The above hand came up at a recent duplicate and, rightfully or wrongly, West passed 1NT when it came back to her.

West led a Spade Jack and my prospects looked dim as West might have well led from a 5 card suit and I had to knock out 3 Aces and also had a precarious looking Diamond suit to boot.

At trick 1 we can count 2 tricks only after East takes his Spade Ace and continues Spades.

Assuming the Spades are no worse than 5:3 it looks like we could have 4 Spade losers, 1 Heart loser and 2 Diamonds. As soon as they get in they will cash their Spades and then set about their Diamond suit.

Normally, we try and set up our longest suit first ie Hearts but if we do this, this will only increase our trick tally by 4 more tricks still making us one off at the end.

Therefore on this hand we will have to disguise our somewhat shakey holdings and make them look more shakey.

Leading a club from South's hand, as West you should play low because it looks like declarer is going to finesse the suit.(Note the power of the closed hand) So if you can sneak a Club through at trick 3 and it holds now you can turn back to your real productive suit and play on Hearts. By doing this the opponents will be a trick behind in the tempo and you will win the race for 7 tricks to score an average on the board ie 1 Spade, 4 Hearts, 1 Diamond and 1 Club.

Perhaps life will have been made easier if partner had bid 2§ and she would have had a much easier run in a the preferred contract of 2© which will produce 9 tricks without too much hassle losing just a trick in each suit.

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