Nailed!

Playing in an open sectional Swiss, we have won all our matches save one. We lost that by one to the only vaguely decent team we have met. Despite that, we are quite a bit behind them. This match, we are playing another reasonable team.

We are vulnerable against not. LHO deals and opens 1, and I hold KQJ QJ74 AQ1093 J. That diamond opening isn't good, but things look up when partner overcalls 1. RHO passes, and my only raise available is 2, so I make it. LHO doesn't double (good!), and quite surprisingly, partner jumps to 4. Even more surprisingly, RHO chimes in with 4!

What's going on? What hand can RHO have not to bid 1 and now bid 4? There is none. I guess he chose not to bid originally, because he has a lot of spades and very few high cards. I have no idea if LHO psyched his opening or chose not to double 2 because he wasn't sure he wanted a diamond lead. He's not going to get one unless it is a singleton, I suspect, and since partner will get pitches on my spades, I think we can make a slam unless we are off two key cards. If I bid Blackwood now, partner can't bid above 5, so the only question is if I'm safe at the five-level. I think so; partner hardly has only one key card for his leap to 4. But it wouldn't surprise me if we were off the black aces. So I check, and I get nailed. Partner bids 5! How can that happen? I have the Q! He must have seven hearts and feels that he should show the queen himself, since he thinks I have three hearts. Joy. I have had this happen before, but never when I had four trumps and wasn't prepared for it. With only three trumps, I might well not have risked this' happening. Well, I can't play anything below 6, so maybe one of the key cards we are missing is the trump king. If so, it'll surely be onside. I bid the slam without much confidence. Nobody doubles. That's not a clear sign, but I can hope. The bidding has gone

LHO	CHO	RHO	Me
1	1	Pass	2
Pass	4	4	4NT
Pass	5	Pass	6
All Pass

Not surprisingly, RHO fires out a club. Partner wins with the ace (good!), ruffs a club, and takes a heart finesse. It wins, and he claims 12 tricks immediately. This is, not surprisingly, a sizable swing, enough almost to blitz the match.

Looks like this time the opponents were nailed.

We blitz the last match, but we are never able to catch the leaders. Even if we had beaten them (can anyone find two IMPs?), we would not have passed them.