Thank you to Suren who spotted this gem from one of our Thursday night sessions.

South plays in 4♠  and receives the ♥ Q lead.

Life starts with a potential loser in each suit but with a few apparent ways to deal with at least one of those.  A standard start sees declarer win the lead in dummy and lay down the Ace of Trumps, whence the first bit of bad news arrives in the form of a five-nil break.  Undeterred, declarer continues with the King of trumps and appreciates that, as that is his only entry, he's going to have only one shot at guessing the clubs.  On the layout, it doesn't matter whether he fnesses the Queen or the Ten, it will be captured minimistically by East.

So a five nil break and a failed finesses.  Is there any hope now?

The keys to reducing the loser count, that has now escalated to five, is to play East to have started with exactly three clubs, including the remaining honour, allowing the shredding of a diamond on the final club and then to grab an extra trick by 'elopement' - the art of using small trumps in hand as 'ruffers' before a well stacked defender gobbles them up.  Here's how the play goes:

Assume East retruns a heart, win that in dummy and play Ace and a small club, ruffing out East's remaining honour.  Return to dummy (with the ♦ A) and play the established club, discarding a diamond.  Now a diamond can be ruffed (the elopement) and eventually, still holding ♠ J10, declarer will come to his tenth and final trick.

Trump promotions are one of the most satisfying defensive plays in bridge.  It's an easy one to miss, though, if both partners are not completely alert to it.  Here's a great example played by Trevor and Jackie last Thursday.  (Board 4, 16/06/2022).

Just as at every table, Trevor kicked off with his boss heart.  (If you play 'King for Count, Ace for Attitude', the King is the best start).  Obediently, partner peters with ten-nine so the Queen is cashing too.

Despite the fact that you have inserted an oar with your heart bid it doesn't feel like North / South are under-valur pointwise for their game so you'll be lucky if partner even has a King.  Just in case, It might seem right to set that up as quickly as possible by switching to a Diamond at trick 4. But as well as the low probability of partner holding DK, if declarer has a Diamond loser, he is not going to be able to shake it off anyway.  Is there another key card that partner could have that will secure the partnership that elusive fourth trick?

It's highly unlikely that you've read this far and not now appreciated that that key card is the Ten of Spades, which if partner is awake enough to use to ruff your fourth heart will force declarer to use one of his honours to beat it and your J98 will eventually provide the setting trick.

Congratulations and a 100% board to Trevor and Jackie for being the only pair to find that defence and comiserations and zero per cent to their unfortunate victims - yours truly and partner.

This hand came up in the Middlesex teams of 8 on the 19th of January.

The final contract came to 6♠ by W , although 7♣ works out making.

The lead was the 4♦ from South.

How would you play the hand?

Here's Board 15 from the EBU's End-of-Year Congress Swiss Teams event in London that some club members played in.

Please use the form to enter what you would have bid in this situation.