Hi all
Quick Tricks in San Francisco has a team game every last Monday of the month. Each time it has proven to be a pleasant and challenging night, with interesting deals. Here’s me (South) suffering in 3NT.
Yes, NS have 25 HCP together.
Yes, the lack of spot cards is slightly unsettling.
Yes, you only have four top tricks.
An early (not very thorough) analysis shows that you need to find the Ace of 
onside, and the suit splitting 3-3. Then if the 
Jack is located on your left, everything adds up to a fortunate nine.
Well, none of that happened. Both black Aces were in West together with a stinking surprise in . So I’m already down two and I can’t claim yet …
When West cashes the master I pitch a from dummy and the criss-cross position has materialized. It’s pretty clear that East has started with a 4-5-2-2. East discards a seemingly sweaty .
West switches back to 
for my Ace and I know that my 3 isn’t good. I play a small to dummy’s King confident that the suicide criss-cross squeeze will have been executed properly. Who needs a finesse anyway when you have a nice squeeze?
Already knee-deep in a hellhole, and East doesn’t even have the friggin’ Jack. Really, the odds were 4-3 in my favor! My efforts lead to a nauseating down 3, vulnerable of course.
To add insult to injury, at the other table they took an early finesse against the Jack and ended up down 1. Sigh.