At the EBU pairs this Sunday Anna and I had a good night, finishing in 7th with 62%. On one board we got a great score when I opened 1NT then misclicked double and we got them off in 2♦x. In general our defence was very good, we just messed up the declarer play on these two:
Anna made a solid 2♦ overcall then when she came back in with 3♦ I thought 3NT would have good play. I was imagining seven Diamond tricks plus an outside Ace-King for 3NT. However, as Anna said afterwards, at Matchpoints I should probably have just left it in 3♦.
You can see that I was sort of right to bid 3NT, as there are seven Diamond tricks there, plus a working Spade finesse for a couple more tricks. However... I got a low Diamond lead. I didn't think too much, just playing low and losing to the (singleton) King. When the inevitable Club came back it all fell apart and I got 3NT-5 for 2.5%. I think I was right to play low, as just occasionally a good West might underlead his King of Diamonds, but it proved very costly here.
On this board it was Anna's turn under the spotlight:
I opened 1♣ and Anna replied 1♠. After I replied 1NT Anna has nowhere to go really but 4♠. This is probably the right contract, as there are two Diamond losers, but in reality almost all Easts led a Heart.
On the Heart lead you have plenty of entries and top trumps to set up the Clubs, and generate a second discard for 4♠+3. What's interesting is that nearly all human declarers were happy to take their one discard on the Ace of Clubs for 4♠+2, but whenver a robot was declarer they always got the Clubs set up to take all 13 tricks.
Clever Bots.
