Don't be in too much of a hurry

[OliverC]

Sometimes you can be in too much of a hurry to grab tricks. Jeremy and I combined well on this hand, but our good result was mainly down to Jeremy not being too hasty:

Game All, Dealer West

You are North, holding

North
75
J107
A9742
AK6

Bidding
West     North     East     South
No          1        No        1
1         X⁽¹⁾       2       No⁽²⁾
No          2NT⁽³⁾   No        3 ⁽⁴⁾
No          3 ⁽⁵⁾   No        No
3         All Pass

⁽¹⁾ Support Double, showing 3-card Hearts
⁽²⁾ Lower range or only 4-card hearts (or both, in this case  )
⁽³⁾ Lebensohl
⁽⁴⁾ Forced
⁽⁵⁾ Competitive with 5+ Diamonds

A nice sequence in which we competed as high as we dared and then went quietly over 3 . No need to double on what was clearly a 20-20 hand or thereabouts. If 3 was off it would be a decent result and if it was making, then clearly it was their hand.

Jeremy led the King and Dummy went down:

East (Dummy)
J93
AQ62
Q105
983

                   North
                    75
                    J107
                    A9742
                    AK6

South encourages with the 7 on trick 1. What do you do?

A lot of people would blindly continue with the King. If there are 3 Club tricks, however, it is unlikely that West will ever be in a position to discard a Club unless they have Kx (which, though not impossible, is unlikely). Bearing in mind that you have led the King at trick 1 (asking for attitude in my suggested methods), partner is just as likely to encourage with the Jack as with the Queen, in case you are leading from KQx.

Jeremy did very well to switch to the Jack at trick 2. Declarer rose with Dummy's Ace and led a small Spade from Dummy. South hopped up with the Ace and led the Jack and Jeremy took Declarer's Queen with his Ace and returned a 3rd Club, won by South's 10. The 8 followed. North took his Ace and switched back to  the 10, covered in Dummy and won by South's King.

6 tricks for the defence in a Spade contract looks fairly normal, but lots of EW Pairs were making 2 , mostly because North was too impatient to cash out the Clubs, which costs the defence a trick.

So well done Jeremy! As Declarer remarked part-way through the defence "You guys are playing me like a piano"