That left us four match points behind the North-South winners, Claude and Muriel Trembley, but should we really be complaining? We still had a 57.92% game. We got go to bring home 1.62 master points.
Plus, that last round against Darlene Menhennet and Leslie Nash (daughter of the recently departed Kit Nash, who was a petite force of nature) may have been sour, but it wasn't all that bad. It started out so sweetly, with me making 3 Spades, a top board.
But then we were all left-footed. I should have sabotaged them when I bid 4 Diamonds to deny them a sure 3 Heart contract. Leslie doubled. Down 1, plus 100 for them. No problem. When they make 3 Hearts, they get plus 140. But I didn't count on how wimpy the East-Wests would be at the other tables. They gave up and let North-South play and make 3 Diamonds.
Nothing we could do about the third hand, either. We take our two Aces and that's that. At some tables, the suit was Diamonds. Two Wests played and made a 5 Diamond bid. At our table, East played 4 Hearts and made an overtrick. Not as bad, though, as the table where West played 3 No Trump and ran all 13 tricks -- seven Diamonds and six Hearts. With a Club lead, the one North should have made since it was his longest and strongest suit, 3 No Trump goes down two. Here it is:
South (dealer)
Spades A-9-4-3-2; Hearts 2; Diamonds 10-4; Clubs K-Q-10-6-5.
West
Spades Q; Hearts K-7; Diamonds K-Q-J-9-8-7-5; Clubs J-4-2.
North
Spades J-10-5; Hearts 10-8-4-3; Diamonds 6-2; Clubs A-9-7-3.
East
Spades K-8-7-6; Hearts A-Q-J-9-6-5; Diamonds A-3; Clubs 8.
To complete our knee-scraping, the round finished with East-West making two overtricks on a 3 No Trump contract. Bottom board. Nobody else in No Trump got overtricks.
Actually, Selina forgot that we tripped up just as badly in the very first round. She opened a Spade and I was holding a 17-point No Trump hand. We arrived at 6 Spades, then wound up being the only North-South who bid the slam and didn't make it.
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