Declarer Play Problem

Last night at the club I had what I found to be a very interesting declarer play hand. I spent probably 8 or 9 minutes on it and still got it wrong. And I've been trying to think of how I could legitimately make this and I can't find a way.

      Q8x
      JT7x
      K8x
      Axx
xx          KTx
9xxx        AQx
J9xx        AT
QJ8         97xxx
      AJ97x
      K8
      Qxxx
      KT

East opened 1C and I wound up in 4S. West leads the club queen. How do you play this hand? I kept thinking I should be able to make this contract but I have yet to find a way to legitimately do it. The bidding and opening lead pinpoints all the honors, so I figured if I could hold my losers to a spade, a heart, and a diamond. But there really aren't enough entried to dummy to lead toward the diamond Q, lead toward the heart K, take a spade finesse, take a ruffing finesse in hearts.

I guess the line I took needed east to be 2-4-2-5 to work, which is certainly possible. I won trick 1 in dummy and played a heart to the K and a heart ducked to east's Q. I won the club return in my hand and played the jack of spades, which east won and led a 3rd round of clubs, ruffed with the 9. I had already lost 2 tricks and have 1 more sure loser and I need to figure out something to do with the last diamond. I can set up a heart for a diamond discard, and then lead a diamond from dummy toward my Q and then duck the next round. But I need 2 entries to dummy to do that. I chose to finesse the 8 of spades to create that second entry but when east won and led back his 3rd trump, I was down 2. Another option I considered at that point was to play a spade to the Q and then lead a diamond. If east was indeed 2-4-2-5, he could promote west's possible 10 of spades for their 4th trick. does anyone see a better line of play? It seems like taking a spade finesse right away might work, but then there's still the problem of getting to dummy again to lead the red suits. I may get spades right but wind up with 3 diamond losers. Maybe it's right to go ahead and strip out the club suit and then play the ace and jack of spades.

Exclusion Blackwood

Last week at the Warner Robins club I had a chance to use exclusion keycard Blackwood for the first time in a very long time. And my partner actually recognized it. Exclusion Blackwood is typically a jump to 5 of a suit to ask about aces of keycards no counting the ace of the suit bid, presumably because the one asking is void in the suit. Normally you would have agreed on a trump suit prior to making this bid. Responses are the same as key card blackwood - 1st step 0 or 3, 2nd step 1 or 4, 3rd step 2 without the Q of trump, and 4th step 2 with the Q of tump. I held:
♠JTxx
♥-
♦AKTxxx
♣AKQ
My partner opened 1♠, I responded 2NT, Jacoby, partner said 3♦ (shortness), and I bid 5♥, exclusion keycard for spades. He responded 6♦ showing 2 keycards with the Q and I could confidently bid 7♠. It's virtually cold even if he only those 9 high card points but he had the singleton Q of diamonds to go along with it.

I'm wondering whether 1♠-2NT; 4♠-5♥ would be exclusion keycard or just first round control of hearts. The 5♥ bid wouldn't be a jump, which is generally part of Exclusion Blackwood. Also, would 1♠-5♥ be exclusion keycard blackwood or exclusion regular blackwood. My partner at the time seemed to think it would not be keycard, which I tend to disagree with, but I don't know.

1H-3H: invitational vs. preemptive? How much does that change your call as the opponent?

In the swiss team game at the Macon sectional with both sides vulnerable, I picked up:
AKTxx
X
X
AQTxxx

It was 1H-P-3H to me. Your call. I bid 4C. I asked and the opener said 3H was a limit raise. So I thought they probably would bid 4H and then I can bid 4S and give a very good description of this hand. It goes all pass and dummy hits with soome 10 or 11 count and 4 spades to the Q, making 5C or 5S easily. After the hand, the 3H bidder said it was a preemptive bid, and their card agreed. So, I told the director that I would have made a stronger bid had I known rho was showing a weak hand. Making game is much more likely with a preempt instead of a limit raise on my right. So, what do you bid over 3H: 3S, 4C, 4H, or X? The director allowed me to bid 3S and partner raise to 4S, making 5 for a push instead of -10 imps. Fair adjustment, I think, and so did everyone else at the table, but I was beginning to reconsider it. Does the knowledge of rho's strength really change the way I bid this hand that much? What do you think? I actually think 4H is the right bid, whatever 3H means. This hand is strong and distributional enough to force to 4S or 5C.

Washington NABC weekend 2

That was a fun weekend even if we won only 3 masterpoints in 6 sessions and I played the worst bridge I've played in years. I had my moody spells, mostly on the way there, I guess just being nervous about the whole thing. It's totally out of character for me to on a whim decide to go and spend a weekend with someone I had just met. I didn't even know Mila's last name until I found her on facebook the night before going back. We got to play against Bill Gates in our second session. I probably never would have even attempted to have a conversation with him (at least not any more than I would with some random bridge player), but Mila really took the initiative and talked with him for quite awhile. I was impressed. We then played in the National Open Swiss Saturday with Angela Collura and her dad. So, I guess we didn't actually expect to make the cut but after 1 session we were in good shape with 42 VP on 40 average. the evening session was really horrible for Mila and I. We managed only 7 more VPs, probably because we were both thinking too much about what we were going to do after the game. ;)

Anyway, I have no bridge hands to share yet, but they will come.

Going back to the Nationals

So, I found a great flight/hotel deal so I'm gonna go back and spend another 3 days in Washington to play with Mila. yay!

Washington NABC weekend 1

This past weekend I was in Washington DC for the Nationals with my parents. My mom doesn't play bridge but just likes going places when my dad and I play. It was actually a wonderful 4 day trip for us. The play at the bridge table left a lot to be desired. My dad and I failed to qualify for day 2 of the LM pairs, posting scores of 42% and 53% in the qualifying sessions Friday. Fortunately, we played 4 more sessions in regional pairs and increased every time up to 66% in the Sunday afternoon side game.

But, really, most of the fun in going to bridge tournaments is seeing the people, the midnight games, and seeing the city. Now, I've been to DC a few times before so I wasn't much into sightseeing, which is okay because with my tight schedule I didn't have much time for that. We got to have some nice food, sleep in, and really relax for a few days.

Sunday I ditched the parents to have dinner with some of my friends. I actually made plans separately to go to an Indian restaurant with Giorgia and Megan. I was glad I double-booked myself because I never found Megan after the afternoon session. So, Giorgia, Sean, and I went to one of the 3 Indian restaurants near the hotel. Later on, I found out that Megan was apparently in the same area looking for me but somehow missed me, probably becasue she and Patrick were fighting. Anyway, she came to an Indian restaurant, too, but picked the wrong one. It all worked out well. Then Sunday night Giorgia wants to know if I can fill in on her team on Monday morning. I am normally very much against 9am bridge games but when she said I would be playing with a female about my age, I couldn't resist. So I met Mila Sunday night and our results were fairly mediocre but we enjoyed playing together a lot. I had a flight to catch at 5pm or else I would have stayed to play and get to know her more, so maybe I'll get to play with her some other time, perhaps even next weekend if I can get a flight deal to come back to DC.

July 4th Atlanta super sectional

So, I played with Coberly for the first time in over a year. 4 sessions at the Atlanta sectional. We didn't play very badly and he was behaving well for the most part, but I definitely remember why I quit playing with him. We had some okay results - low overalls in the A/X Swiss with the Sherwoods.

Since I moved out of atlanta 2 years ago, I guess I haven't realized that some of these youth bridge players have gotten good. Sean Gannon, Zandy Rizzo, Richard and Andrew Jeng, mainly. All of them I am told are close to being life masters already. I should make more of an effort to talk to them and be a good role model. I mean, as a slightly older and experienced junior player, I'm probably someone they look up to, at least as far as how to act as a bridge player. I want to set an example of a person with humbleness and interest in teaching others and spreading my knowledge. There are a lot of junior bridge players, whose names I'm not going to mention here, that are very arrogrant, don't want to teach anybody, and are simply annoying to be around at the bridge table. That's not good. Do they not care if there are any other people learning this game? Anyway, I don't want to see these up and coming youth players to become arrogant when they get better.