Detailed results for all 52 clubs were posted by 9:30 am Saturday - a very good time at less than 12 hours from the first result arriving.

This deal comes from X-Clubs on 6/10/2026. It was played in a teams event at our club. A vulnerable sacrifice against a non vulnerable game just should not happen at teams but can occur more often at match points. And when it comes off it is nothing short of daylight robbery. Look at this deal and judge for yourself

Board 12
Dealer W NS Vul

	T AQJT87 K42 975
AKJ652 93 A9 K82		9873 T853 AJT43
	Q4 K6542 QJ76 Q6

This deal comes from many years ago. I write about it because a similar hand came up at X-Clubs and
I asked a panel of club players how they would play the trump suit when they held AQJ962 in hand and
the singleton 5 in dummy. There were different answers and quite a bit of statistical analyis but it
seems the play that would yield the best result (by a very small margin) is to lead the 5 and finesse the
9. I was asked this question and said my gut feel was to finesse the nine: if the ten was with East and
the nine forced the king I would make the rest of the spades unless there was a very bad break. I am not
great with statistics but it seems that AI says that finessing the NINE would result in five tricks 48.44%
of the time, finessing the queen or jack 37.50% of the time, and simply playing the ace followed by the
queen would yield five tricks 35.94% of the time. But in the back of my mind was the question of
whether the first card that East played should make any difference. It brought back vague memories of
a very similar hand I wrote about years ago:

Dealer W NS Vul

	5 AQ AKJ42 A6532
T743 KJ QT9 KQJ7		K8 T6532 8765 84
	AQJ962 9874 3 J2

Angela sent Vil this problem which came from Tuesday 12/05/26 at X-Clubs

Hi, just one question for now, match points. All vul, dealer West who
passes. Your partner, North, opens 1D and East passes. What do you bid, holding

AQJ

Q9

AT732

J42

This is the final deal I want to review from the session on Friday 17/04/26 where, once more, the game
force 1NT was very effective and the result could have been great but only if you were Deep Finesse

Board 25. Dealer N EW Vul

	AKJ75 T2 J9 K652
9432 85 K762 T93		Q86 KJ63 T5 Q874
	T AQ974 AQ843 AJ