You may not have heard of Sue Johnson but she could be the fairy godmother bridge needs right now. Not only does she go into primary schools to introduce young pupils to mini-bridge, she’s also the producer of the New Tricks videos which can be seen on YouTube, giving bridge much needed exposure in the virtual world. ‘Battle of the Partners’ pits world-class players against their own regular partners with some fascinating results. I urge you to watch. Today’s hand is one where the partnership could not have taken more divergent paths.

While his esteemed partner passed the hand out, our Declarer not only opened the bidding but also jumped on his second go. He then had to swap seats with his robot partner and try his hand at 4 Hearts on a trump lead.

Thinking it was very nice of the (robot) opponents to play out the trump suit for him, he ducked in dummy and won in hand. He went to dummy in Diamonds and played a Spade towards hand, but East robot cleverly ducked, so West could win and play another trump. At last it was time for Declarer to take stock, but whichever way he tried it came to no more than nine, and he eventually went one down.

A little planning from the start might have done the trick(s). You can’t really get ten tricks on a cross-ruff, so Clubs have to be established. This means preserving entries to hand. Win the lead in dummy, play Ace and ruff a Club. Re-enter hand in trumps and ruff another Club, and claim 11 tricks.