My last hand in our most recent game came playing with Karen, against Linda and Anita. I was dealt a hand with six hearts and (slightly) fewer than opening points, so I was ready to open with a weak two bid. However, Karen had dealt and opened one diamond. So at that point, I was ready to raise to one heart. But then, Linda overcalled in front of me with a one heart bid!
I was void in diamonds, so I felt compelled to bid, but Linda had foreclosed my planned heart bid. Then I noticed that I had four spades, headed by the Ace. So I bid one spade. Karen responded with four spades, and I must have made quite a face in response to this, because the whole table erupted in laughter.
It turned out that Karen had four spades, including a couple of honors, with a void in hearts. So, we both had a void in the other's suit. Unfortunately, when I tried to pull trump, Anita showed out on the second trick, so I knew that Linda had started with four trumps against me. (This is the danger with a 4-4 trump suit, compared to the more usual 5-3 split. Consulting Pascal's Triangle, the fifth row is 1-5-10-10-5-1, meaning that the chances of a 3-2 split of the defenders' trumps are (only) 20/32, or 5/8. So not as unusual as you might think to get a bad split.)
Not a complete disaster, but still presenting a serious challenge. So how do I prevent losing total control of the hand? I decided to use my remaining trumps (2 in my hand and 2 in dummy), for cross-ruffing. I ended up running myself totally out of trumps, with Linda still having two left! With four tricks to go, I led a diamond from dummy and Linda took the trick with the King of diamonds, cashed her two trumps, and then led a diamond, which gave dummy's queen the last trick! Had she had any other suit left, I would have gone down.
So, I made the contract, ending the night with +710, compared to -10 had I gone set. (+620 for the vulnerable game, rather than -100 for going down one vulnerable, a 720-point swing).
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