This is aHand:

This series and the next (to be found elsewhere in this edition of V-Blue) are looking at how to describe good hands.

Sometimes you might jump the bidding in your own suit, sometimes you might jump in a new suit. In the next series we look at the ever-mysterious world of the reverse.

Hand 1: Here you have a hand that is far from minimum with a strong suit. How should you describe it to partner?

Following the auction you have to play the thing. Are you up to the task?

Bidding.

After two Passes we open 1♥ and see partner respond 1♠. What bid best describes our hand now?

Well, a jump to 3♥ just about fits the bill. It shows a strong six-card suit and a good hand (roughly 16-17 points – give or take a little).

Partner, with two certain tricks, decides to push the boat out a little by raising to 4♥. Note that he has little in Hearts but is reassured that we have a fine suit.

Play.

West leads the ♣K and we have to Count and Plan.

Our initial count shows probably one, just possibly two losers in the trump suit. (Imagine if West had the ♥Q J × ×; that would be bad news...) On top of that we are sure to lose the ♦A and there are two losers in the Club suit, quick losers once the ♣A has gone.

Some losers are inevitable... we can't do anything about them. Look at the ♦A, for example. The Clubs, though, are the losers we should focus on. Since we can't chuck them in the trashcan we look to dummy for help. We can't trump in dummy, but maybe we can dump. The ♠A is perfect for the purpose.

Should we pull trumps first as part of our plan? The danger in many deals is losing the lead before dumping a loser. In this case, though, we don’t lose the lead by pulling two rounds of trumps.

So at trick one we grab the lead with the ♣A and at tricks two and three pull two rounds of trumps, watching carefully to see what drops. We are dreaming of the ♥Q and ♥J dropping but, while that doesn't happen, at least we get the expected 3-2 split.

When there's one trump out against us, and it's a winner, we usually leave it out there, unless we have to dislodge it for tactical reasons. Here, no such tactical reasons exist – so we can ignore the master trump in an opponent’s hand and play on our side-suits. If East or West chooses to ruff in with the ♥Q at some point that’s fine by us.

Our plan requires us to dump a loser on a top Spade, so that's the next order of business. At trick four, we cash dummy’s ♠A K, discarding a Club on the second round. Now we force out the ♦A and lose a Club. Our third and last loser is the master trump.

Ten tricks arrive courtesy of two Spades, five Hearts, two Diamonds and a Club. Put another way, we lose one trump, one Diamond and one Club.