BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

You are playing 4 ♠ and West leads ♦ Q.

How would you play?

Yet another example to illustrate the importance of planning your strategy before you start to play. Good planning includes the assumption that key suits won’t break, as in this case.

If you win the opening lead straight away and start to draw trumps, you’ll get the bad news at trick three. So you play ♥ A, then ♥ K, followed by a third heart, which east will ruff. east will now return a small diamond to his partner’s knave to receive another heart ruff. One down in a ‘laydown’ — to prevent this situation arising, you merely need to be careful and duck the opening lead. Now, the opponents can’t take more than three tricks.