Too late

Playing bridge way past midnight may be a challenge, especially when staying wake is your top priority. Here I need to come clean when I realized too late that I misplayed a game.

Day 2, first teams session way past midnight, Frederic got a nasty bidding decision with K/Kxxx/A/KJ87xxx after a 14-16 NT by partner and his RHO overcalled 2S. He bid 2NT showing invitational or better with 5+ clubs or a weak competetive hand with long H's or long D's. Partner declined invitation with 3C and system now dictated a 3S cuebid to show gamegoing values with C's (3red would've signoff). Partner now bid 4H (natural) suggesting no (or unsuitable) spade stopper. What to do?

After about 4 minutes, Frederic passed, finally deciding that bad breaks was a bigger possibility after the overcall on apparent minimum values and knowing that I was minimum or bad club fit. Weak suit quality a potential problem, although I could still have 5-card H's. The layout (S/all white):

________K
________K7xx
________A
________KJ876xx
AQxxxx__________JTx
98x_____________Tx
xxxx____________QTxx
________________QT9x
________9xx
________AQJx
________KJxx
________Ax

A low diamond was led to the ace, heart to A, K of diamonds and West followed with the heart 8! Hour was late, West replaced with D (i.e. no revoke), spade discard from dummy and I noted trumps broke and therefore cashed H Q. When East followed with ten, it hit me like an express train. Now clubs were 0-4 and I was was down on a hand that looked like a missed slam!

Low club from hand after discarding the spade in dummy is a 100% line (not cashing a 2nd H). Hey, even club to the ace in trick 2 makes it as long as I continue low C from dummy after 2 rounds of spades. No 'harm done' in the end as teammates were +300 in 6C X and the match ended with a blitz for us.

It still hurts.

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I'll be away playing over the weekend, posting resumes Monday.