[ArtK78]

Bad bidding makes for good stories. The other night in an ACBL matchpoint game on BBO, my partner misbid his hand after I opened 2NT and I wound up in 6NT as opposed to 6S with our diamond suit consisting of the following:

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Not an ideal holding for 6NT.

LHO led the ♦J and RHO won the Ace. Obviously, LHO had led from a holding of KJTx(xx) (pretty impressive lead against 6NT, isn't it?). Just as obviously, my RHO would never work it out. Sure enough, he switched at trick 2, and I had 12 tricks.

It turned out that my RHO had Axx and LHO had led from KJTxxx. So, a normal diamond lead and return produces 6 tricks for the defense.

So, as I stated in the title to this thread, slam makes but game goes down.

(Yes, 6♠ was cold, but that doesn't make for a good story, does it?)

[Trumpace]

ArtK78, on Aug 13 2007, 03:57 PM, said:

LHO led the ♦J and RHO won the Ace. Obviously, LHO had led from a holding of KJTx(xx) (pretty impressive lead against 6NT, isn't it?).

Why is it obviously wrong?

What was the bidding? What was the opening leader's hand?

[cherdano]

If I was RHO, you might make 13 tricks, as I might duck the A.

[pclayton]

This isn't an uncommon theme. Leads against 6 are frequently a lot different than leads against 3.

Of course you never hear the story when 6 goes down...

[ArtK78]

pclayton, on Aug 13 2007, 05:17 PM, said:

This isn't an uncommon theme. Leads against 6 are frequently a lot different than leads against 3.

Of course you never hear the story when 6 goes down...

Sure you would. How often does the defense take the first 6 tricks against a voluntarily bid slam?

As for the reason for the switch, suppose you heard this auction:

2NT - 3♥*
3♠ - 4NT
6NT

Your partner leads the ♦J and the dummy hits with:

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I don't think it is that unreasonable for my RHO to with the ♦A and switch to a club. He did take about 35 or 40 seconds to decide to do that (in a speedball game).

My partner forgot that his sequence was a natural and invitation slam invite with a spade suit. He wanted to set spades as trump and then keycard, which is done by transferring at the 4 level and then bidding 4NT. I held:

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My 6NT bid is a little aggressive. I thought we had 5 spade tricks and a reasonable chance for 5 clubs and 2 red tricks. In any event, it made for a good story.

[barmar]

ArtK78, on Aug 13 2007, 07:55 PM, said:

How often does the defense take the first 6 tricks against a voluntarily bid slam?

Probably happens often when someone cue-bids a void and partner thinks he's showing a high-card control.

[ArtK78]

There are some spectacular examples of that. At one of the North American Championships that I attended some years ago, there was a hand in a matchpoint game which had a void and the partnership had all the tricks in the other suits. Several times the player with the void made a cue bid in the void suit and the partnership wound up in 7NTx down 7!

But this does not happen very often. When it does, it is a big story.