Hitting a grand slam in a losing cause

In the first round of a three-way match in a bracketed KO at Phoenix NABCs, I was dealt this hand:  ♠ J76xx, ♥ KT, ♦ –, ♣ AKQJxx.

Deciding to treat the spade suit as a four-bagger, I opened 1♣.  LHO jumped to 3♦ and partner made a negative double.  RHO advanced to 5♦.  I bid 5♠, ending the bidding.

LHO led a diamond. 

I bought a nice dummy:

 

I ruffed the diamond in hand.  Not wanting to be shortened a second time in the long trump hand, I played two rounds of clubs, shedding dummy’s remaining diamond on the second round.

I led a spade toward dummy and LHO pitched a diamond.  Dummy’s king was topped by RHO’s ace.  For the next several tricks, RHO and I volleyed pointed suit leads: she returned a second diamond which I ruffed with dummy’s small spade; I returned the ♠T which she won with the queen; and she returned a third diamond which I ruffed with dummy’s last trump, the ♠8.

I led a heart to the king in my hand.  Provided both opponents follow suit to a second heart, the trump coup was assured to work, the position being:

More hearts can be continued until RHO decides to ruff in.  At that point, RHO’s last trump can be drawn and declarer can claim the remainder with good club(s).

Trump coups are not so uncommon.  To execute a trump coup, experienced players will have learned the technique of shortening their trumps to a length equal to that of the opponent who is, or might be, long in trumps.  But executing a trump coup after avoiding the shortening of declarer’s trumps (by voiding dummy of diamonds by pitching a diamond from dummy on the Trick 3 play of a second club) is a technique I had not before seen.

Why the title of this post?  Did the trump coup lead my team to victory?

Hardly.  Instead, executing the trump coup was akin to a baseball player hitting a grand slam home run in a game his team lost …

Not only was this board pushed (contract at the other table was 4♠, the play sequence is unknown to me), but I and my New England teammates of Vermonters Peter Tripp and Penny Lane and Rhode Islander Barton Buffington experienced the following:

• we lost each match of the three-way by 1 IMP, thus being eliminated from the event;
• the last board score compared was our side’s +130 in a club partial losing IMPs to our teammates’ -400 defending a notrump game.  Knowing that spades were two small opposite two small, my partner and I asked our teammates, “was a spade not led?”.   They answered a spade was led, and then informed us that the spade suit lie of their hands was AKQJ opposite Txxxx.  After four spades were cashed, the opponents took the next nine tricks.

Bartender?