Another reminder about the Open Teams Championship — two sessions starting at 9.30am at Bermuda Bridge Club next Saturday.

Most declarer play hands in a suit contract take a familiar route — declarer will usually have more trumps than dummy and will try to use dummy’s trumps to ruff a loser or two.

Quite often though, there is a danger of a defender ruffing and a better plan is a “dummy reversal”. This play requires declarer to ruff enough times in her own hand so that her trumps end of being shorter than dummy, and then draw trumps with the ones in dummy.

So if your trump suit is, say, AQ1062 in your hand and KJ9 in dummy you can turn five tricks into six by ruffing three times in your hand and then draw trumps with dummy’s three trumps. Take a look at this hand (see Figure 1).

The two of clubs was a natural game force, the two of spades was a mild slam try (fast arrival bad hand, slow arrival good hand) and the four of diamonds was a splinter, suggesting some extra playing strength.

With all of his values outside diamonds, North re-evaluated his hand and checked on key cards before bidding the slam. West led the King of diamonds and continued the suit.

Declarer paused to consider how he would make 12 tricks. First, he looked at the losers in his hand, where it seemed that, in addition to his diamond loser, he had a second one in clubs. Declarer saw that he could avoid the latter if the defender with three trumps also began with four hearts — he could draw two rounds of trumps, play four rounds of hearts, throwing clubs from dummy, and ruff his own club loser with dummy’s last trump.

This, however needed a lot of good things to happen and declarer decided that a better plan was a dummy reversal, where one ruffs dummy’s losers with trumps in the long hand.

After ruffing the second diamond in hand, declarer played the Ace and Queen of trumps. After ruffing another diamond, declarer led the nine of hearts to dummy’s Ace and ruffed dummy’s last diamond with his remaining trump.

Declarer then returned to dummy with the King of clubs and drew West's last trump with the nine. Three heart winners allowed declarer to discard dummy’s two losing clubs and so make the slam. Beautifully played!

• David Ezekiel can be reached at davidezekiel999@gmail.com

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 10

1 Stephanie Kyme/Diana Diel

2 Tony Saunders/Margaret Way

3 Geoff Bell/Kathleen Bell

Monday, October 13

North/South

1 Peter Donnellan/Lynanne Bolton

2 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

3 Charles Hall/Desmond Nash

East/West

1 Lorna Anderson/Heather Woolf

2 Margaret Way/Rachael Gosling

3 Sancia Garrison/Jane Smith

Tuesday, October 14

North/South

1 Julia Tadman/Joshimar Hussey

2 Tim McKittrick/Keri McKittrick

East/West

1 Malcolm Moseley/Mark Stevens

2 Desiree Woods/Ross Cooper

Wednesday, October 15

1 Elizabeth McKee/Rachael Gosling

2 Loise Rodger/Margaret Way

3 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Thursday, October 16

1 Peter Donnellan/Lyanne Bolton

2 Rachael Gosling/Sancia Garrison

3 Linda Pollett/Sharon Shanahan