John and I had an OK game last Tuesday, playing for Team Buchanan against Gilmorehill. The first hand we bid up to 6H, and I'm glad I was dummy as my hands were shaking from all the sugar from trick or treating. The slam made, but not much else did. Through misunderstandings and optimism I kept putting John in hopeless contracts. He played them well for down one, maintaining good concentration while dressed as a Jedi throughout.
In defence I was more alert than usual, and had a full count of declarer's points and shape for most hands. There was one I was proud of; after a disastrous AH lead setting up declarer's King I kept concentration and later ducked twice to cut declarer off from dummy and get the contract one off. That was the highlight. A lowlight was 2S-1 when I guessed trumps wrong with K9x opposite QTxxx. I first lead the Queen, then instead of finessing on the second round made the cowardly play of the King.
Another lowlight was the hand below.
After a poorly controlled auction I ended as East in 3H, where actually you'd like to be in game. They lead a Spade, and I immediately started on Diamonds. The defence won and played Ace and another Heart. At this point I can virtually claim nine tricks; four Hearts, two Spades, one Diamond and a Club. I just need to ruff a Diamond and return to hand with a Spade to draw trumps.
But I had another plan. Leaving the Jack of Hearts in dummy as a trump policeman I started on the Clubs. If they had of split I would actually get 11 tricks. But they didn't split; someone ruffed the second round of Clubs and now I only had 8 tricks.
This didn't both me too much at the time - I was glad I wasn't in 4H, but I did wake up at 5 am the next day with an uneasy feeling then the correct play on this hand occurred to me. 3H-1 when I should have had 3H=.
In the end we lost the match 4-12.
