The Bermuda Bridge Sectional returns to the local bridge scene after a long hiatus and play started yesterday afternoon with a single session Pairs event. This morning and afternoon see two more single session Pairs events, Sunday afternoon and evening see a two session Teams event and the final session on Monday afternoon is another Pairs event.

Full results will appear in next week’s column.

This week’s hand is set to test your defensive prowess, so get your thinking cap on as you have to concentrate. Using the bidding and the play, try and construct declarer’s hand in order to figure out the best defence (see Figure 1).

East’s two-diamond bid was fourth suit forcing and when West showed a diamond stopper East had a reasonable raise to the 3NT game.

You are South – partner leads the four of diamonds and the ten wins in dummy. Declarer now plays the King and Queen of clubs which you duck and you win the third round of clubs, partner pitching a small spade – now what?

What do you know about the hand? You know that partner started with a four-card diamond suit as he led the four (fourth best) and you can see the two and the three – that leaves declarer with three diamonds.

Your good hold-up play on the clubs has shown you that declarer has five clubs, and given that declarer has bid spades his hand has to be a 4-1-3-5 shape!

So, he has a singleton heart which is either the King or the Ace as he needs that in order to have an opening hand – if it is the Ace, you cannot defeat the hand as he has four spade tricks, one heart, one diamond already and four clubs.

So you must assume the singleton is the King and once you do that you must avoid doing something stupid, like leading the heart Queen! Lead the heart seven and you rattle off four heart tricks to beat the hand – if you had led the Queen you get only three hearts.

See the full hand in Figure 2.

Clever you!

And some of you must be wondering why North led a small diamond from KQ54 instead of the King? North’s lead against a no-trump contract was absolutely correct – the lead of the King against a no-trump contract promises a suit headed either by KQJ or KQ10 at a minimum, and now that I have started this conversation I had better finish.

One of the standard hold-up plays in bridge is the Bath Coup, where the opening leader leads the King and declarer has AJx – declarer usually refuses to win this trick and opening leader is left with the impossible decision of whether or not to continue depending on whether partner or declarer has the Jack!

Well, there is an answer to that – if partner has the Jack he is obliged to throw it under your King, letting you know it is safe to continue. But he can only do that if he knows that you started with, at least, KQ10.

Once again, this will come up at the table time and time and time again, so sit with partner and make sure you know how to handle this situation.

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 18

1. Charles Hall/Geoff Bell

2. Lorna Anderson/Joyce Pearson

3= Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

3= Aida Bostelmann/Heather Woolf

Monday, October 21

1. Elysa Burland/Molly Taussig

2. Stephanie Kyme/Charles Hall

3. Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

Tuesday, October 22

North/South

1. Nikki Boyce/Carol Eastham

2. Joanne Edwards/Marion Ezedinma

3. Tracey Pitt/Desiree Woods

Wednesday, October 23

1. William Pollett/Linda Pollett

2. Tracy Nash/Desmond Nash

3. Betsy Baillie/Sharon Shanahan

Thursday, October 24

1. Charles Hall/Stephanie Kyme

2. Betsy Baillie/Lisa Ferrari