Playoff disappointment

Playing against a tough local team head-to-head for the right to advance to the semifinals of a top bracket regional KO, our score comparison reveals that the two teams have tied at 47 IMPs apiece after 24 boards.  The conditions of contest call for a four board playoff.

On the first board I hold ♠Jx ♥K98xxx ♦Ax ♣T9x and hear 2♠ opened to my left, takeout double by partner, and 4♠ to my right.  I decide to bid 5♥.  5♥X becomes the final contract.

North ♠ K ♥ ATxxx ♦ Kxx ♣ QJxx

South ♠ Jx ♥ K98xxx ♦ Ax ♣ T9x

Is -300 (RHO wins the ♠A, cashes the ♣KA and gives his partner a club ruff) a good result or a poor result?  Hearts are 1-1 and so 4♠ can be defeated if we find our diamond ruff, but that might not be easy.  I later learn that our teammates played 4♠, perhaps with no interference, and scored up +420.  We jump to a 4 IMP lead.

The second board is a routine major suit game, no swing.

The third board at my table involves a part score battle, where I am declaring 3♥ on a trump suit of 98x in dummy opposite my KJxxxx.  I play the opening bidder before me for Ax of hearts.  He has Qx of hearts instead.  Fortunately, elimination play leads to an endplay and I make +140.  At the other table, where perhaps there was no opening bid before my hand, trumps are guessed correctly but a score of +140 is also recorded.

And so we enter the last board with a 4 IMP lead.  A vulnerable 3NT awaits.

North ♠ Kxx ♥ K9x ♦ KT98x ♣ Kx

South ♠ AJ98 ♥ T8xx ♦ AQ ♣ Jxx

West	North	East	South
—	—	—	1♣
P	1♦	P	1NT
P	3NT

My side’s auction, with announcements that club length could be as short as two and diamond length as short as three and that 1NT can be hiding a four-card major or two, is pretty much constrained by the system agreements my partner and I have adopted.  And my partner’s certainty that game will be reached at the other table.

I receive a lead of the ♠2 and pause to consider.  The opening lead has given me a third spade trick, but since I have only three top tricks in diamonds, that leaves me considerably short of the nine tricks I need for contract.  I entertain the following thoughts before playing small from dummy and seeing my RHO play the ♠T:

• If I overtake the second round of diamonds, I will be assured of four diamond tricks and retain the ♠K as entry.  Although this line also maintains a small chance of achieving five diamond tricks, should the ♦J be so kind as to drop in two rounds, I feel that I need a better chance at five diamond tricks and so I reject this line.
• If I take repeated heart finesses, I can possibly take advantage of my side owning the ♥T, 9, and 8 intermediates.  Should one heart “quack” be onside, I can take two heart tricks.  Should I have five diamond tricks, the two hearts and three spades will give me nine tricks in all.  And meanwhile the ♣K is safe from immediate attack even if both ♥ quacks are offside.  A pretty fair plan.
• I can retain the avoidance benefits (losing the lead to the hand over the ♣K) of taking a finesse of an intermediate heart, without committing to a later additional heart finesse.  Any suit returned by my RHO will help me – this is assuming that I have first unblocked the two high diamonds in my hand.

In further considering this latter line, I am struck that a spade return is not nearly as helpful as returns of the other three suits.  Can I strip RHO of spades before finessing the ♥9?  Reading my LHO’s lead as evidencing four spades, I decide to play a second round of spades before giving up the lead.  I think it is better to play a spade before unblocking diamonds than after, because playing spades early masks the fact that diamonds are blocked and that entries to dummy are so important.  Perhaps it is unnecessarily risky to play for LHO to have the ♠Q in stripping spades, but I do play the ♠8 from my hand (not the ♠9, because I do not want to coax a cover that would take an entry from dummy).  When the eight is not covered and wins, I feel pretty good.  As planned, I now cash the ♦AQ and then finesse the ♥9, losing to RHO’s ♥Q.

Alas, RHO returns a spade!  So, spades were 3-3 and not 4-2 as I had thought.  Worse, I have now blocked the spade suit and have no entry to the ♠A in my hand.

I win with dummy’s ♠K and cash a third round of diamonds, as each opponent follows suit and I gratefully cash two more diamonds.   I pitch two hearts and the ♠A on the three long diamonds (OK, not really true, see the confession at the end of this blog entry).  The opponents remain with four hearts and four clubs between them, as I reach this four card end position (having won three spades and five diamonds and having lost only the ♥Q so far):

North ♠ — ♥ Kx ♦ — ♣ Kx

South ♠ — ♥ T ♦ — ♣ Jxx

What to do?

I believe that I have excellent chances to make by playing a small club from dummy (much better than my chances by playing a heart):

• If RHO holds ♣A stiff, he must win and lead a heart to give dummy the ninth trick.
• If RHO holds ♣Q stiff, he can win but must then lead a heart to give dummy a ninth trick.
• If RHO holds ♣AQ doubleton, he must win the ♣Q and eventually lead a heart to give dummy the ninth trick.
• If RHO owns  ♣AQx, he must win this trick and eventually give me a club for a ninth trick, or else lead a heart to his partner who must give dummy a ninth trick with a heart.
• If RHO owns ♣Qx, he must rise with the ♣Q (and he is an excellent defender, quite unlikely to fall for the duck) and return a club to his partner’s ace.  Then his partner, my LHO, must lead a heart and either find RHO with ♥AJ remaining or hope for me to misguess the heart suit if the ♥AJ are split.  (Although, now that I think about it, if LHO leads the ♥J at Trick 12, pinning my stiff ♥T, the ♥7 becomes a possible Trick 13 winner.)
• If RHO owns the ♣Ax, he will duck.  When I lose my ♣J to LHO’s ♣Q, LHO must return a heart and not a club and I reach a position for a possible heart guess similar to the position in the bullet above.

At the table, RHO plays a small club, my jack loses to the ♣Q of LHO, and a heart is returned.  I fly with the ♥K and am defeated by a trick.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ Kxx ♥ K9x ♦ KT98x ♣ Kx
West ♠ Qxx ♥ Jxx ♦ xxx ♣ QTxx		East ♠ Txx ♥ AQ7 ♦ Jxx ♣ Axxx
	South ♠ AJ98 ♥ T8xx ♦ AQ ♣ Jxx

At the other table, a different auction leads to 3NT being played from the other side.  I understand that declarer played for split heart quacks and won nine tricks.  We lose the playoff and the opportunity to advance to the semifinals.

… OK about that confession:  I have no excuse for this play, but, in the interest of honest reporting, I admit that I pitched three hearts on the last three diamonds, thus retaining the useless ♠A while discarding the potentially useful ♥T.  I have, however, convinced myself that even if I had retained the ♥T, I would have gone wrong in the end position by rejecting one form of restricted choice (that RHO’s winning the ♥9 finesse with the ♥Q suggests that he does not own the ♥J) and favoring another form of restricted choice to play the ♥K at Trick 12.  The form of restricted choice I would favor is that LHO might have been less likely to have led a spade from Qxx if he held a similar holding in hearts; that, instead, the spade lead would be relatively more attractive had LHO owned the ♥A.  I would feel better had I discarded the ♠A to begin with and been able to omit this paragraph of confession.