The Manning Foster Cup: Not quite as many errors as last week

So, after last week's total disaster at the Maccabi Bowl, this week could hardly fail to be at least somewhat better. It was, but not a lot. We were playing in the Manning Foster Cup, which is the Buchanan's annual club teams of four competition (presumably named after this guy, who was apparently editor of bridge magazine, and a pretty good player in his day - no idea why a club competition in Glasgow is named after him - I sometimes like to look up people that things are named after, seems respectful somehow). 

As I said, our results were not spectacular, and unfortunately most of the interesting hands were defensive errors from Norman. It wouldn't feel charitable to write a lot of them up. This one has an interesting point on signalling though:

NS Vul. S Deal ♠ 6 5 ♥ A T 4 2 ♦ Q 7 4 3 ♣ K J T  ♠ T 4 2 ♥ K Q 8 7  ♦ A K 6 ♣ Q 8 7  * * * * ♠ A K J 8 3 ♥ J 9 ♦ T 5 2 ♣ 6 5 3 ♠ Q 9 7 ♥ 6 5 3 ♦ J 9 8  ♣ A 9 4 2

N E S W - 1N - 2♥ - 2♠ - - -

Bidding was pretty normal on this one, W opened 1NT, and East transferred into his good 5 card spade suit. Norman led a diamond, T, J A. Declarer finessed, in spades, and I played a diamond back. Declarer won, drew trumps, and ran the ♥J (Norman pitched the ♥2), which Norman won, and cashed his diamond.

This was crunch time. If declarer started off with something like xxx xxxx AKx AQx, then Norman should play a heart back now, I can cash my heart, and lead a club through, and we make two club tricks to go with one spade, two hearts and one diamond. However, Norman should have known this was not the case. We play attitude signals when following suit in a suit contract (first card is attitude, then current count), so my 6 of hearts showed lack of interest in hearts, and it should have been relatively easy to place me with the club ace (remember, we've already seen 7 of declarer's points, so give him 5 in hearts, and he can't have 4 more). Also notice that playing a club also works if I have the queen and not the ace.

I've never really been sure why we play attitude signals when following suit, but this is a good example of where they would have been more useful than count signals. (playing count, I'd play the same card from 6 5 3 as from K 5 3). 

I'm not sure if it should be possible to figure out my club holding anyway - perhaps declarer's lack of interest in the club finesse or his running the J of hearts missing the AT is a good enough clue, but the carding should definitely have made it easy. In fairness to Norman, I forget about 20% of the time that my first card is attitude, and give count anyway, but I think it's still odds on to play me for the A.

Finally, it's worth noting that declarer can always make his contract if he sets up a heart before we set up our diamond. I think this is actually pretty clearly the best line for declarer, but that's no excuse for us not taking our chance to beat him.