Problem

The Auction:

You open the auction with 1NT, North responds with Jacoby transfer meaning hearts, you advance with the Jacoby puppet response of 2♥ and North rebids 3NT. This indicates North has no more than five hearts and as you hold only two, you pass.

West leads the ♠6. Plan your play.

Solution

It is often not the easiest task to decide how to play from dummy to the opening lead. If you play a small spade and East does not have the ace, you will win the first trick with the queen, but as the king has no protection left, spades are basically left defenseless.

Besides there are only two entry points to the dummy – the ♠K and the ♥A – which you are going to need to finesse the clubs. If you lose one of them, you lose a chance to finesse clubs for the second time.

The ♠K wins the first trick.

It seems this NT depends on the distribution. If the split is 3-3, you can get four tricks in diamonds, plus you have the ♥A. Both hearts and clubs are also seven-card suits, but clubs offer certainly a better chance to promote smaller cards to winners, as you miss only the K and 10.

You lead the ♣Q from dummy, East covers and your Ace takes this trick. Next you play the ♦A, ♦K and ♦Q and as the opponents both play diamonds to all these tricks your lowly ♦6 wins the fourth trick as no one else has diamonds left. West discards spades and East hearts into the last diamond trick, while you throw away the ♠5 from dummy.

Now you cross over to dummy with the ♥A to lead clubs again. You have ♣J9 while one of the opponents has the ♣10, so you lead the ♣8 from dummy to finesse. East covers with the ♣10, you take the trick with the ♣J and win the next trick with the ♣9. You are probably going to lose the last four tricks, but you have made it.

As your side had only a seven-card suit of hearts, 3NT was a right choice. In reality 4♥ could have easily been makeable too with this hand. West would have probably led the ♠A, promoting your K and Q to winners. In addition you would loose two trump tricks as you miss the ♥KQJ, but the rest 10 tricks would have been yours.

Par Contract Analysis

The par contract on this deal is 4♥ by North/South