HCL Pairs Finals – a sorry tale of lost opportunities, poor decisions and more.. – morning session

We  – Vivek Bhand and self – finished a miserable 19th out of 28 pairs. Here’s the saga of how it unfolded, with focus on hands where we went wrong. There were a number of hands where we did the right thing, but emphasis in this article would be on the failures. I might add a hand or two where things went our way..

Here was the first hand where disaster struck – and it didn’t take long – just the 4th board.

 You are on lead against N with this auction.

What do you make of it? Taking everything at face value, its quite possible that RHO has a long suit that he has not disclosed (why would he want to know plain aces otherwise, given he already knows number of controls). Or have they had a misunderstanding where RHO meant 4N to be quanti? Its not ♣ RKC, cos they play minorwood (you inquire).

If latter, you ought to exit passively on lead, if former – it might be necessary to set up your Club trick (before for example he sets up spades). Which.

I eventually decided to trust the explanation and led the ♣ K – disaster. Declarer meant his 4N to be quanti, and club was the only lead to sell the contract – declarer holding AJx and dummy T98xx with no other source of tricks.