Platinum Pairs 1st Final Board 3

This is a declarer play problem for West.


Board 3
Dlr South
Vul E-W

♠	A J 2			♠	Q 10 8 6 4
♥	A K 3			♥	J 5
♦	K Q 9 6 4			♦	10 5 2
♣	K J			♣	9 8 2

	Andy		Franco
West	North	East	South
			1♥
Dbl	2♥	2♠	Pass
3N	All Pass

2♥ was a bad raise.

[Not 100% sure of the auction after 2♥]

♥2 led, with the jack winning trick 1. Then the ♠10 held. Now what?

Full deal and outcome below.

		♠	9 7 5
		♥	Q 6 2
		♦	J 8
		♣	Q 7 5 4 3
♠	A J 2			♠	Q 10 8 6 4
♥	A K 3			♥	J 5
♦	K Q 9 6 4			♦	10 5 2
♣	K J			♣	9 8 2
		♠	K 3
		♥	10 9 8 7 4
		♦	A 7 3
		♣	A 10 6

Declarer reasoned that he needed me to have a doubleton spade or doubleton diamond honor, so he next led a diamond to his king and cashed ♠A. If the king hadn't fallen, he planned to duck a diamond next.

Once the ♠K did fall, though, he passed up a free shot to guess diamonds, probably by playing an honor out of his hand. If he does that, he'll make 5 (or 6 if I try underleading a club). Instead, he ran spades squeezing his hand and made only 4.

We got 5/17, had he played a trick better we'd have lost 2.5 more. Doesn't seem like much.

[Andy] I agree with the analysis, although it's hard to say "doesn't seem like much" when we won the event by 0.48 matchpoints :) This is one of the more amusing parts of the event postmortem -- after talking to virtually anyone about anything they did on any hand, there's a good chance we could say "thanks, if you hadn't done that we wouldn't have won."