Another good and bad hand from yesterday's set.

The good one was the 3rd board in.

AKJT5 / A9 / - / AK9762

 

I opened 1 Club.  Jeff bid 1 Diamond.  I bid 2 Spades.  Jeff bid 3 Clubs.

 

His bidding sounded at least mildly encouraging.  This is at worst on a hook and probably much better.

 

7 Clubs it is.

 

'i knew you were going to do that!'

When dummy tracked it felt like I should be able to claim.

92 / K2 / AK8654 / QT3

AKJT5 / A9 / - / AK9762

If Clubs are 2-2, it's a claimer, but Clubs were 3-1 (stiff J) so I had to ruff a Spade in Dummy before I drew the 3rd trump.  Spades were 4-2, so the grand rolled home.

+1440 was only worth 11 IMPs and change (hard to match +2280 in 7NT rewound making on the Spade finesse.)

The bad hand was a bidding problem:

 

A974 / Q72 / AK8 / A87

 

Jeff opened 1 Club.  I bid 1 Spade.  He raised to 2 Spades.

 

Is slam in the picture?  Give him KQJx / x / xxx / KQxxx or KQxx / Kx / xx / KQxxx and I think you want to be there.

One thing's for sure.  If Jeff only has 3 Spades, I don't want to be there.

I bid 3NT.

He now corrected to 4 Spades.

What now?

A sensible player would have passed.  I certainly wasn't going to bid it all by myself, though.  I bid 5 Spades (alerted as 'blame transfer.')

Jeff passed and the 9 of Diamonds was led.

K863 / A83 / T2 / KQJ3

A974 / Q72 / AK8 / A87

Nice pass.  But he knew I needed an uber-max when I bid 3NT. 

My plan was to win the Diamond, play a Spade up, and try to catch Righty napping by playing a low Heart off.  If he ducks the King I'm safe even if Spades are 4-1.  I look silly if Diamonds are 7-1 or Hearts are 6-1 and Spades were breaking all along, but against BBO opps I think it's the percentage line.

I played a Spade to the King (both opponents following low, a reasonably good sign) and led a low Heart as planned.  Righty was not napping, unfortunately, and took his King.

I had targeted the wrong opponent!

Lefty had ducked with QJTx of trumps.  It never occurred to me to deep hook the Spades, but it probably should have.

-100 was a little over 6 IMPs away.

LHO

QJT2 / J4 / Q9765 / T5

RHO

5 / KT965 / J43 / 9642

http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/fetchlin.php?id=4958782&when_played=1186410446