If I blindly followed the 8 ever 9 never rule, I would have never gone down 7, and would have almost certainly made the third day of the LM pairs, and wouldn't have this cool story about how my play from dummy at trick 3 was a 7 trick swing. If you pay attention to me on Facebook, you've probably already seen this.
At favorable vulnerability against Hampson and Greco, I picked up
ATx, AJxxx, QJxx, Kx.
It went P-3S to me. Pass I think is the correct call here (and I even thought so at the time) but I bid 3NT anyway. In dummy I found
xx, KTxx, Axxx, Jx.
We have a heart fit but 4H is still almost sure to go down while 3NT can make. If I pick up hearts for no losers and diamonds split with the K onside there are 9 easy tricks and even if LHO has 4 diamonds, it will become a fairly easy endplay with Hampson having to give me a club at the end. So after the S9 lead, I pondered at trick 1 for a minute or so before playing both major suit aces and then a heart to the ten. Greco took his Q and 6 spades and Hampson then ran his clubs for down 7 and -350.
Since I'm going to need the DK onside anyway to make, it is probably better to work on that suit first. I would find that the preemptor had a singleton diamond and then I would be much better positioned to get hearts right. -350 was worth 1.5 matchpoints while +400 would have been 86 on a 90 top.
Against the other top seed we played on Saturday (Bob Hamman and Justin Lall), they bid aggressively and went down a couple in a bad 4H contract and then I picked off their spade fit by overcalling with a 12 count and 4 decent spades instead of passing or doubling. That got us -430 instead of -450 and another good score but not enough to overcome all of the less than stellar things we did.
Philadelphia is a very nice city and I would like to have stayed longer but I have used enough vacation this summer and I don't think I could handle the 10 and 3 start times much longer.
I think it's right to play hearts first and the finesse is way suoerior. Tough luck.
ReplyDelete