It is December 30, around 11pm and you pick up the last board of the Friday club game. Incidentally, as you have no bridge obligations on the 31st, it is also the last hand of the year. It’s a good one.
Strong 5440’s are notoriously hard to bid, but as you are in 4th seat, let’s first see what happens. Surely somebody is going to bid hearts first. A few seconds later, it is your turn and, as expected, somebody has bid hearts. Your call?
Well, that is easy: double, take-out.
While the double is take-out, the auction continues with 3 passes. Partner must have long hearts, or perhaps some balanced thing with an assorted high card but no clear move. Well, in that case, with all your top tricks, that must still result in a penalty.
You lead the the ♣A as who would not. The dummy is a bit of surprise with 5 card trump support. Anyway ♣A, small, ♣9, small. You play standard carding and partner shows an even number of clubs. Next you cash a second club and the ♦A, with partner discouraging. That’s 3 tricks, now what?
Your hopes of beating this contract have been reduced a lot after the first tricks. Still, there are a few options. First, declarer can be 1-7-1-4. In that case, you have to play a third club and hope for the ♥K singleton with partner. A second alternative is to play a spade and hope for partner to hold the ♠A, if declarer has something like 2-8-1-2, that will lead to down 2. It can, of course, go horribly wrong if declarer has the ♠A. Finally, you can try to cash the ♦A, with the risk to set up the ♦Q for declarer, this works when declarer is 1-8-2-2 or similar.
The more I think about it, option 2 seems best as this also works, for down 1, if partner has the ♠Q instead of the ace.
In practice, it doesn’t matter, in fact, it turns out that you have been endplayed from trick one onwards. Whatever you do, you have to give declarer his 10th trick. In practice, west led a club, declarer ruffed with the ♥A and even Peter Verouden could not get the trumps wrong. When asked, partner says that her heart void suggested that you had a strong balanced hand with some hearts.
-790 and not exactly the way you wanted to end the year. But next year, there will be new hands. Still, a curious hand: not only was the defence endplayed from trick one, also the opponents had a rare 13 card fit. Finally, you note that you could have defeated the hand by leading a small club at trick 2. Partner wins and plays a spade.
Happy new year everybody.