This is aHand:

Here there are three Passes to you so you "know" partner must have something useful.

Well, maybe...

When you are ready click on Play.

Bidding.

We have a 4∙3∙3∙3 hand with 16 points and have an obvious opening bid of 1NT in fourth seat.

Our partner doesn’t have much in the way of fancy arithmetic to do. Adding his dismal 3 points to our 15-17 he comes up with a total of 18-20, meaning that North knows that East-West probably have the balance of the high cards.

With a 5∙3∙3∙2 hand North decides to Pass 1NT and hopes the sun shines. East-West, meantime, could make a contract of their own but neither hand is quite strong enough to enter the fray (nor open the bidding, of course) so we win the auction cheaply in 1NT.

Play.

West leads his longest suit against No-trumps – in this case that’s Hearts. Holding a broken suit West selects the fourth-highest card, the ♥4. The usual rule in these cases is to lead the “fourth-highest of your longest and strongest�. We have already seen one exception to this “rule�, when the long suit is headed by a sequence.

On the sight of dummy we thank partner for his fine hand (!) and get down to some Counting and Planning.

Here, we count a Spade trick and five Clubs, if we can gain the lead. West’s Heart lead will definitely build up a trick for us in Hearts, regardless of who has the ♥A. So we can see seven tricks but we may have to wait a while before we can collect them.

As it happens, though, East cannot help his partner in Hearts – all he can produce is the feeble ♥8. Heartened by this we grab a cheap trick with the ♥J and switch our attention to our suit – Clubs. We play off the ♣A Q J and then a low Club to dummy’s ♣K 10. That’s six tricks and we have the ♠A for the seventh.

That’s all we need and that’s what we take, pronto – letting the opponents gain the lead might have dire consequences for us.

Having taken the first seven tricks we sit back quietly and watch as East-West mop up the remainder.