So Monday night I went down to the local club to play a session with David Sokolow, whose wife Tobi is over playing in the Transnational Open Teams in Shanghai.  We had a rather uneven performance and barely scratched.  Here was one of our not so happy results:

I picked up all white in 1st

AKx / Kx / AQxx / 8xxx

My friend Joanie was on my Right.  I opened 1NT.  2 passes and she came in with 2 Hearts.

I wasn't ever going to sell to 2 Hearts at matchpoints, particularly against one of the not-so-experienced pairs in the field.  I was mildly concerned that David wouldn't take my double as takeout, since I'm sitting over the 2 Heart bidder, but I've got to protect my likely +90 (unless David is TOTALLY broke) and nowadays most low-level doubles are takeout.  I doubled.

David passed in a flash.  Yikes.  Looks like either we're on the same page and this is +500 or we're not and this is -470 or -570.

I led a top Spade.

Lefty started yammering about what a good hand he had and how lucky his partner was.  Uh oh.

98xxx / QT / Jxxx / Kx

I didn't expect Joanie to be broke so this wasn't good news.

David played the Ten of spades (playing udca.)  How do you continue?

Doesn't the Ten deny the Jack here?  What about from JT tight?  Wouldn't he encourage with a small doubleton?  As long as he can't have Tx or JT or JTx (or Txx, would he waste the Ten from that holding?) I'm safe to underlead here.

I think underleading is right, but crashing my partner's QT, while painful, didn't seem as painful as losing a trick to Joanie's Qx or QJ or Qxx.  I continued with the K and David showed out, pitching a discouraging Club.  Now what?

I gave David a ruff and he switched to a low Diamond.  I cashed my Queen and tried to cash my Ace but Joanie ruffed the 2nd Diamond and led a Heart up.

98 / QT / Jx / Kx

- / Kx / xx / xxxx

I popped King to play a Diamond through and Joanie ruffed, drew my last trump with the Queen, and played a Club to the Queen and drew David's last trump with her Ace.  -470 was worth zero matchpoints.

I should have at least gotten this part right.  If I duck the Heart smoothly we have a chance to score 2 Heart tricks and down 1 if she misguesses and plays the Ten.  No sense in going for the tap when a simple count will confirm that that ship has sailed (since pard has already been 'tapped' once as well.)

In the postmortem, David wanted me to start the tap at trick 2.  Pretty tough, but possibly at trick 3.  I wasn't good enough that night, though.  Luckily this one board didn't have much impact on the overall outcome. 

David's hand

T / J9xx / Kxxx / Jxxx

I guess he was worried about picking the wrong minor.  I'm surprised he passed so quickly though, especially since the opponents were white and so we had less to gain if we managed to beat them a trick.

Joanie's hand

QJxx / Axxxx / x / AQx