Playing the last board of a two session stratified open pairs game at the recent Spring North American Bridge Championships in St Louis, Missouri, I picked up the following hand sitting South as dealer (all vulnerable):

I opened 1 (Precision, 16+ points) and the auction proceeded as follows:

The 6 is led, and dummy tables with:

and some mumbled comment about exposing a psyche. How I was supposed to figure that out, I'm not entirely sure. Of course, partner could have chosen the small lie of bidding 2 (5-7 hcp, mostly in spades, with a six card suit) [I wish all the lies I tell at the bridge table were that small! —Ed] and made everyone's life easier (I'll likely bid 3NT and hope he's got a trick for me).

Well, crap. With that lead goes any hope of making this contract; and now I can't even ruff a diamond in dummy. Oh well, might as well play it out and see if someone does something stupid. With nothing better to go for right now, I draw trumps in three rounds (why do the trumps always break in the hopeless contracts?) and then head over to cash the A. West shows out of spades, so it turns out that East's spade bid wasn't a psyche after all. At least that's some good news, because the people playing in some number of spades doubled aren't going to have too fun a time either.

Winning the A, I play a top spade, pitching a heart. East decided not to break a red suit, and so makes the not particularly dangerous play of continuing with his other spade honour. I ruff this, then play another couple of rounds of trumps for no particular reason. A couple of diamonds come out, so I'm optimistic that I might possibly be able to go down only one, setting up my 10 for trick 13. I consequently lead a small diamond towards the 9 in order to flush out one of the diamond honours, hopefully from the long diamond hand.

The Curse of Scotland holds the trick. Then all hell breaks loose. East commences screaming at his partner, who apparently ducked the QJ of diamonds assuming his partner could beat the 9. West is slinking underneath the table, my partner is trying to remain calm, and I commit the gravest of all sins at the bridge table by failing to be awake. That's right, I called for a heart. Partner managed to retain his composure and play without comment. A shocked East won the trick and continued a heart, ruffed. I then played diamonds from the top, losing trick 13 to a diamond honour in the West hand, getting, shall we say, what I deserved.

This was the full deal

Down one was above average, as while some went plus, many went down in 4X. I don't know that many people found 3NT, which will usually make from the North, and go down in the South since West will lead a heart, then overtake the Q on the way back.