Well, maybe you should have passed after 3NT, but this pales in comparison with the contract North has declared – a grand slam in clubs. West leads the ♠2. Plan the play.

The opening lead is a lucky break, as the ♠J from dummy wins the first trick. Although you have the ♦A, you know that you need to find a way to discard the rest of the diamonds. Hearts are the best possibility as there are five hearts on the table and with any luck with distribution, you should be able to promote small hearts. As you miss the ♣Q, you also need a successful finesse to make the grand slam.

You lead the ♣10 from dummy, East plays the ♣7, you play the ♣2. Luckily West cannot beat the ten, so next you lead the ♣9 from dummy, East plays the ♣5 and West discards the ♦7.

East has the remaining trumps, but as you have the ♣AKJ and East Qx, this should be no problem.

You still need these additional tricks in hearts, so you take a trick with the ♥K and the next one with the ♥A. In case East has no hearts left – you can use hearts as a trump coup. So you lead hearts from dummy and as both East and West play a heart, you ruff. This means your remaining two hearts are indeed winners.

Now you can pull the trumps, take a trick with the ♠K, cross over to dummy with the ♠A and take two tricks with hearts discarding two small diamonds from hand and taking the final trick with the ♦A.

Minor suit slam possibilities are certainly worth exploring if you have a fit bearing in mind slam bonuses. But it is not an easy task to bid a slam with a minor fit, as minors are often neglected in favor of finding a major suit fit or getting to game with 3NT. With a good minor suit fit most time most players settle for 3NT.

So although this hand can yield a grand slam, most of the times the bidding would have gone like this: 1♣-pass-1♥-pass-2NT-pass-3NT-all pass.

Of course 3NT is makeable too, because with any opening lead – and in NT contract West would probably have opened with a diamond lead – you can regain lead, cross to dummy finessing spades on the way and start finessing clubs. So ultimately you will win 5 tricks in clubs, 3 in spades, 2 in hearts and 1 in diamonds, making 3NT +2.

Analysis:

Par Contract Analysis:

The par contract on this hand is 7♣ by North/South

Bridge Baron deal No : N2268-33534-25240-86574-91584-46187