One of the most important aspects of declarer play is trump management — most intermediate, and even some advanced, declarers make the drawing of trumps the first thing they do. After that, they start thinking about the hand — and often it is just too late!

The bidding on the hand is interesting — after South opens one heart, what does North bid?

The obvious choice is four hearts, but often that leaves South with a difficult decision if he has a better than normal hand, as he does not know whether you have made the bid based on high cards or on distribution.

My choice, knowing I am probably going to bid four hearts eventually unless I hear something new from partner, is a forcing 1NT to let partner get his hand off his chest.

If he makes some normal two level bid I would then bid four hearts, but if after 1NT he jumps to, say, three diamonds then I am going to look for slam.

On this hand, South bid two diamonds and North jumped to four hearts.

West started with the Jack of clubs and continued clubs and declarer ruffed the third round — he now played a heart to the King and another to the Ace and had to think about the hand when West discarded a diamond.

Declarer saw that he had three losers and could not afford to lose a diamond by letting East ruff — so he must frustrate East if he has diamond shortage.

So, lead a diamond to the King and now lead a diamond from dummy — East is stuck — it does him no good to ruff as you will just discard a losing diamond, so he discarded a club.

Now South went to the spade Ace and led another diamond and East once again had to discard a spade.

Now South wins and leads his last diamond and ruffs with the carefully preserved heart in dummy — whether East overruffs or not the defence only gets one more trick — contract made!

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, September 18

1 Gertrude Barker/Lisa Rhind

2 Martha Ferguson/Judy King

3= Tracy Pitt/Desiree Woods

3= Tony Saunders/Patricia Siddle

Monday, September 21

1 Sheena Rayner/Molly Taussig

2 Caitlin Conyers/Gertrude Barker

3 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

Tuesday, September 22

North/South

1 Keri McKittrick/Tim McKittrick

2 Ross Cooper/Desiree Woods

East/West

1 Dorea Grant/Sharon Andrews

2 Amanda Ingham/Heidi Dyson

Wednesday, September 23

1 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

2 Tracy Nash/Desmond Nash

3 Geoff Bell/Molly Taussig