This is aHand:

Another deal where you have to make a careful response to a take-out Double.

After that it's a question of re-evaluation.

In terms of the card-play... you'd think with billions of possible hands, you'd never see the same thing twice, but there are certain card combinations you see over and over.

You'll see an old friend in this hand that will help you make the contract.

Will you know him when you see him?

Bidding.

As dealer West opens 1♦ and North has an ideal hand for a take-out Double. So our first task is to make an appropriate response.

Our actual choice of 2♥ shows about 8 to 11 points (give or take) and is invitational. (Note that a 1♥ response would be a travesty of a bid on our cards)

Partner needs to know if it's a minimum 8, in which case game is not realistic, or a maximum 11. He passes the buck back to us with a 3♥ raise. As we are near the top of the range we accept the invitation and advance to game.

4♥ it is.

Play.

West leads the ♦K and we settle down to Count and Plan.

We can see two possible Spade losers, one Heart loser and one Diamond loser. The only loser we can hope to get rid of is the Spade. We remember the 75% solution: When two honors are out against us, they generally split.

If they do split (or if they are both in the West hand), we would only lose one Spade trick, and if they are both in East, we'd lose two. We have a 75% chance of success, we can't ask for better odds than that. In fact, after West has opened the bidding there is a greater than 75% chance that he has a Spade honor.

We consider whether or not we should pull trumps first. In general, there are two reasons not to pull trumps. One is if we need to ruff in dummy and can't afford to shorten dummy's holding. The other is if pulling trumps would lose us the lead when we absolutely cannot afford to give it up. Neither condition appears here, so we plan to pull trumps, then attack Spades.

We take trick one with our ♦A, and go right after the trumps at trick two. At trick three, they harvest their other Diamond winner, and with nothing better to do, try a Club.

We win that (in either hand; we actually choose to take the ♣Q in hand) and pull the last of the trumps (we even get a favorable 2-2 split). Now it's time for the Spades. We lead from our hand up to the ♠10, East taking the trick with an honor. No worries, though, we expected that. We win the Club return in hand and play another Spade, finessing dummy’s Jack.

Dummy's ♠J holds, as we have every right to expect. The 4-2 Spade break is irrelevant – we have the rest of the tricks.

We get away with losing one Spade, one Heart and one Diamond. 4♥ making on the nose.