County KO

The half time score in our county KO match read 41-40 after 12 boards of wild hands and gratuitous errors from both sides. I had two interesting 4♠ contracts to play. One I got wrong and it cost us a big swing, on the other I managed to avoid messing up but my play made little difference to the score. Such is life.

East's 2NT was Lebensohl, showing a weakish hand with a long minor. My 4♠ was a bit rose-tinted, but I had no way to make a game try as 3♠ would just be competing the part score. East gave this a little look before his final pass.

West started with ♣AK and I ruffed. Now I ran the ♠Q, hoping to squash a singleton 10, but this lost and East returned a heart. (A trump to the jack would have been better as it would keep entries fluid and still allow me to pick up a single 10 with East.) I ducked, West won the queen and returned the king to my ace. Now I drew a round of trumps and both followed. If hearts are 3-3 I can avoid the diamond guess, so I came back to my hand with a trump and ruffed a heart, but East showed out. I now needed to find the diamond queen - it looked as if East's shape was 3-2-3-6 in which case the diamonds were 3-3, and West had already shown up with 12 points, so it appeared to be a 50-50 guess. Needless to say I got this wrong by leading a diamond from dummy and finessing the 10.

It was only afterwards that I remembered East's little hesitation before passing 4♠. He could only be thinking of a sacrifice in 5♣, in which case he probably has at least seven clubs and West has four or more diamonds. I should cash dummy's last trump, which squeezes West in the red suits, so that a later diamond finesse will see me home.

In the other room West opened 1♦ and North was declarer. A diamond lead gave declarer an easy ride.

I was a bit more awake on this hand.

West led ♥Q to the ace. The bidding marks East with all of the remaining high cards, so you should resist the temptation to cash another top heart and play a diamond up. Then play another diamond when you are in dummy with the king of trumps. If you cash another heart at trick 2 and West ruffs, you can only lead diamonds once from dummy and will go down if East has more than three diamonds.

I made 4♠, but my play was almost irrelevant. The ♥Q was a singleton, but East started with ♦AQx so I could still have recovered even after trying to cash a heart at trick 2. And in the other room the opponents had a mix-up and lost 1100 in 5♥ doubled, so that the difference between making 4♠ and going one down was only 3 imp.

The second half was somewhat less volatile and we won by 25 imp.