Aggregate at Buchanan

I was lucky enough to get a game with John Di Mambro at the Buchanan Bridge Club this week. After several attempts to arrange it we settled on the Monday night aggregate. For a one-off game we had a fairly detailed system card but needless to say none of it came up, and as it happened all we needed was 5 card majors, strong NT, standard attitude in defence.

There were a couple of times when I was glad it was aggregate, as I didn't have to worry too much about the very best defence to get the contract two down. Once I took five minutes thinking about if I could make an overtrick with a squeeze, decided I couldn't, then realised we still had one board to play and apologised to the opponents for taking so long.

This was the most pleasing board, a 16-point game that I didn't expect to make:

Danny John W N E S 1♦ 1♥ 2♦ 2♥ 2♠ 4♥ - - 4♠ - 5♦ - - -

I've just been teaching the pupils at school about bidding two-suited hands and so was delighted to be able to pick up the North hand and show the shape by bidding Diamonds-Spades-Spades. Not surprisingly we ended up in 5♦ rather than 4♠. East lead a top Heart then switched to a low Club to West's King. She tried another Heart, which I ruffed.

My first thought was "we've only two losers" and my next thought was "how do I get rid of all my Spades?". I could ruff all four in dummy, but that would require Spades to split 4-4 (to prevent an over-ruff). This would effectively be a cross-ruff, making the Ace of Spades and ten trump tricks. This line could be beaten on a trump lead, but was still an option for me.

After West won the ♣K I saw another option. Presuming that East hadn't underlead the ♣A it must be with West, meaning I could take a ruffing finesse in Clubs and set them up. I checked I had enough entries, then drew trumps in two rounds (if they're 3-0 I'm down), ruffed a Spade, lead the ♣J (covered) then crossed back to dummy with a final Spade ruff.

It's only occurred to me now that it might be best for West to win the first Club trick with the Ace, disguising the location of the ♣K, but in fact on this layout everything is nice for declarer.

On the other tables there was another Diamond game and one pair managed 5♦x+1 (on the lead of ♥AK I think). Mostly East-West made nine or ten tricks in Hearts.

Overall we finished mid-table, missing a couple of 50-50 slams and bidding one that went down.