♠ A Q 8

♥ 8 3

♣ A Q 8 6

♦ 7 5 4 3

♠ K 9 7 5 4

♥ A K Q 2

♣ 7 3

♦ Q 9

You are in a contract of 4♠ ,playing matchpointed pairs,  and the defence start with 3 rounds of diamonds. You ruff the 3rd round- what do you play next? Hint- you are probably in trouble if trumps break 4-1, so you can assume they are 3-2

a) a heart?

b) a club?

c) a spade?

This is a fine example of how to plan the play of the hand as early as possible, by working your way through the play.

Most players can see that they have a potential loser in clubs if the finesse fails. However, it's easy to miss that you also have a heart loser to take care of. There is nothing you can do about the club finesse, it either wins or it doesn't, but you need to plan to eliminate the heart loser. So what next?

Having determined that we need to ruff our 2♥  , we still have some planning to do... we have to ruff with the 8♠ otherwise we will promote a trump trick for the defence.

Let's say we play A♥  K♥   and then ruff the 2♥  - we can play the A♠  and Q♠ , but what next? Ruffing a diamond could easily promote a trump trick for the opponents (If West started with 3 diamonds and 3 spades) The same applies if we draw 2 rounds of trumps before trying for the heart ruff. 

Similarly, if we play a club at this stage, we give up un the chance of the club finesse being onside, plus we have the same dilemma if East wins the 2nd club and plays a diamond.

So, having visualised how the play will go, we conclude at trick 4 that our best plan by far is to lead a club for a finesse immediately. Whether this wins or loses, we have a much safer way of ruffing our 2♥ , drawing trumps and returning to our hand by ruffing the 3rd round of clubs to draw the final trump. This gives us the maximum chance of making our contract, and an additional chance to make 11 tricks if everything goes well!

(Thanks to Gavin Wolpert for the hand from his website)