The bad news: I misdefended the hand.
Playing in a sectional pairs tournament, I missed a chance to capitalize on declarer's respect for my defensive skills. This was the hand (I was East):
.
Vul: None
Dlr: East
N
North
♠
x
♥
xxx
♦
10xx
♣
AQJxxx
.
W
West
♠
xx
♥
AQxx
♦
Qxxx
♣
Kxx
Lead: ♠5
E
Me
♠
xxxx
♥
Kxxx
♦
Kxx
♣
xx
.
S
South
♠
AKQJxx
♥
xx
♦
AJx
♣
xx
.
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
South
—
—
Pass
1♠
Pass1
1NT2
Pass
4♠
—
—
—
—
(1) super-conservative partner
(2) forcing
I was playing with an occasional partner whose bidding and defensive play are very conservative. This is usually not a problem -- I can, and did, adjust to partner's style. We had a 55% game overall, to end up 3rd overall in our direction. But, on this hand, the super-conservative style meant that he didn't do a negative double. Obviously, North had been planning to bid some number of clubs. That, or a part-score in spades, was the contract at the other tables. At our table, instead, declarer had bid what he thought he could make. 4S, making, was going to be a bottom board.
Double-dummy, of course, 5S makes, but declarer gave us a chance to set the contract. After the trump lead, declarer quickly pulled trumps and took the club finesse. The Queen of clubs held. Then, he thought for a long while. Finally, he played the Ace of clubs (!) and when the king didn't drop, he ran his ten of diamonds to partner's queen. Obviously, he was afraid that I had the king of clubs and had held up with it. Had he played a diamond to his Ace and repeated the club finesse, that would be the end of dummy.
But now that partner was in with the queen of diamonds, he could have set the contract if he'd cashed his Ace of hearts. I would have encouraged, and if he'd continued, we would have led a third heart to make declarer ruff and play diamonds out of his hand. 2 hearts and 2 diamonds would have been down 1. But partner led a diamond back, finessed me out of my king and that was the end for us.
But do you see why I say that I failed to capitalize on declarer's respect, in that he didn't take the "obvious" club finesse a second time? When he played the 10 of diamonds, I needed to go up with the king. Had I done so, we are guaranteed 4 tricks. Instead, I ducked, thinking that since dummy had no entries, my play made no difference. I failed to consider that partner might think that he was end-played and might well choose to finesse my diamond king.
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