Rust

Well, we've moved - and I promptly got sick.

During my convalescence, I snuck in a few hands. This one stuck out.

♠ AQ8 ♥ QT875 ♦ AKQT ♣ K

♠ K9752 ♥ K9 ♦ J3 ♣ AT83

West	North	East	South
p	1♥	p	1♠
p	3♦	p	3NT
p	4♠	p	4NT
p	5♠	p	6♠
p	p	p

I was ok with the auction. Looking it over, slam should make on a 3-2 trump split. If trumps are 4-1 and the Jack or Ten falls, I can probably make the right inference and make.

So I won the 4 of diamonds, and cashed the Ace of spades - 6, 2, 3. The queen of spades drew a discard from west. Down 1.

Well, I would have been, except that in my vacant-headed exuberance, I "remembered" to unblock clubs before my brilliant plan of running diamonds and throwing my hearts on the diamonds. Only the plan was not so brilliant, as RHO had discarded 2 diamonds on trump by that point, so the chances of east going 4 rounds of diamonds were basically nil.

The first lesson was to pay attention to the discards!

I think there were 2 better lines (obviously excluding the club play - as I'm always going to have entry to my hand). Both rely on the ace of hearts being with west.

The first is to run a low heart to the queen. If it holds, I only need to discard one heart on a diamond, and I can do that on the 3rd round - meaning I only need diamonds to be 5-2 or better. The problem is that I'm not so sure many defenders will duck the first round against a slam contract - especially at IMPs.

Maybe the better line is simply to concede the 4th round of spades. If east does not have the ace of hearts, she has to guess the right suit to return. Maybe I'll get a club return, and I'll be free to run diamonds, discarding my hearts.

Interesting hand.