Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Adequate
My hand: ♠ A K J T 7 4 ♥ Q T 4 3 ♦ A 6 ♣ 2
Three passes to me. I open 1 spade. West overcalls 2 clubs and that gets passed to me. I am uninterested in playing this, so I bid 2 hearts which gets alerted. Hmm... Partner bids 2 NT. I bid 3 spades which gets passed out.
West leads the 3 of diamonds.
NORTH ♠ 3 2 ♥ 9 6 ♦ Q J 9 7 4 ♣ K Q J 7 | ||
| WEST ♦ 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A K J T 7 4 ♥ Q T 4 3 ♦ A 6 ♣ 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | 1♠ |
| 2♣ | Pass | Pass | 2♥1 |
| Pass | 2NT | Pass | 3♠ |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1Forcing | |||
I have 2 heart losers, a diamond loser, a club loser, and maybe 1 spade loser. That's one too many, so I need to get rid of one of them. Fortunately it turns out the opening lead gets rid of one of them for me. If I insert the Q of diamonds here it either wins or I get to cover the K and still win the J. That was easy!
Do I have 9 tricks? I have 2 diamonds and 5 spades. I have 2 clubs after taking out the A of clubs. I may well have a heart too, or a 6th spade if I pick up the Q of spades.
Looking at it closer I may lose an extra heart too, if I draw trump first. I also have no entry to board to collect those clubs. This may be trickier than it first seemed. Oh well, let's play this diamond trick... 3-Q-5-6. If they have to play diamonds later in the hand I might get a board entry after this, so I should really pound out a club. K-4-2-A. West plays a diamond back to my A. I draw trump. A-9-2-6. K-Q-3-5. Glad I didn't finesse a spade!
Ok, I have 4 tricks in and 4 more trump tricks in hand. I need to find one more trick. The opponents have 1 trick in, and have set up a diamond and 2 hearts for sure whenever they get in. So if they can get one more trick, they set us. I am going to have to break hearts myself, which means leading away from the Q, which means giving them the J. I don't see a play from here. Maybe I can make them pitch most of their hearts or something by running trump.
They pitch all clubs and a diamond. I decide to play my last trump because I don't see how it can hurt and East pitches a small heart. I wonder if that will be good enough? I exit a low heart and East wins the J. And then they cash all their tricks. Down 1.
| NORTH ♠ 3 2 ♥ 9 6 ♦ Q J 9 7 4 ♣ K Q J 7 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q 9 ♥ A 7 5 ♦ 3 2 ♣ A T 9 6 5 3 | EAST ♠ 8 6 5 ♥ K J 8 2 ♦ K T 8 5 ♣ 8 4 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A K J T 7 4 ♥ Q T 4 3 ♦ A 6 ♣ 2 |
All 8 of the tables played a NS contract in NT or spades. 7 went down with 3 pairs going down more than 1 trick (and one of those was even doubled). One pair managed to make 3NT. So despite what felt like a really bad situation, we still get 9 MPs. I feel like partner's 2NT bid spun things out of control. I'm showing a two-suited hand in the majors. He has a 2 suited hand in the minors with no support at all in the majors. I feel like he should have showed a preference by bidding 2 spades instead of 2NT and let me make a big move if I want to keep going.
Captain Jack has all sorts of problems with this hand. His first problem is with my 3 spade bid. He thinks it's too passive and wants me to jump to 4 spades. This seems crazy to me. I have a 14 count and partner has shown no willingness to bid my suits. He probably has a club stopped for his NT bid, and that's going to be wasted values. Nevermind that he passed to start, so he can't have an opening hand! I thought 3 spades might be too high, not too low!
Next up he disagrees with my pounding out the club suit when I won the first trick. He wants me to draw trump. Then when I get in with the high diamond he disagrees with my drawing trump and wants me to play a heart. I guess this makes sense in that maybe, just maybe, I can ruff a heart. If the opponents are bad.
Finally he disagrees with playing the last round of trump. I don't know how it could hurt, but he wants me to duck a heart to start. I tried playing it out and I actually took a trick at the end. I guess letting East pitch his low heart was actually bad for me. Huh. Live and learn!
Ranking after board 20/60: 6/16 with 52.14%.
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