Rolling the Dice

If there's one thing that I learned from running, it's that no matter how much willpower I have, plans can go awry. When my plans find themselves at odds with the bigger picture, I can either try to fit it all in, or I can be flexible. In general, I've found that adapting to the situation has made for a less stressful existence.

Life got very, very busy in September, and my play time suffered. C'est la vie.

The storm seems to be passing now. He's a hand from this weekend.

♠ K5 ♥ AQ8 ♦ KQT64 ♣ K52

After 3 passes, I chose to open 1NT. LHO overcalled 2C (Capp). Partner intervened with 2S, and I had a decision to make. This was the second hand I'd played with a pickup partner, and I wasn't operating with a lot of confidence as to what he might have. In the end, possibly erroneously, I opted for 2NT, which was passed out.

The club 6 was lead, and I dummy came down.

♠ AT743 ♥ 6 ♦ J5 ♣ JT987

♠ K5 ♥ AQ8 ♦ KQT64 ♣ K52

RHO won the club ace, and returned a heart, which I ducked to LHO's 9. A diamond switch found RHO's ace, and a low heart pulled my queen, and LHO's king. The heart jack drew my ace.

At this point, my trick count was: 2 spades, 1 heart, 3 diamonds and a club. All I needed was for diamonds to be 4-2 or better to collect an 8th trick in diamonds, but when I played the king, LHO discarded a heart.

♠ AT7 ♥ ♦ ♣ JT98

♠ K5 ♥ ♦ QT6 ♣ K5

The clubs look so good, but my problem now, as always* is that I only have one entry to the board, so I can't run the club finesse. I guess there really is only one play.

Of course, this is notwithstanding any mistakes I've made up to this point, or any mistakes I'm making in my analysis of this crossroads. Maybe in 2 years I'll roll my eyes at this post.

The reason I'm sharing this hand is that, 3 or 4 hands later, I couldn't remember how I'd played it. I knew I'd gone down grasping at straws, but all I could thing was "I should have played for the drop in clubs."

As it turned out, I did exactly that. There are 3 clubs outstanding, and it's not impossible that the Queen is single.

It wasn't.

I cashed out my diamonds and spades, and exited a club, but there was always either a diamond (RHO) or a heart (LHO) coming back for the setting trick.

I'm glad, at least, that I took a shot at making the contract.


*Against weak defense, I suppose I could have ducked the first diamond on the board, hoping to drop the ace for free and promote the jack to an entry. I considered and rejected this approach.