Too Obvious

Yesterday I went for a snooze after putting the children to bed. Anna woke me up, and five minutes later we were playing in our second-ever EBU tournament. On the first board I made a 2♣ bid, and alerted it as "Checkback Stayman, forcing to game". I'd got confused though, and it wasn't Checkback Stayman. Anna correctly passed, and we played 2♣+2 with a combined 27 count. Amazingly, no game made, and we scored 83% for our efforts. I apologised to the opposition.

We had got lucky there, but also had plenty of missed opportunities. This could have been glorious:

I'm 5-5 with Clubs and Spades, and decided to open 1♣. When Anna replied 2♣ I was a bit anxious about not showing my Spades but couldn't really make a forcing bid so passed. When it go back to me at 3♥ I still haven't shown my Spades so rather foolishly bid them now. This must show five, but with Anna only having a doubleton she put me back in 4♣. West doubled, and lead the ♠T.

The lead went to the ♠Q, ♠K and ♠A and now my Spades are all winners. If I can just draw trumps I could only lose one trump and two Hearts. Or I could even get rid of the Hearts on the Diamonds. I cashed the ♦A, and lead my ♠J, hoping the lead was a doubleton. It wasn't. West ruffed, took his ♣A and two Heart tricks for one off.

There is no legitimate way to make the contract, but I could have done a lot better. Leading the ♠7 rather than the ♠J would mean that West might not ruff (ruffing could cost a trump trick if his partner has ♣Jxx). Also, I could instead have tried to get to dummy with a low trump to the ♣Q, after which I can discard my Hearts. Or, maybe I shouldn't even unblock the ♦A, which is so obviously a singleton, but rather start on trumps and hope West continues to be reluctant to lead Hearts (thinking I have the ♥K).

Conceding 4♣x-1 was worth 12%. If we leave in 3♥ and beat it we still only get 37%. Making 4♣x would of course been a top.

After this we played 6♣+1 not 6NT for another bad score, then got 0% where I failed to switch against 3NT and it made with an overtrick instead of five off. But we had a few good ones too and finished on 56.5% for 34th out of 148 pairs.