BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

West is in 3Nt, and North leads ♥6. Plan the play.

When this board was played in a recent club duplicate, all pairs played in 3nT, and most Wests went down in what turned out to be a cast iron, straightforward contract.

There are nine fairly certain tricks (six clubs, two hearts and a spade), yet the greed for possible overtricks distracted declarers from the approach of basic safety play.

When dummy’s ♥Q held the first trick, declarer took a spade finesse, which was allowed to hold; he then started cashing clubs, overtaking the second round in dummy, and finding that South showed out; declarer was able to establish the suit, but the defence was careful to ensure that he could never reach dummy again to take his winners.

All declarer needed to do for success was to play low from dummy at Trick One and win in hand with ♥A; then cash ♣QJ, and force an entry to dummy by playing a heart.

The prospects of overtricks on this deal is certainly not worth the sacrifice of a safety play to cater to a bad club break, even though the chance of a 3-2 break is 68 per cent.

The essence of good declarer play is to ensure the contract, before looking for overtricks. And here, one should plan for the 28 per cent chance of a 4-1 break.