Not ready for prime time!

After a week of free beer and complementary second hand smoke in the casino, I stumbled into my seat to play The Jacoby Swiss. 

The very first board as East, I pick up ♠ QJx ♥ x ♦ AKQJ ♣ AKxxx

The auction : 

Partner led a club. 

This dummy came down. ♠ xxx ♥ Q109x ♦ x ♣ AQJ102

One look at dummy and I could not stop laughing as I flopped my hand on the table. “look, there are two Club Aces in this board?!” After everybody had a look at the hands, we even turned the cards over to make sure we had the same colour deck.

We called the police. After looking at the hands, the director said to me ” You have the Ace of Spades not the Ace of Clubs!” ” You have 13 penalty cards!” At this point I was still laughing, started gathering up my hand thinking we were going to reshuffle the board. But no this declarer insisted on playing the board as is! 

My real hand : ♠ AQJx ♥ x ♦ AKQJ ♣ Kxxx

Declarer played as if he could see all four hands. That was a light bulb moment, suddenly I understood what double dummy meant, there was one in front of declarer, then there was the other in my seat. 

He won the Club lead with The Ace. Play the Queen of Clubs, ruff out my King. Drew trumps in two rounds ending in dummy, discarded all but one of his Spades on the good clubs. At the end give up two tricks and claimed 11 tricks. Made 5 ♥ X.

Sobering second thought, why don’t they have free beers at the bridge tournament!?

 

The correct board :