This DVD focuses on declarer play in no-trump contracts and starts by talking about making a basic plan, including the methods for establishing your extra tricks.
The most common tactic in no-trump contracts is making extra tricks from your long suits. Making sure you have the entries in place to develop and take tricks in a long suit, which can involve ducking in that suit. Then it goes on to the idea of combining techniques as displayed in this hand:
You are South, declarer in 3NT on the ♠️Q lead.
You have seven top tricks and might make an eighth from a 3-3 spade break, but West has led the suit, so you do not hold out too much hope for that. Your mind turns to the six-card club suit in dummy and how you might use that.
The obvious play is to finesse in clubs and when it works you have eight tricks, but that means you have made only half a plan. You will not make any extra tricks from your club length. Your ♣️Q wins, your ♣️A wins but there is no entry to dummy to make extra club tricks. Instead, you plan for a finesse and making your long clubs.
To do this, you need to duck the first round of the suit. You win the ♠️A, and duck a club – playing small from both hands, allowing East to win the trick. You win the spade return with ♠️K and then play a club to the queen. When your finesse works, your ace brings down the king on the next round and you have three extra club tricks: 11 tricks in all.
You needed some luck, but by ducking early in clubs, you made the most of it.
The DVD moves on to a few more technical aspects of play including unblocking, overtaking and also getting used to making choices of plays – comparing finessing with high card establishment and long suits.
Here you can see a hand that uses some of the techniques discussed:
You are South, declarer in 3NT on the ♠️Q lead (hand in the next column).
You have eight top tricks and the obvious place to look for extra tricks is clubs. You could take your ♣️K, cross to dummy’s ♥️A and cash the ♣️A, but if the queen fails to materialise, dummy’s clubs will be stranded and you are left with the eight tricks you started with.
The interior strength in the club suit offers a much better play: overtake your ♣️K with the ace and use the ♣️J-10-9 to force out the ♣️Q.
This way you still have the ♥️A as an entry to your established clubs – you give up one top trick by swallowing the ♣️K, but you gain four tricks by retaining your entry.
You finish with three ace-kings and five club tricks making 11 tricks.
The DVD covers a lot of different aspects of declarer play. It focuses on the need to try to make a plan early. Take your time when dummy comes down and try to pinpoint where your extra tricks might come from: long suits, high cards, finessing etc.
Above all, remember that when you are playing duplicate pairs, you are aiming for as many tricks as possible, so those overtricks matter!
