Man or mouse? Concluded

Spring Nationals
Open Teams semi-final
Set one
Board 3
Dealer South
EW Vul

	NORTH KJ62 AK986 A A82
WEST A1093 7 7532 KQ65		EAST Q875 5 KQ94 10973
	SOUTH 4 QJ10432 J1086 J4

The question was you sit West and hear this auction:

West….North….East….South
……………………………Pass
Pass…..1H…….Pass…..4H
Pass…..6H…….All Pass

Question: Partner leads the DK, taken by declarer’s ace. Then ace and another trump to dummy and partner discards the S5, playing reverse count. I’m not sure why declarer did this as it must be wrong on principle to let the defenders make a possibly useful discard here. Still, there you are. You now have all weekend to make the decision about what you are going to do SMOOTHLY and in tempo on the spade off dummy at trick four. I’d prefer to give you one nanosecond to do that, but unfortunately it is out of my control.

Answer: Hinge ducked smoothly and Gumby tried the jack. One down. I expect it is hard to say declarer should have done anything else, is there? Even holding the ace of spades, the opening leader clearly had a natural diamond lead. And surely on pure odds the jack is right: half the time RHO will hold the queen and some of the rest of the time they won’t find a smooth duck.

Something completely different tomorrow. See you then.