When I gave my talk at the Bridge Club in April I spoke about how much existence of tens and nines in your hand can make it so much stronger — AK10 Q109 J1087 KQ9 is an immeasurably stronger hand than AK5 Q87 J873 KQ2, as it will give you many more play options and will also enhance partner’s hand.

For instance if partner’s spade suit is J87, with your AK10 you can now finesse the Queen of spades, a 50 per cent chance. If you had AK5 your only chance is to drop the singleton or doubleton Queen, and the odds of that happening are probably well less than 20 per cent.

So when you are bidding and partner makes an invitational bid the first hand makes it much easier to accept.

Take a look at this hand in Figure 1 that came up on BBO this week.

You reach the slightly aggressive 6 Spade contract and West leads the Queen of hearts .

You have to avoid two club losers and your best bet is to strip the hand and hope for an endplay.

You win the heart with the King, ace of diamonds and a diamond ruff, draw two trumps , Ace of hearts and a heart ruff to reach this position in Figure 2.

Now Ace and another club leaves the defence dead – West has to concede a ruff and discard (East can’t afford to overtake) and the contract makes!

Of course, an expert West will see what is coming and throw the Queen of Clubs under the Ace (“Crocodile Coup”), hoping partner has K10x and the hand is defeated. But then a really expert declarer would have planned ahead and cashed the club Ace at trick two to not alert West to that play!

Now let’s make the A54 of clubs into A104 – now this is the end position with the lead in dummy (see Figure 3).

Now you can guarantee your contract by playing the jack of clubs from dummy — if an honour comes up you only have one club loser, and if it doesn’t you let West win the trick and he either has to give you a ruff and discard or lead into your A10 of clubs – hand made!

Take a look at both of the above plays, and defence, carefully as you will meet this sort of situation many times at the table.

David Ezekiel can be reached on davidezekiel999@gmail.com

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 6

1. Betsy Baillie-Tim Mardon

2. Aida Bostelmann-Heather Woolf

3. Gertrude Barker-Martha Ferguson

Monday, October 9

North/South

1. John Burville-Molly Taussig

2. Richard Gray-Wendy Gray

3. Gertrude Barker-Jane Smith

East/West

1. Patricia Sidle-Diana Diel

2. Martha Ferguson-Tim Mardon

3. Lorna Anderson-Heather Woolf

Tuesday, October 10

1. Malcolm Mosley-Mark Stevens

2. Vivian Pereira-Julia Cook

3. Nikki Boyce-Carol Eastham

Wednesday, October 11

1. Lynanne Bolton-Greta Marshall

2. Patricia Sidle-Diana Diel

3. Tracy Nash-Desmond Nash

Thursday, October 12

1. Peter Donnellan-Lynanne Bolton

2. Betsy Baillie-Tim Mardon

3. Claude Guay-Sharon Shanahan