About the only really interesting decision I had last night was on the very last hand. 

I picked up in third all red:

K / KQT983 / A984 / Q3

Pard opened 1 Spade, I bid 2 Hearts, he bid 3NT.

Pick your poison.

I hate this auction.  All the room's been sucked out of it.  I've had a flawless set and now I get to guess what we can make here.  Does pard have a 15-17 NT hand?  What can I make opposite that?  Almost any bid at the 4 level (except 4 Spades) is justifiable here.  I could psych a Club cuebid.  I could introduce my chunky 4 bagger in Diamonds (and if pard just takes that as a cuebid, so much the better.)  I could rebid Hearts (surely a safer spot than 3NT, no?)  Or I could bid 4NT and let partner guess how I intend it (Blackwood ordinaire? Quantitative? RKCB for Hearts?)  Then again, I could just bid 6 Hearts.

If I had K3 of Clubs instead of Q3, bidding slam would be automatic.  But after much stewing, I reluctantly passed.  In hindsight, I think that was a pretty gross decision.  Both because 4 Hearts rates to be safer and because it needs so little for slam.

Luckily for me, the 5 other pairs who made slam weren't in it either.  The 4 pairs who were in slam all went down.  It would have been a fun hand to play.

Jeff led the 9 of Clubs and this is what pard saw:

K / KQT983 / A984 / Q3

AQ983 / J7 / KJ5 / A84

This is about the minimum hand pard should have for this auction and 6 Hearts is a little better than 50%.  Good argument for bidding more with my hand.  But here we are in 3NT and if John has KJTxx of Clubs and the Heart Ace, we're not even making that. (Good argument for at least bidding 4 Hearts if I'm not going to move towards slam.)

But when the Queen of Clubs held, partner was soon claiming 12 tricks (3 Spades, 5 Hearts, 2 Diamonds, 2 Clubs.)

The hand is much more interesting from my side in 6 Hearts.

AQ983 / J7 / KJ5 / A84

K / KQT983 / A984 / Q3

How do you play on the Jack of Clubs lead?

...

It's tempting to try to set up the Spades, but that line doesn't work.  If you win the Club, play a Spade to the King, Diamond to the King, Ace of Spades (pitching your Club loser,) ruff a Spade high, you can force an entry to dummy in trumps, but you obviously can't take a Diamond pitch on the long Spade until you draw ALL of your opponents' trumps and it's rather difficult to end up in dummy after doing  so on this hand.

About the only person I know who would have made the hand is my friend Joanie, who would have won the Club in dummy, cashed the AQ of Spades, pitching a Club, and then led the Diamond Jack for a 'finesse'.

Avoiding the good slam that doesn't make (on normal lines) was worth 5 IMPs and change (and brought the margin down to single digits, which was nice, though winning would have been a lot nicer.)

My LHO

J742 / A / T63 / JT72

My RHO

 T65 / 6542 / Q72 / K6