The pendulum – Summer National Pairs – Session 3

I opened 1N in 3rd seat, Vivek balanced with 2♣ showing hearts and Panja, S became declarer in 2♥ 

I saw this dummy on the lead of ♠ K

We normally lead A from AK, so this was an alarm clock play, suggesting AK doubleton, K singleton, or that the card partner is going to switch to is a singleton. I played the Queen on T1, and partner switched to ♦ 5

Obviously pd doesn’t have AK stiff spades, he’d continue at T2. So he either has ♠ K singleton (unlikely, declarer will probably win Ace after seeing the Q ) or singleton diamond.

I decided to play ♠ J as it seemed totally safe. It was impossible that pd held AKxxx and allowed them to play 2♥ , even AKxx was highly unlikely. 

When partner followed to 2nd spade, I cashed my ♦ A and gave him a ♦ ruff.

Partner cashed his ♠ A and exited a club. Ace and another ♥ to me, and I played back the 4th diamond which partner was able to ruff with ♥ 8.  That was -3. In retrospect, my cashing the ♠ J could have costed if pd had started  with 8xx.

With 4 80% + scores in the session, we were not just leading, we were now ahead of 2nd position by nearly 1.5 boards. It seemed like a good position to be, and barring a freak session for someone, all we needed was to avoid disasters.. or so I thought..