This week’s hand came up in a recent 8 table Pairs game and was, for such a flat looking hand, full of interest.

South Dealer, Neither side Vulnerable

All 8 South’s opened a 15-17 NT and at 5 of the tables North bid Stayman and on finding the heart fit bid 4 Hearts, this stood no chance with the bad trump split and usually went two down.

At the other three tables the North players were a bit more experienced and looking at the horrible heart suit and the lack of ruffing values they jumped directly to 3NT … with the diamond King being offside this failed at two of the three tables. This left one table — what happened there ??

West led the queen of hearts and, when East produced the king, declarer ducked, since no shift from East would be threatening.

East switched to the jack of clubs, taken by declarer with the king. The suspected 4-1 heart division was confirmed when declarer cashed the ace of hearts

and East discarded a diamond. Declarer had eight tricks.

Obviously, he could play on diamonds, finessing the nine first and then the queen,(a 63 percent chance). As there was no particular hurry to start on diamonds, declarer delayed matters by cashing the ace and queen of each black suit.

This brought no special information as both opponents followed suit.

So, declarer cashed the kings of clubs and spades, finding both suits to be 4-3 — leaving East as having started with at most eight cards in the black suits.

(If East had started with nine or ten cards in the black suits, declarer planned to finesse the queen of diamonds for his ninth trick.)

As East had at most two black-suit winners outside diamonds, declarer played a diamond toward the dummy with the intention of covering West’s card.

When that card was the three of diamonds, declarer played dummy’s nine and East’s took the trick with his ten.

After cashing his two black-suit winners, East had to lead a diamond into dummy’s ace-queen, surrendering the ninth trick to declarer- contract made!

Of course, if West had played the jack of diamonds on the first round of the suit, declarer would have covered it with the queen and it would have been taken by East with the king.

After East had cashed his black-suit winners, dummy would have taken the last two tricks with the ace and nine of diamonds.

Once both defenders had followed to two rounds of each black suit, declarer’s subsequent overall plan would have succeeded in making a ninth trick close to nine times out of ten — a really well thought out hand.