This is aHand:

This hand is similar but not identical to Hand 1.

Should you bid it the same way?

Should you use the same tactics in the play?

Bidding.

We've another lovely hand (16 points and a 5·4·2·2 shape) so we can show our shape and point count by reversing, bidding Hearts as a rebid after opening 1♦.

This shows partner:

1. We have an intermediate or better hand;

2. We have more Diamonds than Hearts.

Notice we are bidding a suit North has by-passed...another tip-off that we are reversing.

Knowing that we have a good hand North has no problem in raising to 4♥. 3♥ would be wet on his cards.

Play.

West leads the ♣A against 4♥ and we settle down to Count and Plan.

We can see four losing Diamonds and two losing Clubs in our hand. Umm, not good. Sure, with a single Diamond on table we can ruff some losers – but how many? Let’s try counting winners instead... we've got three Spades, four Hearts and one Diamond for eight available winners. We need two more tricks.

When we find ourselves in this situation (a trick or two short) we should look for a way to use our trumps independently for ruffing rather than just top tricks. We could pick up our extra tricks by ruffing one Club and one Spade in hand. That adds up to ten.

What if we planned instead to ruff some Diamonds in the dummy? Be careful! We have to keep the trumps intact in one hand or the other so we have enough to pull trumps later in the piece. If we trumped in dummy also then we'd lose a trump trick at the end. As a point of general technique, when playing 4-4 trump fits, try not to ruff in both hands. It only weakens the trump holding.

At trick three, we are tapped with a third round of Clubs – we are forced to trump in our hand. Okay, that's part of the plan.

It is not a good idea to pull trumps at this point. Why not? Because we cannot count sufficient winners (unless Spades were to break 3-3. Are we that lucky?)

If our strategy is to use our trumps independently we must delay extracting the opponents' Hearts. Instead, at trick four, we attack Spades by playing off the â™ A and the â™ Q.

At trick six we are ready to gain our tenth trick by ruffing a low Spade in hand. We must be careful to ruff with a high trump to unblock our trumps. At trick seven, we are ready to start pulling trumps. As they break 4-1 we need to pull four rounds before attempting to cash the boss Spade.

By ruffing a Spade in hand we exhaust East of the suit. That means that the baby Spade in dummy gets promoted to winning rank and we score an overtrick.

Good technique wins the day.