Taking the Opportunity

[OliverC]

Sometimes you'll find that Declarer is in a stone cold contract, maybe not the best contract they could be in, but stone cold nonetheless, but Declarer does something that will allow you to defeat the contract, but you have to take the opportunity, and often timing is everything. Both I and Partner missed the opportunity here. Partner can be excused, because he didn't have a critical piece of information that I had, but I had no excuse.

Love All, Dealer West

Bidding
West          North         East        South
1              1            2         No
3              No             4         All Pass

You lead the 5 and can see

West
63
A92
984
AKJ65
                 South
                  J85
                  8543
                  Q105
                  Q74

Partner won the first trick with the King of Spades and switched to the 2 . Declarer won this with the Ace and took three rounds of trumps ending in hand, Partner following to the first two trump tricks and then discarding an encouraging Spade. Declarer now cashed the AK of Clubs (Partner follows with the 8 and 9) and took the losing Diamond finesse. What now?

Completely senior moment by me. A moment's thought will tell you this: Clearly Declarer started with only four trumps (Partner having followed to the first two rounds) and so only has one trump left. Whatever the Club position is, the Queen of Clubs at this point will either win the trick or force Declarer to ruff with their last trump. Discarding a Spade, even if they started with Qx, will do them no good, because a Spade  will still force them to ruff and you will still be left with a Spade to cash.

I returned a Spade. Partner can still save the day by continuing with a Club and establish a trump trick for me, but clearly he won't realise that I still have a trump left, so that line of defence didn't occur to him the way it ought to have occurred to me. He switched back to a Diamond, but now Declarer could win, draw my last trump and claim the rest.

Here, 4 is icy cold as long as Declarer tries the Club finesse. 3NT is absolutely icy cold for 11 tricks on the same line (taking the finesse), so my lapse didn't actually cost us much (2 IMPs), but 4 -1 would have been worth 8 IMPs, which is costly. Ho Hum!

[kenberg]

An  interesting hand all around. Here is another line that might have occurred to declarer:

The opening lead 5 to the K and then a switch to a small . Declarer can place a reasonable bet that the Ace is on his right and that the 5 was from a 3.card holding.Probably the the switch was from three or maybe four rather than a stiff. Win the A, play a small to the  A, lead a . Your partner hops up and leads another . Win the K  and play the Q , throwing a from the board. Lead a small . Either you follow or you don't, here you do. Unless that 2 by your partner was a very tricky lead from a doubleton spot, he will be following suit and it will be safe to ruff low. I take it that declarer originally had four    and now his last is good. Of course, as far as declarer knew, your partner might have been leading that from Qxxx. In this hypothetical case you are down to clubs and hearts.  He  can   ruff if you pitch a club or over ruff if you ruff. He now has one trick , 4 tricks in his hand (I am assuming he can bring down your 8, else you would have just cashed it ni the play as it went), one ruff on the board. two top and two top . He can go for an overtrick of he gets greedy but I wouldn't recommend it.

This seems like a reasonable line. If worse comes to worse, say the opening spade lead is from a small doubleton, then the spade Q is ruffed and overruffed, and the club finesses is still available as a back-up plan.

It's a very interesting hand. I am making a guess that on the auction you expected declarer to have five hearts, and even though partner showed up with two, showing that declarer only had four, your head didn't grab it. I have had the same glitch over and over again.