Three card endings.

I tend to do unusually badly when there are only 3-4 cards left. I'm not sure why, you'd think things would be easy at that point. I think probably I just need to learn to count to thirteen, or something. Anyway, here's one hand from our disastrous session on Wednesday from the Winter pairs. This is a club competition, and the best 4 results from the 8 sessions count towards the final totals. Let's just say that this month's result won't be one of them for me and Norman, and leave it at that.

None Vul.N Deal ♠ Q 7 2 ♥ 9 6 5 4 ♦ A K 8 7 5 ♣ J ♠ J ♥ A K T 8 ♦  Q T 2 ♣ K Q 7 5 2 * * * * ♠ A K T 3  ♥ Q J 7 2  ♦ J 9 ♣ A 6 4 ♠  9 8 6 5 4 ♥  3 ♦  6 4 3  ♣ T 9 8 3

W N E S - - 1♥ - 4♥ - - -

Norman led the diamond 4. I cashed two diamonds and played a third - didn't seem like declarer could have anything to pitch, and it was possible that Norman's lead of the 4 was from 4-3 doubleton, in which case I might have to give him a ruff now. Declarer drew trumps and cashed three clubs, leaving this ending. Norman's first discard was the spade 9. Declarer can only ever make two more tricks at this point. Unless...

None Vul.N Deal ♠ Q 7 2 ♥ - ♦ - ♣ - ♠ J ♥ - ♦  - ♣ 7 5 * * * * ♠ A K T   ♥ -  ♦ - ♣ - ♠  6 5 ♥  - ♦  -  ♣ T

W N E S - - 1♥ - 4♥ - - -

Declarer led the spade jack off the table, and I covered! I've no idea why. There is literally no good reason, it's not exactly a "cow flew by", I could quite easily do the same thing again in a similar situation, but I realise it couldn't possibly gain. Hopefully I'll do better next time.

Then today, I played this on BBO with Martin, Ed Jones and Jake:

I won the opening lead, and returned a diamond. This might have been a mistake, but partner might have had a singleton... maybe I need to stop trying to give my partners unlikely ruffs at tricks 1 and 2... Anyway, Martin won, drew trumps, playing a spade to his hand on the way. He then played a diamond off the table, and pitched a spade when I covered. I returned my last diamond, Martin ruffed and ran a club to me. We've reached this position, and I'm (sort of) endplayed. I can cash the ace of clubs, but then either a spade or a club promotes the other card in that suit, while leaving the remaining trump as an entry to the promoted card. This is only sort of an endplay - if South was on lead, he could do this himself, but if the lead is in the North hand with 3 cards to go, declarer can't manage all three tricks.

Well played Martin, and actually, looking at the hand again, I'm not sure there's anything I could have done about it (for some reason when I started writing this, I thought returning a club was good enough, but it clearly isn't). So maybe I'll absolve myself of that endgame. Still, 1 out of 2 ain't great