Hi all
Last Saturday twelve heroic fighters from Dombo fought an epic battle against the dirty dozen from Groningen (APIH) and a number of vile, unshaved villains from Amsterdam (US). Here’s a story starring Dennis and yours truly.
21. (Moderate) values, pass would have been forcing anyway
2. Very offensive hand (nice!)
I chose to bid 6
and that was spot on, for this was the deal:
I took the lead, drew three rounds of trumps, ruffed a , cashed the Ace of 
and crossed to hand with the Queen to draw the last trump (safety measure against a 4-1 split). Claim in approximately 30 seconds losing only one trick in 
. It felt like a true coup de grâce, but to my surprise they scored +1370 at the other table too.
This is a very clean example of the power of the 4-4 fit. In twelve tricks are available too (on a non lead), but that’s way too sweaty and ugly for me if I have a solid alternative.
No, actually I was thinking about a partial elimination. Take the spade lead, Ace of diamonds, diamond to the Queen and ruff a spade. Now remove West’s club and play a heart towards the Jack. If West rises, he’s thrown in, later you have to extract East’s third trump.
Hmm, silly me. The heart lead is of course only deadly if North is declarer.
As to 6
, I suppose you are referring to an endgame against West. With four cards to go you have still x, Jxx in dummy and A, Axx in hand, and West has to come down to a singleton 
. Now cash the 
Ace and play a 
up for the throw-in. A 
lead destroys this ending for obvious reasons, but a 
lead seems equally disastrous as West can now keep a 
winner…