some from 6/25

By drinking half a bottle of wine, I discovered that I had much more than just half a bottle at a friend's wedding.

In other news...

p - (4S) - all out

Partner leads the H6 (3rd/low)

972
Q3
A764
KQxx
----------x
----------A9
----------Q532
----------JT9xxx
(closed
hand)

You win the A, declarer follows the 4.
I thought about it for a while and shifted to a diamond, which is necessary. It really wasn't that hard, but I'm still glad I got it right. This was a game swing, since the other table did not beat it (the player in my seat tried to prevent a swing by preempting my hand, since I am known to be extremely wild. This got his partner off to the CA lead.)

They bid 2C 2D; 2H 2N; 3N

I lead DT, we see

----------A86
----------AKQT9
----------A3
----------Axx
QJx-----------------Kxx
Jx------------------xxxx
T984----------------Kxx
Kxxx----------------Jxx
---------closed
----------hand

Partner won the DK and returned a diamond. Both defenders can see 8 tricks for declarer, so the only hope is that if declarer does have a 9th trick, he can't reach it. We (west) know declarer has the DQ, so we must never touch the suit again.

Declarer plays a club to the Q, I win the K. I exit a club. Declarer ducks to partner's CJ, and partner exits a heart.

Declarer cashes all his winners, and I pitch all my diamonds at my earliest opportunity to clarify the diamond position. Declarer plays SA and another. Partner ducks smoothly in case declarer has another QT guess, but it's all over. We managed to hold declarer to the 8 tricks we saw in dummy.

I think I could have done better by clarifying the diamond position at trick 2. I'm not sure which card would attempt to make it unambiguous for partner, maybe the 9? In any case, I followed with my smallest diamond which can't be right. Thankfully partner held the SK (instead of us) so he knew there was no hurry. I admit that I was rather wined up by this point and didn't really think about the defense until trick 3. Then again, if I held KQ of spades, maybe I would have been more alert to try to play a revealing diamond at T2.