Recently, I have been playing a lot. Doing absolutely zero in terms of economic productivity. Dun know how to explain also… but maybe lost a bit of direction in life… so just wanted to idle away some of my time… 
Hmmm… or maybe I should come out with some half-truths to explain away such idleness:
a. My team in China is in chaos…as the capable lead coordinator has left for some important project.. and thus… all my projects are stuck. As such, there was absolutely no need for sales.
b. Suddenly, my lead coordinator came back.. and he was so capable that he settled most of my 5 cents – 10 cents problem. However, he is spending so much time doing it that there is really no spare capacity left on his side. As such, also no point doing sales.
But what the heck. Idleness is not part of today’s topic. Lets focus on bridge….
On a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was part of the NUSS (blue) team to play at SGCC. I played with Kok Poh… one of the better players on our team… so thought a little harder than usual…. However, somehow, still played pretty badly in 2 hands during the second half of the section. (For the first half, we did not really get much chance to play badly as we were playing against a really weak pair…)
HAND 1
Bidding
| North | East (Kok Poh) | South | West (Me) |
| 1♥ | - | 1♠| - |
| 2♦ | - | 2NT | - |
| 3♥ | - | 4♥ | All Pass |
| Dummy ♠Kxxx ♥ Jx ♦ QJxx ♣ KJx |
||||||||
| Kok Poh ♠QJxx ♥ Qxxx ♦ Kx ♣ xxx |
Me ♠Axxx ♥ x ♦ xxx ♣ Axxxx |
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| Declarer ♠x ♥ AKxxxx ♦ Axxx ♣ Q10 |
Kok Poh lead a small club. Dummy came in small and I took the A of club.
Declarer has probably a 6-4 distribution. On second thoughts…. he might have bid that way even if he had a 5-4-3-1 or 5-4-4-0, afraid of the singleton in Clubs… but that will be another story… It did not occur to me at the bridge table.
Assuming that it was a 6-4 distribution, declarer will have another 3 cards in the side suits. It is either 6-4-1-2 or 6-4-0-3.
Generally people tend to prefer to lead double turns over a three card top or nothing. As such, I felt that partner lead from a doubleton club and placed declarer with a 6-4-0-3 hand. To break the contract, we need another 3 tricks. My A spade will not take a trick in 6-4-0-3 hand, and it does not seem very likely that partner can take 3 tricks from the diamonds and hearts alone. So I thought… the only way we can probably down the contract was to hope partner has a heart stopper and could get a club rough on the 3rd round.
Indeed partner only had 2 tricks in diamond and heart suits. Unfortunately, by returning a club, I gave the opponents a chance to discard his singleton spade in his hand.
Hmmm…. partner ask how come I did not take the A of spade. I think that is quite a hard call to make… especially when u see the K in dummy. And for this hand… any other return would have been fatal. Declarer can easily use his clubs to discard the singleton spade by winning my return.
But of course, if I knew partner had a 3 card club, I will cash A spade… and just hope for 2 winners in hearts and diamonds. What else can I hope for?
HAND 2
Bidding
| North | East (Kok Poh) | South | West (Me) |
| - | - | - | 1♥ |
| - | 2♥ | - | 4♥ |
| All Pass |
| Dummy ♠109xx ♥ xxx ♦ AJxxx ♣ x |
||||||||
| North ♠(not sure) ♥ J10x ♦ (not sure) ♣ (not sure) |
South ♠Axxx ♥ x ♦ xxx ♣ Axxxx |
|||||||
| Me ♠AKxx ♥ AQxxx ♦ K10 ♣ Qxx |
I had 18 points. So when partner responded with a 2H, promising 8-9 good pts, I flew to 4H. This contract is almost cold except for the H lead. But the irritating opponents led just that.
So now I had a problem. I had 4 hearts, 2 spades, 2 diamonds… 8 tricks. I needed 2 more tricks.
The chances of getting them from 2 club roughs is … impossible. If I lead a club… opponents will sure win it and draw trumps… so i will get 1 club rough… and must finesse the diamond for the 10th trick. (By finessing the diamond, I am putting myself at the risk of losing an extra trick… as I have no entry into the dummy’s hand to cash the diamond ace should the finesse fail).
Is there another way to go about playing this? I decided to try to establish the diamond suit first. I believe this will cause more confusion. If the finesse works, I can still play the singleton club and get my 1 club rough, 3 diamonds.. blah blah blah.. 10 tricks. However, if the finesse fail, the defenders’ will have a problem. They might not draw trumps. Why? Because they see a fully establish diamond suit.. .which can easily be used to discard away all the other losers… (including possible ones in spades). For all they know, I might have:
â™ Qx
♥ AQxxx
♦ K10x
♣ AKx
If I had the above holdings (spade losers with a diamond entry to dummy), it would be imperative that our opponents quickly lead a spade back to cash all their spades tricks before I have a chance to discard them on my long diamonds.
Anyway, they drew trumps and I was down 3. Yeap. The finesse failed.. they drew trumps and took all the clubs. So they took 3c, 1d, 1h, 1s. Down 3.
If I played a club immediately, I still would need to take the diamond finesse and failing so will be down 2. (no entry to A diamond)
If I played a club immediately, and just cash AK diamond, I will be Down 1. So what the heck. This is teams… so lets take the risk…. Unfortunately, the other side played 1H + 3. Sigh.. the opps must have forgotten to count distribution points.
At the end of the game, I think Kok Poh was telling me my RHO had 4 card diamond… hmmm… if that is the case.. then it was pure crappy play… as the RHO will be able to figure out that I started with a doubleton diamond and as such have absolutely no entry inside to work on the established diamond suit… and will continue to happily pull trumps.
