[McBruce]

As South, white vs red at IMPs, you hold:

♠ A J 9
♥ K 9 8
♦ 3
♣ Q J 9 8 5 4

You open 1♣ in second seat and LHO overcalls 1♦. Partner passes and RHO bids 1♠. You rebid 2♣ but your side passes from here to the end of the auction.
LHO doubles your 2♣ rebid and RHO cuebids 3♣. LHO tries 3♥ and RHO's 3NT ends the auction. You lead the Q♣ and see this dummy:

♠ Q 5
♥ A 5 3 2
♦ K J T 9 8
♣ A 6

Your hand again, with dummy on your left:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ♠ A J 9
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ♥ K 9 8
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ♦ 3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ♣ Q J 9 8 5 4


Declarer wins in hand with the K♣, partner contributing the seven. Declarer leads the 4♠ to dummy's queen, partner playing the two. After some thought, the jack of diamonds is led from dummy, and partner plays the two in tempo. Declarer thinks for some time and finally plays the king. The 4♦ is the next play, and declarer rises with the ace after you discard the 4♣, next losing a diamond to partner's queen, declarer playing the three as you pitch a second small club. From partner comes the ten of clubs which declarer wins on the table with the ace.

You are down to ♠AJ ♥K98 ♦-- ♣J9 and declarer has five tricks to your one. Declarer next plays off the winning diamonds to get to seven tricks. Partner follows to one and pitches the four of hearts on the second one. What is your plan for these two tricks and the ace of hearts, declarer's eighth trick, which follows?

...

...

This hand was the finale of the Commonwealth Nations Bridge Championship's secondary event, the Transnational Teams, held this past week in Glasgow, Scotland. The main 28-team event was "won" by the "Chairman's team" with Wales second, Wales winning the gold medals for being the highest-placed national team in a field made up of national teams and several filler teams ineligible to win. The semifinal and quarterfinal losers joined the Transnational Teams event with eight of eleven matches remaining, and despite being only given 33 VP of a possible 60 for the three missed matches, three teams from the main event qualified for the semi-finals: Scottish President's, Canada, and Australia, along with Swiss leaders "Canadonia." Canada and Scottish President's played in the final, which came down to this hand, shown on BBO vugraph here in Vancouver (where several of the Canada and "Canadonia" players are from) Sunday morning. The closed room completed their set as the bidding happened and the score with just this board to play, Canada sitting East-West, was 65-60 to Scotttish President's. The closed room result on this board was 1♠ +1, 110 to East-West. The match result thus depended on the success of the 3NT contract.

---

The Q♣ was lead and Bryan Maksymetz won in hand with the king, and led a spade to dummy's queen. A short break followed and the vugraph showed the jack of diamonds led to trick three, but when North, Liz McGowan, followed low smoothly, a minute later Maksymetz chose the normal play of winning and trying the finesse the other way. When Sam Punch showed out, the vugraph operator reported that Maksymetz was apologizing to partner Daniel Korbel, who agreed with the play. Hey, we're Canadians, that's what we do.

But it was not quite over. Maksymetz won the K♦ in dummy and led another to North, and the club return put Maksymetz in dummy to cash the rest of the suit for seven tricks. The ace of hearts followed, and, according to the vugraph, all followed low. Big mistake. Do you see it?

Commentator Barnet Shenkin, who did a fine job all day, commented that this was 'mis defence' because the following heart from dummy endplayed South into giving up the ninth trick by leading away from his spades.

But the next vugraph events, nearly simultaneous, were a claim of 8 tricks by East (at least, that was what was entered), and a note from the vugraph operator that "the Scottish President is polishing up his speech." Nothing more was broadcast from either table. You can view the board at the Vugraph Archive, where it is called "2014 TNT Glasgow - F2_2" and the board in question was Board 22 (23 and 24 having been played first at the open table).

What actually happened? Did Sam Punch find the unblock of the king of hearts (risking the match if the positions of the jack and queen of hearts were swapped) and the vugraph operator made an error? (Perhaps Maksymetz's hand with the Q♥ instead of the J♥ is a likely opener, but are you risking the contract on that view?) Or did Maksymetz claim eight tricks from a position where he in fact had nine on an endplay?

I'm guessing there was an unblock here (and if so I say bravo! with great enthusiasm) and a vugraph error and a quick retirement to the party, but some confirmation would be helpful. Anyone know?

[gnasher]

From your comments I assume South came down to AJ Kx - Jx.

If declarer had ♥Q he would have exited with a spade to endplay South. And if he did have ♥Q that would be a control-rich12-count, which presumably even a Canadian would have opened.

One interesting point: suppose that the layout where East has ♥Q were possible. North should have switched to a spade, so that South could win and then endplay dummy.

[paulg]

I've spoken to Liz McGowan (North) and she confirmed that the contract did go down.

The vugraph operator did not capture the play correctly and Sam Punch (South) kept three clubs, coming down to the bare ace of spades and baring her king of hearts when Liz showed that she had the ♥Q on the final diamond. Declarer then played ace of hearts and another, which Liz won and led a spade for Sam to take the rest.

[barmar]

As a frequent vugraph operator I can attest that it's hard to get all the cards right. It's particularly hard to get spot cards right, especially if you don't know the players' signalling methods.

Sometimes you get something wrong and don't even notice it until a trick or two later. The software allows you to undo, but it's time consuming. While you're backing up and reconstructing the incorrect play, you're likely to miss the rest of the play. So when we notice something like this, we usually just give up, wait for the end of the hand, and record the final result.

So if there seems to be a conflict between the result and the play, the result is almost always correct. If the operator enters a result that seems unlikely, one of the commentators or spectators will usually notice and ask for confirmation.

[McBruce]

Thanks for the confirmation. Congratulations to the winning team!

Several years ago, before duplicating machines made their first appearance in this area, I took charge of the task of preduplicating about 3100 deals for the Canadian Championships by hand, and was also asked to handle the vugraph arrangements for the final stages of the event. With about 1000 deals still left to be duplicated upon my arrival, I was smart to find two local players who did a fine job as vugraph operators. There was a sequence of about 12 boards where I was called upon to fill in during the semifinal, and I was terrified that I would manage to give something away somehow, exactly what I had trained my assistants not to do.

So I think we should commend the vugraph operator, the one person at the table who knew absolutely that finding the queen of diamonds was going to decide the match. As we waited to see if Maksymetz would indeed run the jack of diamonds, minutes went by and the operator waited without giving anything away by typing a message or some other mannerism. Not an easy task at all when a popular local win depends on the next play!

[barmar]

I don't think operator typing would have given anything away. There are many things he could be typing about, there's no reason the player would assume it's about that specific card.

We used to be instructed to wait until the board moves through the screen before entering either of the bids from that side. I still do this out of habit, but most keyboards these days are pretty quiet, and the players are concentrating on their own hands so much that they don't notice, so Jan has told me that this is not considered an issue.