Firstly, apologies for the missing column last week. I thought it was still the turn of one of my guest columnists and ... it wasn't!

While on that subject, I would like to really thank Alan Douglas, Roman Smolski, Bill Tucker and John Burville for taking part in the guest column initiative – I've enjoyed reading their stuff and I hope you have too. More from them soon.

Igor permitting, the bridge season is due to kick right back into gear this weekend, following the hugely successful Club BBQ at the Godet's house, despite the 30 minutes of torrential rain and wind !

Today is the second day of the Bermuda Sectional and I know that between Chairperson Katrina Van Pelt and her team and Tournament Director Karl Hicks, no effort will be spared to ensure that it is a fun four days for the participants – full results in next week's column.

Following hot on the heels of the Sectional, the local tournament season gets started with the Open Pairs on September 27 and October 1 and I would expect all the top pairs to turn out for that event … later on in October the Junior Teams is held on the 13 and 20 … again, full results here at the time.

This week's hand came up on Bridge Base Online last week and it's a play I see often but haven't seen covered in many books or articles. My hand was :

S-85 H-K7532 D-J106 C-1095 …I was sitting West and heard the following bidding at favourable vulnerability. Partner was the dealer:

WEST NORTH EAST SOUTH

1&Copy; Pass

4&Copy; DBL Pass 4

Pass Pass Pass

The 4 Heart bid looks aggressive but with a lot of trumps and at favourable vulnerability it usually pays to put pressure on the opponents .

I was on lead and before just putting the reflex 3 of hearts on the table did a bit of thinking. What did I know about this hand? Three things …partner has an opening hand , West has a huge hand to force partner to bid without knowing whether partner has any points, and – perhaps most importantly – we have at best one heart trick in defence. Given that West and North have all the points, it might be critical for me to lead a diamond or club through the West hand, but which one?

Having thought this through, I decided to try and get a look at dummy before making that decision and led the King of Hearts …well , it worked like a charm! The full hand :

Board 2. N/S Vul. Dealer East.

ªAKQ6

&Copy;Q

¨AK985

§K32

ª85 ª732

&Copy;K7532 &Copy;AJ986

¨J106 ¨4

§1095 §AQJ6

ªJ1094

&Copy;104

¨Q732

§874

When my king of hearts held, I didn't need to see partner's six to tell me which suit to switch to, as a club was obvious. Luckily partner had the perfect holding to defeat the hand.

Clearly this doesn't happen every time, but it is a situation that occurs on many occasions and often retaining the lead at trick two is critical. There might be many situations where the switch is not obvious but partner can signal easily knowing that you will not be continuing hearts by playing a HIGH heart for a diamond switch and a LOW heart for a club switch.

Notice that a low heart lead makes it impossible to defeat the hand. So, another arrow in your quiver … to use at the right time!