This is aHand:

Here you are pressured in the auction into a difficult decision by an aggressive opponent.

The play isn't easy either...

Here, as South, you open with the obvious call of 1♦ and West overcalls 1♥. North makes a by-now familiar Negative Double and it comes to East.

Many players would make your life easy by raising gently to 2♥ on those cards (you’d then have a simple bid of 2♠ to make and everyone would live happily ever after). Nope – this East is made of tougher stuff and he gums up the works with a pre-emptive bid of 3♥. Good bridge!

This makes your life that much harder – as East fully intended. You have the charming choice of Passing – and allowing East-West to steal the hand in 3♥, possibly making – or bidding 3♠ on a feeble suit and just 13 points. Decisions, decisions.

Well, when you know of a fit it is often right to take the push and bid. It could be wrong (both 3♥ and 3♠ might be failing contracts) but it could be very right (both 3♠ and 3♥ might be making contracts). Anyway, we try 3♠ and North knows enough not to fall into the trap of bidding game.

Against 3♠ West kicks off with the ♥A lead. This may appear odd but his partner has supported the suit to the three-level and there is nothing else that appeals to him.

Having studied the dummy, West finds an awkward Club switch. Awkward because the defence of the ♣A and a Club continuation threatens to derail your train via a Club ruff. The counterplay is to cross to a Diamond and to ditch a seemingly winning Club (!) on dummy’s ♥K before playing trumps.

The defenders can do nothing now. Eventually you can draw trumps and run off your long Diamonds.