From                  20th September, 2006, Board 22

                                          Theme               Weighing the Evidence

                                          Difficulty           * * *

                                          Dlr North          E-W Vul             Hands Rotated

                                                                                               for Convenience

West leads the Spade Six, playing "3rd and 5th" leads.  You win the Ace, draw trumps in three rounds, West pitching a Spade and two Hearts.

It looks as if East must have a Spade honor (otherwise West would have led the King), and it's presumably the Queen (West would be unlikely to underlead the KQ or QJ).  So the rest of the HCP's are probably with West, and we can be quite sure that the A♥ is wrong for us.  That means our only hope for 11 tricks is to score 4 of them in the Club suit.  How do you play the suit?

SOLUTION

This is an easy one for players who count.  West will not have 5 Spades (she would have overcalled 1♠), and East must have longer Hearts than Spades, so everything points towards West starting with 4-4-0-5 or, conceivably, 4-3-0-6.  We cannot do anything about the latter case, but we do have a chance if West started with 5 Clubs.  After drawing trumps, we cash the A♣, and, if East started with a singleton Nine or Ten or Jack, we can double-hook the Club suit for 4 tricks.

	♠ AT8 ♥ J2 ♦ QJ94 ♣ KQ85
♠ KJ63 ♥ AQ86 ♦ ♣ JT763	North    West          East            South	♠ Q952 ♥ T9543 ♦ 876 ♣ 9
	♠ 74 ♥ K7 ♦ AKT532 ♣ A42

Keys to Success

   - Deducing from the opening lead that East probably held the Q♠ and that West (for his bidding) must

     have the A♥

   - Deducing that West must be 4-4-0-5 or 4-3-0-6

   - Realizing that the only chance is to cash the A♣ and double finesse

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