Cool defense; cool comment

Defending in a club Swiss this morning, against a declarer with over 13,000 mps, you encounter an uncommon agreement in the auction of the opponents:

Partner leads the ♣2, playing 3^rd/low.

 

Do you like the lead?  What is your defensive plan?

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I won the ♣A, felling declarer’s ♣K.  I liked partner’s lead; what I did not like is knowing that trumps are 3-3.  Otherwise, a club continuation would shorten declarer to a length less than one of the defenders.  However, there surely were no side suit winners, and so continuing clubs might have some merit.  I noticed that declarer’s transportation was messy: he has no cards remaining in dummy’s best suit and dummy was dealt no cards in declarer’s best suit.  Maybe, especially if the ♠K were not an entry to dummy, we could develop an extra trump trick via a force anyway?  

I continued a small club and declarer ruffed and then advanced a trump to dummy’s ♥9.  I won the ♥K and played a third round of clubs, declarer ruffing again.  The rounded suit volley continued when declarer led the ♥Q, which I won with my other heart top for our third trick.  I continued the attack on declarer’s entries by playing a spade back.  Declarer won the ♠A (that’s good news, because winning the spade in dummy would allow declarer to draw trumps with the ♥J and then get to his hand with the ♠A and claim with good diamonds.)  Declarer next played three rounds of high diamonds, both partner and I following all three rounds.  When declarer played a fourth good diamond, partner ruffed with the ♥T and declarer overruffed with the ♥J in dummy.

Now declarer conceded down one by saying “giving up a trick to your ace”.  He knew we held the thirteener trump and he held all the tops in the other suits.  But winning a trick with my ♥2 having been favored by being denominated an ace was pretty cool.

The whole hand:

FWIW, I am not a fan of their auction choices.  I prefer opening 1♦, and I prefer a 3NT second round bid by responder.

But then there would be no story.