3NT Bid and Made

Playing in a cut-around IMP game, there are no established partnerships in play. With no one vulnerable, my opponents swiftly bid to 3NT. Cleverly, they have put me on lead.

Dummy	Declarer
1	2
2	2NT
3	3NT
Pass

I hold

654

AQ1054

J103. It looks like spades are breaking, so if we cannot make something of the hearts, I doubt we'll beat this. Despite expecting declarer to have five hearts, I'm going to lead one. Anything else is a shot in the dark. Normally, I'd lead lowest into a known long suit, but with these spots, I see no reason not to lead a normal fourth-best.

Dummy hits with

	AQ98732 9 5 A876
654 AQ1054 32 J103

Dummy	Declarer
1	2
2	2NT
3	3NT
Pass

The

9 holds in dummy. Oops. It would have been nice for partner to contribute the

J, but at least he knows that I have nothing but hearts.

Surprisingly, declarer leads a club off dummy and floats it. Again, I see no reason to false card, so I win the 10. If declarer can attack dummy's entries, I can attack the long suit. Since I clearly led the wrong major at Trick 1, I shift to a spade. Declarer ducks and partner inserts the ten. Declarer pitches a diamond, and partner shifts to the J. Declarer thinks about this for a little while and rises with the ace. He crosses to dummy with the A and plays two rounds of spades. He suddenly realizes that he has a discarding problem. After a little while, he decides that if my partner has another heart, he's going down a lot, so he pitches two hearts.

Partner produces a heart for me (yay!) and since declarer's KJ are now bare, I run the suit. Declarer squirms some more. We reach a 2-card endposition thus, with declarer yet to play.

	Immaterial
— — 3 J		— — K10 —
	— — Qx K

Declarer is simple squeezed in the minors! He eventually pitches a diamond, and partner's diamonds take the last two tricks. Declarer has held himself to his three aces and the

9 from Trick 1. Down five means we have taken nine tricks. 3NT bid and made!

We needed every one of these tricks. We won the match by 1 IMP.