pair making 12 tricks, with a string of 4♠+1 outcomes elsewhere on the traveller...

Next time, perhaps?!

Dave Simmons

Of course, you lead a third spade, for a perfect trump promotion (click on Show All Hands). Partner has a stiff ♥Q doubleton, but that third spade magically creates another trick for the defence, as East can ruff high, ahead of dummy.

Many defenders seem to have a blind spot about trump promotions for some reason, but not our opponents on this occasion. I ruefully entered the score on the Bridgemate, 4♥=N, knowing it would not be good. Sure enough, the next day revealed the grisly truth: only 3 pairs out of 6 had found this defence, and they all ended up with a joint top. On any other lead, declarer rattles off 12 tricks without breaking sweat.

So what's this got to do with bidding, you may ask. Well, after West opens 1♠, that gives East an obvious choice of lead (partner's suit). If West passes however, East may well choose another lead from that hand, with a "safe" choice such as ♦J or a top-of-nothing club, especially at Match Point scoring where conceding unnecessary overtricks can be notoriously costly. Expert advice is that when debating whether to make a marginal opening bid or overcall, one of the most important criteria is "do you want the suit led if you end up defending?" The answer is obviously Yes here, so I would suggest it was a good decision to open the bidding.

Of course, one hand in isolation proves nothing, but my guess is that nowadays, experts would open that hand 1♠ every time.

And if you say "Sure, but you were playing one of the top pairs at the club, I would never have found that bid, or that play", it may come as a bit of a surprise which pairs found this defence and which pairs didn't... have a look at the traveller for yourselves. As I said to our opponents at the time, that defence couldn't have been bettered by a star pair in the Bermuda Bowl, so it was well-played indeed. Pick on someone else next time, please!

Dave Simmons

... This is a rare case where a hold-up on the first three rounds of a suit is required! North can work out at trick 1 that the club suit is blocked, so if he also holds up on the third round of clubs, declarer needs not one but an unlikely two entries to dummy, the first to establish and the second to run the long clubs. North's third-round hold up has killed dummy's long club suit stone dead. Let's see how the play would go.

Declarer is probably more irritated than dismayed by the marathon hold-up, as it looks like he has a second entry to dummy with the ♦10 assuming the suit breaks 3-2. He cashes two top diamonds, and that wipes the smile from his face — the suit breaks 4-1 and his second entry has disappeared.

The best he can do now is to cross to the ♠K and take the marked diamond finesse, for 10 tricks (see what I mean about double-dummy). The defender's clever play has saved a crucial overtrick, which often makes a significant difference at Match Points, especially when the contract appears to be a "routine" one like this, on the bidding.

You may think opportunities for triple hold-ups at bridge are rarer than hen's teeth, but consider the opening lead again, after a slightly different auction of say 2C – 2D – 3NT. On this bidding, there's quite a good case for considering the lead of a heart or spade (as the opposition haven't looked for a major suit fit via Stayman).

On a good day, North may hit on the inspired lead of ♥J rather than the regulation low club. Bingo, the lead strikes gold, and now declarer is in big trouble, cursing his luck that the defender has found the one lead that can trouble him.

Now the only way he can make the contract (barring an unlikely singleton ♣K) is to pray that the defender with the club stopper also has the shorter hearts. A hold-up is no good, nor is a double hold-up as the cards lie.  But a triple hold-up of the ♥A does the trick, exhausting North of hearts, so that when he gets in with his club stopper, he can do no further damage. Declarer just loses three hearts and a club.

So there you are... a routine 3NT making on the nail, with optimum double-dummy play by both defence and declarer, for a flat board... well, maybe in the Bermuda Bowl.

On the night, anything from 8 to 11 tricks were made by West in NT, and several pairs ended up in diamonds somehow, making from 10 to 12 tricks. One pair even managed to bid and make a small slam in 6♦ despite the bad breaks in both minor suits... you try it, it looks impossible to me!

Which all goes to show that there's no such thing as a standard contract at club bridge.

Dave Simmons

She chose the simpler line, and ran the spade. South is certainly less likely to hold the ♠Q as he's shown extreme length in hearts, so is likely to be short in spades. But South could hold something like 8 hearts and ♠Qxx on the bidding, and the odds against a 5-1 split in spades are also quite small. Not much in it either way, in my opinion. Maybe toss a coin time?!

Click on Show All Hands to see the gory details. Declarer decided to finesse, guessing right of course, and was claiming all thirteen tricks a few seconds later. But note that the equally reasonable line of going up with the ♠A and trying to ruff out the ♠Q happens to fail as the cards lie.

Looking at the traveller afterwards, the vast majority of results were 6♣= / 6♣+1 by West and 6♥-1 by South (the contracts often doubled, both ways). Our opponents were the only pair to bid 7♣. And if 7♣ goes just one down, we get a near top with 32 Match Points, but as it was we got an absolute bottom and a Eurovision-style "null points".

Getting 32 MPs on that single board would have dragged us up by a few percent, scraped us into the top twelve in the rankings and earned us half a Blue Point for our trouble. But it was not to be.

Oh well, next year at Eastbourne...  see you there?!

Dave Simmons

Of course, the answer is "Your guess is as good as mine", or even "Insufficient information" (in particular, I've not said what club partner led at trick one).

Let's suppose partner led ♣3. This could be the standard lead from three to an honour (♣J73) or a singleton. That would leave declarer with either one or three clubs, respectively. So no great help there.

Here's an advanced tip for ambitious partnerships: adopt the signalling convention "Ace for Attitude, King for Count". It is tailor-made for this sort of situation. At trick 2, lead the ♦K, asking partner to show count. If he's paying attention, he will play a low diamond, showing an odd number, or a high diamond showing an even number. If we'd been playing this method, the problem would be neatly solved. Partner's ♦2 shows an odd number of diamonds, so West knows he can cash precisely two diamonds, and must look to clubs for the fourth trick. Bingo!

Click on Show All Hands to see the situation. Not only does the second club cash, but a further club neatly promotes an extra trump trick for East's ♠J. Two down for +200 and a resounding top for EW.

Did you find that difficult? Well, who said bridge was an easy game! OK, Iain McLeod said it in 1952, but the game has moved on since then.

I first came across this tip in an excellent book that I spotted in Buntingford Library a couple of years ago, David Bird's 10 Ways to Improve Your Bridge. And Neil Rosen wrote up the same technique recently in a useful article in English Bridge, June 2015 (Advanced Defence, P44). But beware, this technique is not trivial and requires detailed partnership discussion. For example (as David Bird makes clear, but Neil Rosen doesn't) it means that you have to lead the Queen from KQ if you want the customary attitude signal from partner!

Oh yes, and what happened at the table. Well, don't tell Steve, but my brain was overloaded at trick one with all the excitement, and I didn't properly take in his lead (it was the ♣7). If I'd been thinking straight, I could have worked out that this could only be a singleton or doubleton lead (assuming standard leads), so I could safely cash the second club. Instead, I led a third diamond, declarer ruffed, and the roof fell in... nice try, but no cigar!

So the real moral perhaps is that fancy systems are all very well, but get the basics right first. My advice is to agree a sensible set of standard leads and simple signalling methods with your partner, then get into the habit of using them consistently and always watching what card partner plays.

I'll try and follow my own advice next time I play at Hitchin!

Dave Simmons

On the face of it, there's little choice but to play for the drop in clubs. On a 2-2 split, it's obvious that the contract makes easily.

An expert declarer can give himself an extra chance. He should lead the ♣10 to the ♣A (the play of the ♣10 is an unblocking play). If both defenders play low clubs, there's no option... just play off the ♣K with fingers crossed. The contract makes on a 2-2 split, and goes down on a 3-1 split. However, the declarer may be "rewarded" by seeing East drop a club honour on the first round, let's assume for the sake of argument that it's the ♣J.

Now you see the point of the ♣10 unblock. Declarer can cross to hand and lead his remaining low club, planning to finesse the ♣9. This makes the contract if West started with ♣Qxx, a play which would have been impossible if he'd simply played clubs from the top in the first place.

But in reality, declarer is faced with an uncomfortable choice, as East could just as easily have played the ♣J from ♣QJ doubleton. If so, the finesse will lose and dummy's remaining club winners are dead in the water!

What do you do? Well, the expert who has heard of the principle of restricted choice will now finesse, as it's [allegedly] the case that because East played the ♣J on the first round, he's now less likely to have the ♣Q. The argument goes that if East had had the ♣Q, he might equally well have played it on the first round, so the presumption is that he hasn't got the ♣Q. Whereas with the singleton ♣J, he'd have had no choice but to play as he did. in other words, the ♣J was his "restricted choice". Mathematicians will recognise Bayes theorem here, and laymen may have come across the Monty Hall problem, which is the same idea dressed up in game-show context. (Try Googling "Monty Hall problem" for plenty of interesting discussion, such as the Wikipedia article).

By the way, the play of a club honour by East has nothing to do with the standard old-timer's semi-bluff of playing the Q from QJ doubleton. The principle of restricted choice applies equally whichever honour shows up on the first round, assuming the player is equally likely to play the J or the Q when he has both (which happens to be the defender's best strategy). In practice, after East plays a club honour on the first round, declarer will cross to hand with a spade and lead a second club. West play a second low club, no great surprise there. It's the moment of truth... declarer has to decide whether to finesse or play for the drop in clubs.

To cut a long story short, the percentage play here is to finesse, if you believe the principle of restricted choice (and you should). 
Click on Show All Hands to see if this line would have paid off at the table.

You can see that East did indeed have the doubleton ♣QJ all along, so anyone who played the "expert" way would have been rewarded with a bottom, and have scant consolation in knowing that his line was in theory the better line, while his opponents try their best not to chuckle too openly.

That, in a nutshell, demonstrates the fascination and frustration of duplicate bridge. Like it or not, luck plays a large part in the outcome of any single hand, or an entire event of 24 boards for that matter. If you played this hand a hundred times, the expert line would pay off about two thirds of the time.

But in reality, you play this hand once and probably get a top or a bottom... sadly you can't demand a 67% score just because you feel that you played it better than most, and were unlucky to go down!

And how did I play it? We'll never know, the opposition had other ideas!

Dave Simmons

Go into the BridgeWebs Scorecard for this deal, and click on the "Play it again" button (just below the deal in the BridgeWebs Scorecards display).

The very first time you use Play it Again in BridgeWebs, you will be given some choices. Click on "BS Online" to select the Bridge Solver Online module to run the analysis.

[Note. A full explanation of how to use Bridge Solver Online from this point can be found on the EBU website at www.ebu.co.uk/node/2034, where it is invoked from within the EBU's SIMS results service, as opposed to BridgeWebs. But BS Online looks just the same invoked from either interface.]

Continue by selecting a contract to analyse, in this case click on the 3 in the grid representing the 3♠ contract by West. Now all should be revealed!

The only lead to defeat 4♠ is in fact the ♣A (that card is coloured green with a 4 suffix on it, the rest are coloured yellow with a 3 suffix). To elaborate, the green card shows that playing that card results in the best outcome for that side (yellow cards represent inferior lines), and the numerical suffix says how many tricks will result from playing that card (assuming best play by all players from that point onwards).

Looking at the hands, this analysis certainly looks plausible, as it looks like that on any other lead, declarer can cross to the ♦K and lead a trump. Assuming South ducks, he goes up with the ♠K and draws a second round of trumps. If not, he plays a second round of trumps on regaining the lead. Either way, game over.

Back to the analyser. Play the cards one at a time by clicking on them. After 4 clicks, we arrive at the second trick, and the analyser shows that North has only one continuation, the ♣10, to hold the declarer to 9 tricks (as before, it's the only card in green).

At this point, West probably gains the lead with ♣K. You can see from the double-dummy analyser that whatever West leads at this point, he can now only get a maximum of 9 tricks against best defence. The analyser can show what would happen on any continuation, but at our table West followed a sensible line, crossing to the ♦K, and leading the ♠10 from dummy. 

The moment of truth has arrived! The analyser now reveals that the only way for the defence to hold the contract to 9 tricks at this point is for South to rise with the ♠A and lead a third club, promoting partner's ♠Q. At the table, South made the instinctive play of covering the ♠10 with the ♠J — "nice try, but no cigar"! West won with the ♠K and returned a trump. Now EW are guaranteed 10 tricks against any defence.

If you've been correctly following the analysis in Play it Again, the winning and losing plays in the above lines should have been clearly identified throughout in green and yellow.
 

So how did we do on the night? Well, we made a good start by choosing an aggressive club lead rather than a probably futile heart lead. After the ♣A lead and ♣10 continuation by North, declarer correctly decided to cross to dummy with a diamond to lead a trump towards his ♠K, but South missed his moment of glory and failed to find the star defence at that point.

The hand was well played by declarer, and the winning defence was certainly difficult to find at the table... but not impossible. So any players trying to improve their bridge play, whether as declarer or defender, could learn something from the Play it Again analysis on this deal (and many others, for that matter).

The analyser is particularly good at identifying the best opening lead against NT contracts, which is hardly surprising as it has the advantage of seeing all four hands, unlike the poor defender often squirming at the table with a choice of equally unattractive leads!

Oh yes, and did any of this make a difference on the night?

Well no! Declarer was in 3♠ at our table, and either 3♠ making for 140 or 3♠ making with an overtrick for 170 would have scored exactly the same in MPs as it happens (an Avge+ for EW). But of course, if we'd been defending 4♠ rather than 3♠, there would have been a huge difference between declarer making 9 or 10 tricks: one outcome would have been a top, the other a bottom.

But that's just duplicate bridge for you. Luck still plays a big part in the outcome of any individual board, like it or not, however well (or not so well) you play it.

Dave Simmons

You have 13 points and 9+ playing tricks in spades. Clearly, 4♠ is pretty likely to make, and you may be in the slam zone if partner has a couple of aces.

Some of you may be tempted to open an Acol 2♣ on the basis that game is almost certain with this hand, and to give you room to investigate a slam.

Well, I can think of at least two reasons why this is not a great idea:

1. You don't have enough high card strength, so you may mislead partner.  
Traditionally, 2♣ requires at least 5 quick tricks (in top honours), or 23+ points for those who learnt their bridge after 1970
(if you discount the singleton ♦K, you only have two quick tricks, hardly enough for an opening bid, let alone 2♣)

2. You have virtually no defensive values
How many tricks can you expect to make if the opponents compete in hearts say?  A cautious estimate would be... none at all.  Even the most optimistic defender could hardly expect to make more than 2 tricks with this hand.

Much the same arguments apply against opening 2♠ if you play Acol strong-twos, or the Benji equivalent.

So to me, this hand is crying out to be opened pre-emptively, 4♠ being the obvious choice on the well-tried principle of bidding what you think you can make.

But hang on, with a 7-card suit such as the KQJxxxx and nothing outside, you'd open 3♠;
and with an 8-card suit of the AKQxxxxx you'd open 4♠;
on that basis, why not open 5♠ with this 9-card suit AKQJ10xxxx? It seems logical enough in principle.

Well, common sense intervenes. You'd feel a bit silly going one down in 5♠ if partner has nothing much opposite, when everyone else is making 4♠ for game. And as we'll see in a moment, an opening bid of 5♠ is reserved for a different sort of hand altogether. But if your long suit was a minor suit, yes 5♣/5♦ is probably the opening bid (expecting to make, or as a pre-empt: who knows?).

And what about missing a slam?  Well, you're missing three aces so on average partner will only have one of them.  Even if he does have two aces, you could easily have two losers off the top in hearts.
And if he has all three aces? Well, won't he consider raising you to 6♠ even with no spade support?  (Roman Key Card Blackwood is perfect in this case, as he can find out if you have one two or all three of ♠AKQ, and bid accordingly).

Seeing as these hands crop up about once in a lifetime, it's hardly worth worrying about, but there are two "expert" bids that can also help with freak hands like this:

Opening 5♥ or 5♠ would show precisely eleven top tricks just missing the AK of trumps.  Partner passes or raises to the appropriate slam.

And with a hand like this: ♠AKQJ10xxxxxx ♥x ♦A ♣--, that rare beast an Acol 4NT opener comes in handy:

Unlike standard Blackwood, an opening 4NT doesn't ask how many aces, it asks for specific aces, as follows:
5♣ shows no aces
5♦ shows ♦A
5♥ shows ♥A
5♠ shows ♠A
5NT shows two aces
6♣ shows ♣A

Again, this enables opener to bid the correct contract of 6♠, 7♠ or 7NT with total confidence. That's in the unlikely event that both you and partner know the convention, and remember that you are playing it, of course?!

Not much to the play on this board (click on Show All Hands to see the details): West leads out ♣A, and if he's sensible will switch at trick 2, (on the bidding, declarer is much more likely to have a club singleton than partner). Declarer should now be held to just 10 tricks, though he can run the spades and hope the defenders slip up.  

Par outcome: 4♠ tick!

Dave Simmons

In 7♦, your only thought should be making the contract. Once the trumps break 3-2 (phew!), is there anything else that can go wrong?

Well, the hearts could still break 4-0 and one defender may have ♥Jxxx.  Stranger things have happened.

On a spade lead, it's pretty straightforward.  Draw trumps, cross to the hearts, and even if they break badly, you can ruff a heart, and cross back to the ♣A and claim all 13 tricks.

On a club lead (which was what I got), not quite so easy.  If South turns out to have all four hearts to the Jack, then all you can do is curse your bad luck, smile through clenched teeth, and congratulate your opponents on their defence. But if North has all four hearts, you can still make, so long as you play carefully. Draw trumps, play a heart to dummy discovering the bad break, cross back to hand with a spade, and take the marked finesse in hearts.

Did I follow this line?  Well, I cannot tell a lie... in the excitement of playing only the second grand slam of my life, I just ran all the trumps on the unlikely chance of a defender discarding a heart, and then crossed to dummy and ran the hearts from the top. If the hearts happen to break 4-0, it's now too late to do anything about it.

Not a difficult hand, but easy to play carelessly in the heat of the moment. Click on Show All Hands to see that on this occasion I got away with it -- the hearts broke, and 7♦ makes with two overtricks! 

But next time, I'll try and remember Rixi's excellent advice before I play the hand... not the next day!

Dave Simmons

Declarer could see that the slam depended on two finesses. As long as they weren't both wrong, the slam makes. He tried the heart finesse at trick 1 with no great optimism, and sure enough West won the trick with ♥K, and returned the ♦Q.

Declarer could have taken an immediate club finesse and put himself out of his misery, but decided that there were additional chances of a squeeze, so he cashed two rounds of spades (they broke 2-1), returned to hand with ♠9 to cash the ♦A, returned to dummy and cashed ♥A (is this the Vienna coup?!) and ran the spades. East was showing signs of stress by the 11th trick.

Here's the situation as declarer leads the last master spade from dummy (South):

North
♥ 10
♣ A97
                East
                ♥ J
                ♣ Q103
South
♠ 2
♣ KJ4

North throws a club and East is squeezed.

At the table, East reluctantly threw a club. Declarer crossed to ♣A and led a low club, and was spared a guess in clubs when the ♣Q inevitably popped up -- a sort of show-up squeeze in reverse? Of course, if all else fails, declarer can still take the club finesse, so it's a "no lose" line of play. And if the finesse loses, it's going to be a bottom anyway.

Declarer was feeling quite pleased with himself at this point thinking that making 6NT should score a near top, but the Bridgemate only showed an average plus -- several pairs had made all 13 tricks in 6♠!

Click on Show All Hands to see the actual layout.

As is often the case, the explanation is [probably] down to the opening lead. On anything but a heart lead, declarer can draw trumps and take the club finesse straight away. Even if this fails, there is an extra chance for the twelfth trick if the suit breaks 3-3. But as the cards lie, the club finesse works, the club suit breaks 3-3, and declarer rattles off all 13 tricks without the need to even consider the (losing) heart finesse.

Roger and I had the rare experience of bidding and making three good slams over the session, and scoring an aggregate of just 47% for those three boards combined! Normally, making a slam almost guarantees a good plus score. A case of the 100 year wave? It certainly felt like it!

Dave Simmons

I was convinced that declarer must have a good diamond stopper for his 6NT bid, and could see that the lead gave him a free finesse if he held ♦AQ, and I'd just be gifting him yet another trick by going up with the King if he held ♦AQJ. So I decided to withhold my ♦K and ducked.

Big mistake! Declarer won with the ♦J, led a heart to the ♥K and when that held the trick, claimed the rest with five tricks in each of the black suits and the ♦A for luck. 12 or 13 tricks is much the same, a top in anyone's book. Click on Show All Hands to see the gory details.

Of course, I should have done what most players would have done without a thought, and gone up with the ♦K on the first trick. Declarer can run 11 tricks, but must lose the last two tricks as Roger will cling on to ♥A and ♦Q like grim death.

When a pair punt a 6NT auction after a bidding sequence like that, it's very likely to be a top or a bottom. Our opponents very nearly got a bottom after they were hustled into the wrong slam. Roger deserved a top for his diamond bid and lead, but I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with my play to the first trick. Looking at the scores later, I realised that my mistake on the play of just that one card cost us well over 5% in the overall rankings... scary.

Roger, I owe you a drink!

I was on lead, with a tricky choice. I was briefly tempted by the singleton trump as the safest lead and unlikely to cost a trick, but rejected it as too passive. So it was a choice between the red suits.

Normally, the heart lead would be the choice, but given that declarer probably has at least 8 tricks to run once he gets in, the ♦A seemed sensible, to hold the lead and have a look at dummy.

Once dummy went down, I was relieved I hadn't led a trump. A heart switch was obvious (on the bidding, declarer is much more likely to have a singleton diamond than partner), so I switched to ♥10, and Roger cashed out with ♥K and ♥A, as I followed with a low heart.

Then the master stroke: Roger led his third heart, and put declarer to the guess. 

West agonised for a while. If both hearts and spades break evenly, the contract can't be beaten. And if North has a doubleton heart and four spades to the 10, there's nothing to be done, the defence have engineered a textbook trump promotion.

It looks from the play so far that North has a doubleton heart. How galling would it be for declarer if he ruffed low, and North made a trick with ♠10 from two or three small -- or even worse, a singleton -- when the trumps are breaking all along. So declarer made the percentage play of ruffing high with ♠J and drawing trumps, only to find that it was Roger who had the four trumps, and he made the setting trick from a trump holding of ♠10xxx.

An easy hand for declarer to play... double-dummy! But the defence found the only line that gave declarer the chance to go wrong. And on this occasion, it paid off.

If it's MP scoring (or if you're in 5♥ of course) there's no option. Simply take the heart finesse like everyone else and hope it works. If it does, you'll make 11 tricks, for a likely average+.

But playing any other form of bridge (Rubber, Teams, even Butler Pairs), it's not so simple.  Now the reward for making your contract (420 points), and the corresponding penalty for failure, far outweighs the value of a mere overtrick (30 points). So you need to ask yourself is there any risk in taking the heart finesse.

Well, there clearly is.  The heart finesse could lose to the ♥K, and the defenders could then cash two top diamonds and score the setting trick with a diamond ruff. Sure, it's unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

If you were playing for England and in the happy position of being 5 IMPs up against the demon US pair Meckstroth and Rodwell on the very last board of the Bermuda Bowl, it would certainly be a no-brainer. You'd know that if that killer defence was available, Meckwell would find it, no question. So PLAY SAFE, or you might regret it for the rest of your life (which might not be for long, as your teammates would probably kill you anyway, and plead justifiable homicide)!

OK, this wasn't the Bermuda Bowl. But Roger spurned the finesse anyway, and calmly cashed trumps from the top to score 10 tricks without breaking sweat. Click on "Show All Hands" to have a look and see if this caution was in fact necessary...

Well no, as it happens. The heart finesse worked all along, and no defensive ruff was available. 

The traveller reveals that of the eight pairs who were in 4♥ three made 10 tricks and 5 made 11 tricks. So we lost one whole IMP on the board. But I for one was impressed by Roger's technique on that one.

Dave Simmons

First things first, the lead. I doubt if anyone will look beyond the diamond suit for the opening lead. Best choice is a top diamond (♦A or ♦K according to partnership agreement) to have a look at dummy – you never know, dummy may go down with ♦Qx doubleton, and you can cash the first five tricks (dream on). Definitely not a time to "lead fourth-highest against No Trumps" on this holding!

Dummy in fact goes down with ♦53 and partner plays a discouraging ♦4, presumably denying the ♦Q. (If he holds the ♦Q doubleton, he should unblock).

What now? (This is where it gets a bit more difficult – but who said defence was easy!)

You need 7 tricks to defeat 1NT, and leading out two more top diamonds may well present declarer with that vital seventh trick if he has the ♦Q guarded.

Playing for the drop of the doubleton queen is one approach, but that seems fairly optimistic. An approach with a better chance of success is to try and find an entry in partner's hand, so that he can return your diamond lead through declarer's likely holding of ♦Qx.

So a switch is indicated, but which suit to lead? A club from ♣Kx is a very high risk choice, likely to cost at least one trick (if not several) if you pick declarer's strong suit. A heart from the ♥Jx has much the same drawback. That leaves a spade as the only choice, and it has the incidental benefit of making your intention clear – you can hardly be trying to find partner's suit with a spade switch, with ♠KQJx in dummy!

Either partner has the ♠A in which case problem over – he wins and returns a diamond immediately. Or else declarer has the ♠A and the spade lead doesn't cost a trick. Note that against a 1NT contract, you often need to defend cautiously, not aggressively – unlike defending against 3NT where losing a trick on the lead is often a risk worth taking, if it establishes your long suit.

"Plan A" fails – declarer has the ♠A. But after declarer has cashed four spades and two hearts, he's run out of winners. He is still a trick short of making his contract, and has to surrender the lead to South. A belated diamond return now ensures the defence takes the rest of the tricks, for one down. Click on Show All Hands to see the full deal.

On the night, the traveller shows a row of 1NT contracts all making, so I'd guess that not a single pair out of eight managed to find this defence. Did you do better?

Finally, be aware that you can still net a lot of IMPs with part-score hands at Butler Pairs. The difference between 1NT making (7 tricks) and 1NT going one down vulnerable (6 tricks) is 190, or 5 IMPs. Not to be sneezed at – it only takes a couple of part-score swings like that to easily beat a non-vulnerable game swing of 7 IMPs and almost match a vulnerable game swing of 11 IMPs.

Dave Simmons

I hoped that clubs would break no worse than 4-2, and after winning the opening lead in hand, cashed the ♣A and ruffed a club, crossed back to hand with a spade ruff, and ruffed a second club high with ♥A. This was both to avoid a likely overruff, and retain a low heart in dummy so that I could easily return to hand with a trump, catering for a 4-1 heart split. I played off the four rounds of trumps and reeled off my established clubs, feeling rather pleased with myself.

Oops!  John produced a fifth trump out of nowhere, and I was down. In my excitement at the prospect of doubled overtricks, I hadn't spotted that Colin had discarded on the very first round of trumps -- the hearts had split 5-0. Click on Show All Hands to see the gory details.

It made me feel slightly better the next day looking at the deal when I realised that there was little I could have done about it at that point. As Bernard Magee commented in the booklet "... declarer ruffs and probably plays ♥K to find the horrible news. There is no way back now and two off [in a slam] is the likely result."  Quite!  But one down or eight down in 5♥ doubled, it's all the same at MPs -- our worst score of the night.

Looking at the Bridgemate at the time, I was amazed that we'd got such a bad score on the board. The key was Colin's opening bid as dealer, which pretty much determined everything that happened afterwards, in both the bidding and play.  

Of course, the slam can make easily enough double-dummy. If declarer optimistically relies on the clubs splitting 3-3, he only needs the one club ruff, and the 5-0 trump split doesn't inconvenience him. Equally, 5♣ doubled is trivial to make on anything but a heart lead (which results in a killing defensive ruff). All declarer has to do is bang out three rounds of trumps, hoping for a 3-3 split.

So would you have opened with the North hand?  Plenty at the club wouldn't. And a few would, I suspect.  

If you evaluate your hand for an opening bid using "the rule of 20" (add high card points and the length of the longest two suits), the hand is arguably a point light. But to me, a punt at 1♠ with that hand looks perfectly reasonable, especially if NS had been non-vulnerable. The main downside to opening 1♠ on that 5053 shape, especially playing 5-card majors, is that there's no satisfactory rebid over a 2♥ response from partner. But if partner responds 1NT or 2♣, then there's no problem -- show your 2-suiter with a 2♦ response, and expect a good score. As Dirty Harry would say, "Are you feeling lucky, punk?!"  One thing's for sure -- Colin's decision to open the bidding on that hand paid off in spades on that occasion!

There are several morals to be drawn from this board:

• Opening light can be very effective -- but beware, it is a high-risk strategy
• Marginal doubles can also be a good strategy (but only at MPs!) -- again beware, it is a high-risk strategy
• Predicting the bidding on any deal can be a difficult job, even for experts like Bernard Magee
• Spotting when an opponent shows out on the first round of trumps is not a bad idea in general, Dave!

Dave Simmons

As with any lead, there's no right or wrong answer.  But some leads certainly work out better than others.  Robyn picked a cracker!

On this occasion, she made the excellent choice of ♥J (the standard lead from KJ10x) from the unbid major, preferring to retain her ♦AQ tenace over declarer's presumed ♦K. When dummy went down (Show All Hands), I could see declarer was certain to run at least 10 tricks once he got the lead.

I took the lead to be from something like ♥J108xx or even top of nothing, and I placed declarer with the ♥K. So I went up immediately with my ♥A, switched to ♦J through declarer's Kxx, and the defence can now easily take the first 9 tricks as the cards lie.  Luckily for me, declarer didn't have ♦A and ♥xxx (equally possible on the bidding and opening lead), in which case the diamond switch would have been a disaster.  At the time, I didn't even give it a thought!

And if Robyn had equally reasonably chosen to lead the "obvious" ♦4, the traditional choice at NT of fourth highest of her longest and strongest suit?  Then declarer quickly rattles off all 13 tricks!

So a 9 trick swing on the choice of lead.  It goes to show that fourth highest isn't always the best lead against a NT contract. And sometimes, as defender you just need to be lucky, and guess right.

It's an obvious Acol 2♣ opener, but after that, it's not so easy.

Bidding is always a matter of opinion, but here's my suggestion:

The hand is balanced (5332) shape with 28 points.  With stoppers in every suit, this seems tailor-made for No Trumps.  Some may be seduced by the heart suit, but ♥AKQJ9 makes the same 5 tricks playing in hearts and No Trumps.

Most Acol books tell you how to bid strong balanced hands as follows:
20-22 points -- open 2NT
23-24 points -- open 2♣ and rebid 2NT (non-forcing)
25-26 points -- open 2♣ and rebid 3NT

Unsurprisingly, most summaries don't bother to go above 26 points, presumably on the grounds of lack of frequency.  But with this hand the right approach must logically be to open 2♣ and rebid 4NT.  In fact, I did find a couple of references that confirmed this, though they varied between 27-28 and 28-30 points as the requirement for a 4NT rebid.

So on that basis, the bidding could be short and sharp: 2♣ 2♦ 4NT 6NT.  It also happens to arrive at a reasonable enough contract, makeable on the club finesse, and other chances.  (Use Show All Hands to see the details).

Is that how I bid it on the night?  Of course not.  Roger and I had never discussed this sequence, and I was put off bidding 4NT by a worry that partner would take it as Blackwood.  So I bottled out in 3NT, and hoped the slam wouldn't make, or that not many pairs would bid it.

And the play?  Well, I received a friendly looking low spade lead into my ♠AJ tenace, and won with the Jack.  And then...  realised I'd made the most basic blunder in the book – playing to the first trick without thinking!  I was stuck in hand with no obvious way to dummy to take the club finesse.  I eventually scrambled 12 tricks, but knew this would be a poor score as the cards lay so favourably for those who'd bid the slam.

In fact, with both the club finesse working and the ♦Q dropping doubleton, all 13 tricks should probably be made in 6NT played by East.  By a strange coincidence, this is the third year running that the opening session of the year has featured a grand slam being bid and made, every time by East.  Conspiracy theorists will no doubt blame "the computer", but this is pure coincidence.  Mind you, I may try and sit East on 8th January next year!

Dave Simmons