♠ J9 ♥ AJ98 ♦ K87632 ♣ 8			Both Vulnerable South   West     North    East 1♥         Pass    3♥         Pass 6♥         Pass    Pass     Pass   South might well have opened with an artificial game-forcing 2♣, but one way or the other it seems that N-S should get to slam on these cards.  In fact 7♥ is a fine contract, though hard to reach.  Sadly, our Declarer even managed to go down in 6♥, which took a lot of doing!
♠ QT42 ♥ ♦ JT4 ♣ JT9542	Dummy   West            East          Declarer	♠ K753 ♥ 543 ♦ AQ95 ♣ 76
	♠ A86 ♥ KQT762 ♦ ♣ AKQ3

 

Against 6♥, West led the ♣J, Dummy went down and South rued the missed grand slam.  Even so, this being a duplicate bridge event, making the overtrick was important.  With that in mind, he counted four side-suit tricks, and could make the rest with ruffs back and forth.  In fact, with 10 trumps between the two hands he even had one trump more than was needed to score 13 tricks.  So, he cashed the ♥A, followed by his two remaining Club winners.  Tragically for Declarer, East ruffed the third round of Clubs and fired back a trump.  Suddenly, Declarer’s 13 tricks had been compressed into 11 and he was down one!

 

Where did Declarer go wrong?

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