District 16 is having a STAC this week, and while my matchpoint game is pretty rusty, I thought I'd give the afternoon game today a shot.  So I called up Adam Ruprecht, a fine, if somewhat inexperienced, player (who finished 4th in the Red Ribbon pairs in St Louis with Jeff Ford) and off we went.

I had a couple of ugly ones.

In the middle of a mediocre set (you usually need close to 70% to win a District-wide STAC), you pick up:

K42 / A9864 / 86 / J72

Partner opens 2N in front of you

Thoughts?  Transfer and 3N is obvious, is it 100%?

I broke tempo and eventually decided that a mildly swingy action was in order.  We have 28 or 29 HCP, so slam is out of reach.  But these extra values hands often take as many tricks in NT as in the suit contract.  And there's no law that Adam was preferring hearts over NT anyway.  I bid 3NT.

Opening leader held:

Q8 / T53 / J9532 / T53

She couldn't decide which T53 to lead from and led a diamond.  Unfortunately, that was the killing lead.

Adam held:

AJ76 / KQJ7 / KQ / KQ4

He ended up down 2 when he didn't guess to drop the spade queen doubleton offside (no reason to get it right.)