The Most Spectacularly Awful Defense Ever

Last week in Vegas, my partner Greg and I were playing in the finals of a Bracket III KO against a very solid team: friends Mike and Eric were at the other table against our teammates Ellianna and Adam, and Greg and I were facing Victor and Steve at our table. On one board, we had the following auction:

(1S) P (1N) 2N! (3N)

or something like this. Neither Greg or I can remember it perfectly, actually. Greg is the one who stuck in the 2N bid, which shows the minors (at least, that's our agreement). He then led the diamond jack.

Dummy hits with something resembling this:

AJxxx QJ Kxx Axx

My hand was:

Qxxxx Kxxx xx Qx

Declarer thought long and hard, won the opening lead, then finessed into my spade queen. I switched to the club queen, which went low - KING - Ace. Victor faced his hand and said through a burst of laughter, "Making 5?" What just happened here?

Well, partner was off in la-la land, thinking he was showing HEARTS and a minor with 2N (not so much). So I led the club queen to unblock and set up his long clubs. But he unblocked the K from Kx to unblock what he thought were MY long clubs. Really, Victor had JTxxx of clubs in HIS hand. Oops.

Greg commented after the hand that if he had led a heart, that might've been a little better. His hand was:

x Axxxx JTxxx Kx

The only problem is that I'm quite likely to duck a heart, thinking the only way I'll score my K is to wait out the two inevitable finesses. Partner doesn't have hearts, right? D'oh!

If I'm in on the joke, we'll take five hearts off the top, and a few more tricks after that. This was one of the few boards all week where our stellar teammates were unable to cover our butts. But since we did go on to win the match, it goes down in history as a good story rather than the reason for the demise of our partnership... :)

In all seriousness, I don't think I've ever had a more fun group of teammates, and I certainly made my fair share of boneheaded plays (though none quite so entertaining as this one -- thanks, Greg, for permission to immortalize it). Even if we had lost the match, this is not something I would've been mad about. It's the ability to recover from such disasters that make a winning squad, after all.

We'll be looking to repeat our success in the North American Swiss Teams in DC later this month. Hopefully we'll have worked out our agreements by then :)