North's reopening double promised 8+ points and heart shortness or better
South's 1N promised 8 to 10 points with opener's suit stopped. With 4
spades, a balancing 1N that would have shown 11 to 14 balanced points seemed
inferio.
West's 2
bid at favourable vulnerability
forced South to a matchpoint 2
gamble.
West's
7 lead drew the top 3
heart honours in order.
Declarer won dummy's
A to advance
a spade, the
K winning.
Next the
A won, and another spade
from dummy had declarer's
J win.
West won the third round of diamonds, East discarding a heart.
West's 4th best club was ducked to East's
Q.
A small heart was won by declarer in hand and declarer saw this (with 6 tricks
in):
At matchpoint scoring, South considered ducking a club, exiting a diamond, ruffing
a heart, and leading a spade.
If spades divided 3:3, simply exiting a spade would probably have East on lead,
a diamond and a trump clinching the 'borderline' Moyseian contract.
If a heart were ruffed in dummy, then the
Q
led and won by an East with only 3 spades, almost certainly 5 hearts, certainly
2 diamonds and almost certainly 3 clubs then, East would have been endplayed into
leading away from a hypothetical
Ax
into dummy's
Kx after cashing two
heart tricks.
With a diamond exit, on a 3:3 division, West could ruff and continue a heart (or
put declarer to a club guess). This option seemed worst.
South, with 23 combined points, decided that at some of the other tables, 2
might be making and that 2
down
two would be still be better and that if spades dividied, simply a spade would
solve all issues.
East won the spade exit, drew the last trump and claimed the balance of the tricks.
West unblocked the
T.
Unfortunately for declarer, NS were Vulnerable and down 2 was -200 (not a good
score despite the odd -110 apparently successful 2
contracts.
-100 -100 50 50 -200 110 ---- -200 -110 50 90 -110 600
Ruffing a heart, or even exiting a diamond, would have been at least 3 out
of a possible 11.