Too Bad

I'm playing in a regional Swiss. Despite winning our first two matches, we draw a journeyman team in the third match. I'm dealer and pick up a very good hand,

AJ5

A84

AKQ853. It's not quite good enough to open 2

, and it's complicated, so I open 1

. LHO overcalls 1

, and partner raises to 2

. RHO passes, and I have an easy cue bid. LHO isn't through; he confidently competes to 3

, passed to me. Partner and I play that returning to our forced level is weaker than pass, but I don't think that applies here. It would have if LHO had doubled 2

; then 3

is weaker than pass. Regardless, it seems as if partner does not have a heart stop, but he could still hold

KQJxx and out or even more than that, so I have to try for slam. Upon reflection, I wish I had jump cued last round, making it clear that I'm short in hearts. That's water under the bridge, so now I simply re-cue 4

. Partner returns to 5

, so I have to give up. It has been an interesting auction; it's not everyday that the auction goes 1

-2

-3

-4

between me and my LHO.

LHO leads a high heart, and I see that partner had his bidding shoes on.

	42 963 KJ75 9742

	AJ5 Q A84 AKQ853

Declarer	LHO	Dummy	RHO
1	1	2	Pass
2	3	Pass	Pass
4	Pass	5	All Pass

RHO contributes the

J to Trick 1. Without much thought, LHO continues with the

K. I'm happy to duck this; nothing bad can happen. LHO thinks about this a while and continues with a small heart. I play low and RHO plays his

10 as I ruff.

At first glance, it looks like I have at least a red suit show-up squeeze for my 11th trick, but there's not much chance that LHO has four diamonds. I need to draw trumps and ruff a spade; let's see what I learn when that happens. I draw two rounds of trumps and ruff the spade in dummy. LHO started with the singleton J and follows to three rounds of spades. He appears to have started with KQ10, but I haven't seen the 9, so it's possible that he has four spades. Probably, however, he has either 3721 or 3631. I suspect the former, as he bid a lot with a moderate suit. And with only six hearts, he might have continued with the 8 to protect partner's 10. Regardless, I can run some trumps and see what gets pitched. On the next two rounds of trumps, RHO pitches a heart and a spade. That makes it clear that LHO started with 3631. The position is

	--- 9 KJ7 ---
--- A ??? ---		9 --- ??? ---
	--- --- A84 3

I'm not going to have to take a diamond finesse, so I might as well play the last trump. LHO pitches a diamond, of course, so I release the

9. RHO perforce pitches the last spade, so he is down to three diamonds.

Since LHO has only two diamonds, there's no reason to cash the A, so I play a small diamond. He inserts the 9, and now, as I expected, I have a problem. I win the K and take stock. If LHO started with 109x, I can run the J. If he started with Q9x, I need to drop the Q. A priori, it's 2-1 that LHO has the Q, since he could have been dealt Q10x or Q9x, and he could have played the 10 or 9 from 109x. It's much more fun to play for the squeeze—if LHO has the Q, I make on a simple finesse—but I want to get it right. Did LHO start with KQ10 AK87xx 109x J or KQ10 AK87xx Q9x J? He doesn't really have his bids with either of those, but the latter is a 15-count, and it seems substantially more likely that he took a second bid with the second hand, so I try to drop the Q. That works, and I make 5.

It's too bad that the squeeze cum backwards finesse didn't pan out; that was a neat end position. Even so, this hand was fun both in the bidding and play.