Grovesnor Aces

I played with Adam Dickinson. First time we've played together, but it worked well. We had almost no agreements, other than those we managed to come up with in the car on the way there. We still haven't actually agreed what leads we were playing (although I think it was 4th and 2nd, as you'll find out below...).We played weak no trump, bidding 4 card suits up the line (so 4.5 card majors, or something like that). I find in a new partnership without time to discuss anything, a weak no trump tends to work better, as there are fewer understandings needed. In particular, when partner opens something other than 1NT, you know he doesn't have a weak NT, which can help enormously in a variety of competitive situations. 

Edited, 6 December:
Apparently some of what I wrote below was controversial. I've deleted the names of the participants, and a couple of the more colourful phrases I used to describe what happened. Comments added in italics. General correction is, I didn't actually hear the initial incident, and don't know who was at fault there. I could hear a large portion of the subsequent argument, but don't want to get into a discussion of who was at fault.

The main event was not at our table, but at table 1. At some point, dummy didn't pick up the card declarer called for I think it was a singleton, so this is probably something we might all have done, and this resulted in some subsequent confusion at least this is the impression I got from the subsequent conversation. Her opponents then politely asked if she'd mind picking up the cards from dummy and making it clear that they had been played. There was then an argument, and I don't know the details of this, and don't want to speculate and then the fun started... From here is stuff I could hear from across the room I don't know too many details, but I do know that at some point dummy was refusing to play the cards her partner called for, and Law 44B had to be read out at the table: 

Play of Card from Dummy
Declarer plays a card from dummy by naming the card, after which dummy
picks up the card and faces it on the table. In playing from dummy’s hand
declarer may, if necessary, pick up the desired card himself.

Despite the sexist nature of the laws, it's pretty clear what it says, but dummy still refused to play the cards. At some point law 74 was also mentioned by our captain, who did very well to remain calm when giving a ruling at the table in a difficult situation. 

Proper Attitude
1. A player should maintain a courteous attitude at all times.
2. A player should carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause
annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with
the enjoyment of the game.

I think both captains handled the situation very well, but it was very distracting for all involved, and was entirely unnecessary distraction from what was actually a very interesting set of boards. 

I'm just going to mention one which we managed to defend very well, although declarer may not have played it optimally... 

Everyone vulnerable, West opened a weak NT second in, and that bought the dummy.

Partner led the ♦6, and when this when 3, 9, J, I could now place pretty much the entire diamond suit. Partner would not (I expect) have led the 6 from KQT6(x), although he might have led it from KQ76(x). Given that declarer didn't seem the sort to win the J when he had the T available, this meant I could pretty much place partner with exactly KT8x(x) in ♦s. Declarer now slipped up, playing the ♠J out of his hand, and Adam switched to the ♥2. I won the K, and returned a ♦, setting up the suit (it doesn't seem likely that we're going to get rich on the ♥ suit).

Declarer now played a ♠ to his A, finding out the bad news in that suit, and then decided to exit with ♦. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking here, but it gave me a chance to tell Adam I had the ♥Q by pitching the 2, and when he now cashed the ♥J before playing a ♥ to my Q, I stopped to have a think. I know declarer has ♠AQJx (I've seen them all) ♥xxxx (Adam would surely not have blocked the ♥ suit if he had 4), ♦QJx (by now I've seen the ♦T from Adam, so I know the exact position) and so he must have exactly one of the top club honours, either Ax or Kx. However, my partner is not insane. If he didn't have the ♣A, he would surely have cashed his ♦ tricks when he had the chance (he pretty much knows all this too), so I switched the the ♣Q, taking the rest of the tricks for +400 on a partscore board. 

I can't decide if it would have made my life easier for Adam to cash his ♦ tricks before playing a ♥ to my Q. I think actually it would have made it more difficult. I have to pitch both my ♠s, but this would be wrong if declarer had the ♣A, so I think Adam made my life as easy as possible by playing it this way. Good defence all round. 

We had a few other interesting boards, including one disaster where I went for 800 in 3♦X when the opponents couldn't make anything, and one lucky board where we rolled in a 6♦ which pretty much relied on ♦s 3-3 (or JT tight). We probably overbid somewhat (we were in game on 14 out of the 24 boards, and played 18 out of 24, despite the points being almost exactly evenly split). The team eventually managed to scrape together a 2-1 win, with a 600 point margin over the 24 boards at 4 tables. We really needed a 3-0, to keep with Dundas at the top of the league, but we're still in with a shout if we can manage big wins in the rest of our matches. Next week, December Peebles.