The Final Match

It had been a hard day at the local sectional. We got blitzed in the first round when our friend Kate led a club from 9xxx to defeat our notrump slam. We didn't make it to average until round three, the halfway point. After strong wins in the next two matches we were a distant third going into the final match. We lobbied to play the second place team, but the oddities of the bracketing forced us to play another team, forfeiting our ability to directly control our own fate. Not only did we need a big win, we needed the two teams in front of us to seriously falter.

After going down a couple on an unmakeable game, partner dealt and passed at favorable vulnerability on the next board. RHO bid 1C, LHO bid 1H and pard now came in with 1 notrump, showing the other two suits. RHO jumped to 4H and I considered my hand:

Qxx
Qx
KJ
1098762

What the heck--4 spades, a bid I thought I could get away with. Pass, pass, 5H on my right. All passed and pard led a spade.

Dummy had:
Ax
109xx
AQ
AKQJx


Declarer won the spade ace and ran the H10 to pard's king who returned his lowest spade. I won the queen and decided pard was void in clubs. I returned a club for him to ruff and he returned a diamond, my king winning the finesse. I gave him another ruff. When the smoke cleared we were plus 300. We could have doubled but this felt like a good score as 4H would probably make.

A few boards later I picked this collection, vulnerable:

Q9xx
AKQ8xx
K
Jx

I opened 1H and pard bid 2H, constructive. I jumped to game and a club was led.

8xx
J109
Qxxx
AKx

Q97x
AKQ876
K
Jx

I won the ace (I hate to go down at trick one!) and paid attention to the discouraging signal played by RHO. After pondering my options I played a heart and then led a diamond to my king. It held! Now I could lose 3 spades and still make my contract. There are various ways to accomplish this, but I made it unnecessarily difficult for myself by having to rely on an endplay at trick 12. As it turns out RHO had A10 of spades and 3 trumps. LHO had KJxx of spades and 1 trump. A straightforward line, which would probably have worked, would be to play on spades immediately, leaving a high trump in dummy to ruff the 4th one if necessary.

Instead I drew trump and threw in LHO with a spade, who then led a club which I ducked to my jack and good 9 of spades. Oh well--620 was the goal.

While we were waiting for our teammates to finish, we learned that the second place team had suffered a big loss. When we compared scores we won 14 imps as our teammates made 4H while we set 5H three tricks. We also won 12 imps as they beat 4H while I made it. We wound up with 18 victory points and hovered at the leader board waiting to see how the first place team fared.

Surprise--they were blitzed! We won the event by 3 victory points. Bob, Gary, John and I were pleased--especially considering our dismal beginning.

(*Note the advantage of opening 2NT on the first hand. The opponents don't get into your auction and the big hand is hidden. Our teammate got a club lead which was ruffed. He rose with the ace when a diamond was returned and played ace and another heart which drew the trumps. He gave up a diamond and the losing spades went away on the good clubs.)

See you at the table!