Oh, Those Matchpoints


Q 9 8 6 3
------
8 6 4 3
A Q J 7
5 2 ------
J 7 5 4 3 A Q 10 9 2
J 9 K Q 5 2
K 9 8 4 10 5 3 2
A K J 10 7 4
K 8 6
A 10 7 Opening lead: a diamond or not a diamond
6 Contract: 4 spades, 5 spades, (once) 6 spades

Not even an overtrick was very good in a four spade bid. That was worth only 13%. But two overtricks were worth 53.7%! Slighly over 40 points more for a second overtrick. But one thing is fairly certain about matchpoint scores, is that disparities largely reflect how easy that extra points were to garner. If an overtrick is awfully difficult to ferret out (or maybe depends on defensive malfeasance that not many declarers are getting), that's just two people who beat you. It doesn't matter whether they beat you by 30 points or 500. They beat you and they can be happy over their score, but that's just a couple of pairs. But if overtricks are easy to pick up, then you're going to have a lot of people beating you because you were lazy and saw that the contract was in the bag and didn't look for picking up as many tricks as possible. To be sure, these things often depend on the opening lead.
This was such a hand. It depended heavily on the opening lead (a diamond lead's the potential killer, while any other lead should make 12 tricks a cakewalk).
Without a diamond lead, there is little excuse for not picking up a 12th trick. You draw trump and take the club finesse. Indeed, you can finesse against the king either way, and it doesn't matter which way, a little surprisingly. You're going to get one sluff and only one sluff of a diamond on the club honors, whichever way you go. With a diamond lead, of course, it certainly does make a difference because your ace of diamonds stopper has been wiped out. But there is one point I might make here.
The declarer in five spades understandably enough didn't want to finesse on a lead to the A Q J of clubs, for if that finesse is off, he goes down, and of course his first thought is to ensure his contract. But he runs no risk finessing the other way: go to the A of clubs and then push the Q through, sluffing a diamond. We can see that it doesn't work, but that's neither here nor there, for it costs him nothing -- he still loses only two diamonds -- and declarers who are looking out for any spare (not too risky) chance is going to come out ahead in the long run over those who give up easily.
One declarer who got a diamond lead, fr'instance, won with the A, took two rounds of trump and led . . . a diamond! Giving up awfully early. Another risk-free chance you might take is to go to the A of clubs, ruff a club, back to dummy and ruff another club. That too won't work. But it's better than leading a diamond at trick 2.

One declarer got a diamond lead (playing from the other side of the table, he got the K) and made six! Did he actually take the club hook the right way? No, that wasn't how he did it. After drawing trump, he came to the A of clubs, led the Q and apparently not liking the non-cover (this time correctly so), ruffed, came back on a heart ruff, ruffed a club, back on a heart ruff, ruffed his last club, came back with dummy's last heart to ruff, led a low diamond at trick 11 and West (well, East above) went up with the Q. At trick 11 when dummy is showing the 10 7 of diamonds and the J of spades. Hey man, if your partner can't beat the 10 of diamonds, guess who has the J! And if declarer has it, what's he going to do with it?
That was a totally inexcusable failure to go second hand low.