BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

YOu are South, declarer in 6 ♥ , against which West leads the ♣ Q. Plan the play. You win the first trick with the ♣ A and draw trumps, which fall in two rounds. The suit that is worrying you, though, is spades. You have a losing club, but can you avoid a spade loser?

You can’t be 100 per cent sure as you have no cast-iron way of playing spades. You can avoid touching them yourself and force the defence to do this for you, in which case you may be able to judge where the missing honours lie.

To do this you must eliminate the hand, which means cashing diamonds. You then play your losing club, which the opponents will win, though it doesn’t matter if it’s east or West.

Whichever it is, he will have to give you a ruff discard, which would make your contract certain with no further worries, or lead a spade, giving you a chance of judging who has the missing spade honours.