At the table I messed up and misread partner's signal, encouraging in diamonds. I cashed a second diamond (the queen, since partner already knows about my king) on which partner played the
♦4, ostensibly remaining even count, declarer contributing the
♦5. For some reason I interpreted this as partner having started with three diamonds, which simply can't be right. I was worried that even if partner could overruff dummy declarer could just pitch the club loser on my third diamond, but in that case I can just run another diamond up. Whoops. At the table I switched to the king of hearts, the idea being that once I got in with my king of spades I could play a club to partner's ace and get a heart ruff. The trick went
♥K-A-8-Q, partner's 8 showing an odd number. Declarer led a spade to the ace (
♠2-4-A-7) and another (
♠Q-K-8-T). I played the club up (
♣8-9-Q-A) and at that point I learned partner did not have an entry and I'd botched the defense completely. Declarer drew the trumps and ran off the hearts for -1. Here is the full hand:
Had I just continued diamonds declarer would have gone three off. Partner gets the immediate diamond (over)ruff, but if declarer pitches a card on the third diamond I get to lead a fourth immediately, while if declarer ruffs partner will overruff and put declarer in by leading a club, and now there are insufficient entries to the hand to ruff the fourth diamond and the second club (so we get an extra trick eventually, along with my king of spades).
The IMP score for 5
♠X-1 was +4 IMPs to us. Scores were all over the place, a few NS pairs in 5
♣X-1 (presumably on a slower auction), one NS in 3NT-7 and a second pair in 2NT-3. There were a few 3
♠-2's by East, one 4
♥X= by West and several more different results.
helene_t, on 2023-December-23, 11:28, said:
We won't make 6c but we might make 5nt. X is fairly clear, though.
5NT would not have worked so well. Even on a non-heart lead we don't have many tricks, and if East can find the
♥Q unblock (or just lead it after winning
♣A) it's all over.
I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. If I hadn't screwed up miserably we could have scored +500 for something like +10 IMPs rather than +4 IMPs. At the same time our auction put us well ahead of the field, and I'm happy with the bidding. Notice the 4
♥X= and 5
♣X-1's, if you give the opponents time to bid their hearts I think this is a likely outcome.