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A Bridge Nightmare
A Very Costly Mistake......

After North had shown a balanced hand worth 15 to 17 points, South's 2♣ bid was checkback to try and find a 4-4 or 5-3 major suit fit. North devalued his hand by 1 point when bidding 2♥, showing partner 15 points and 3 cards in hearts.South now bid 2♠ which was forcing to 2NT and North decided to add the point back as the contract was being played in 3 NT, and not in a suit without any ruffing power.A pushy game contract which you want to be in teams but possibly not in pairs.

A small club was lead and then West switched to the Q♠ . What was going on? It looks like West has a singleton A♣ and 6 spades.North decided to take the A♠ and started to think along the lines of a throw in to obtain two more spade tricks. But first the hearts needed to be tackled. With no idea where the Q was it looked easiest to lead the K and then finesse. Not good.. West now returned the 2 , which was allowed to run up to the 10 9 in dummy. Good news the K won. The Q♣ was returned won by the K♣.The hand was now cold, yet North ( Michael Whittaker) contrived to go down and had his bridge nightmare! What he should have done was cash the hearts in dummy, to get a complete count of West's hand. After just one more round of hearts he finds West started with 6 spades, 4 diamonds, a club singleton and just two hearts. The throw in is nailed on. Take all the hearts discarding the 10♣, come back to hand and cash the AQ , and lead the last diamond. West must win and lead into the spade tenace in dummy. For some inexplicable reason, Michael cashed the top diamonds first, and then crossed to dummy to cash the hearts to throw in West with a low spade. It would have worked if West had started with 3 or 4 hearts, but luck was not with him..Even worse if Michael had played the hand correctly, he and his partner would have won the County Pairs Championship. A very costly error indeed.