Hand from Knockout Final

After last night's November Knockout Final I asked seychelles, captain of the victorious No Strumpets to write up a hand from the final. Modestly she chose a hand that her team was a little lucky on. This was the first board of the extra 4 boards required after Antihomers were behind by one imp at the end of the first 12.

Seychelles explains:


"1C = strong NT hand or distributional with C or D
2H = we must have H our way
4H = intrepid bid by my partner!!! (she is sitting over the C & has S shortage)

We got lucky – with the lead of AS followed by QS.

When East wins the 1st trump, he leads a C which I take with the A on table. After east wins the 2nd trump, he continues C , KC is trumped and I can cross to dummy to discard a losing diamond on JC (I had decided that east had already shown all his points – he would have x with the strong NT type - therefore I decided that the ruffing finesse in C was necessary)

At the other table east opened a precision style 2c and there it played. This made an overtrick and we collected 11 imps."

- Well played seychelles and congratulations again to No Strumpets on their win. I do feel a bit for dolbeldjd however. With no attractive lead he chose to risk that the KS was either with partner or dummy. Partner in fact turned out to have 2 of the 3 outstanding kings, but not the king of the suit that he had bid! Looking at all four hands it is clear an early diamond switch will defeat the contract but looking only at the east hand when a diamond risks either blowing a trick or saving declarer from a guess.