Playing at the Young Chelsea a few weeks ago with Luke, we hadn't had the best of starts and needed a few more good scores as we arrived at the penultimate table of the evening. Our opponents were fully in the spirit of things as they were well lubricated, always important at this game. As we sat down, one told the other that he really needed a cigarette and to make every effort to let him be dummy. That didn't seem to stop them defending our two-level partscore when they could have made game in no-trumps or clubs, but it's not the bidding that's under scrutiny here.

The full deal, traditionally rotated, was as follows:

Both Vuln Dealer E	5 3 10 6 K Q J 9 7 4 J 9 4			West North East South Luke Michael Pass 1 X 21 X 2 AP Notes (1) Showing diamonds
2 A Q 7 5 A 10 8 3 K Q 8 3		A 10 9 4 J 9 2 6 5 A 10 7 6
	K Q J 8 7 6 K 8 4 3 2 5 2

Oppo were a little confused at the meaning of the double of 2, so West didn't support and East didn't take another bid. This left me to play undoubled in 2, a contract certain to lose two clubs, a diamond, a trump, two hearts, and probably another trump and some more hearts at the end too. Still, it seems to have worked out well considering the easy game on their way.

The opening lead was the A, rather aggressive in view of the diamond bid, but as you can see not immediately expensive. The diamond continuation, however, was. Presumably he was hoping for his partner to ruff with what was probably a natural trump trick. I pitched a club on the K and thought I might as well play another top diamond, let East shorten his trumps a bit and get rid of my second club loser. I was still in danger of losing four heart tricks, but you never know what will happen.

East did ruff after a long pause. I was rather surprised, though, to see he had ruffed with the Ace! He then tried to cash his A but I ruffed and led a heart up. West went in with the Q, cashed the A and played another club. I ruffed this, drew a trump and, even though I didn't need to (my 8 would have been good when the K dropped the J), I ruffed a heart. Then a diamond ruff (or over-ruff if East ruffs in) got me back to hand to draw trumps and claim. 2 made with an overtrick.

Let's just recap. My two club losers became zero. My four heart losers became two. My two spade losers became one. Ok, alert readers will see that I can't lose four hearts and two spades because the defence have to attack spades to stop me from ruffing hearts, thereby ruining their second trump trick. But you have to admit it was a sterling (not to mention generous) effort by them to drop four tricks in defence and settle for -140 when there were scores of +630, +500, +800 and even +1100 littering the traveller.