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 WestBiddingWest North East South1
1
2
No
3
No 4
All Pass
You lead the 5
and can see
West 63
A92
984
AKJ65
South J8
5 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!