Bid and play this hand along with me. In a regional Knockout Teams, neither side vulnerable, as South I hold

West, the dealer, passes, my partner opens 1♦️, East overcalls 1♠️, I bid 2♥️ and West competes with 2♠️. My

partner huddles, consults the ceiling and comes forth with a gentle lift to 6♥️. East passes.

Partner may be gambling a bit, but he can't know that I have a sixth heart. He may suspect I have a spade void, but he couldn't have known for sure. I really have no right to take the push to seven since I can't count 13 tricks, but I can't believe I won't have a play for it.

You only live once, so I bid 7♥️, and everyone passes. West leads the ♠️7, and I await the dummy edgily.

"I could have had more," my partner says -- not quite what I want to hear.

I suppose he could have had a bit more; even the ♦️J in addition might have made a difference. But I can't fault his bid since we would have had a good play for 6♥️ even if I held a dead-minimum hand such as

I seem to have gotten us into a losing grand slam. Maybe I should have been disciplined instead of speculative. Dummy plays the ten on the first spade, East produces the jack and I ruff. The contract isn't hopeless. If the ♣️Q is doubleton or tripleton and the trumps break 2-1, I can get two diamond pitches from dummy and ruff a diamond for the 13th trick. So I lead to the ♣️A, return a trump to my hand (East-West follow), take the ♣️K to discard a diamond from dummy and ruff a third club high.

East discards a spade, so that's the end of scoring the ♣️J. But it seems that East has length in diamonds as well as in spades, so hope remains. I ruff a spade, ruff the ♣️J high, and take two more trumps, pitching dummy's last low diamond.

With four tricks to go, I'm hoping the position is

Sure enough, East still has a discard to make and can't hold the fort. If he throws a spade, I lead a diamond to dummy and ruff a spade, and dummy is high. When East actually throws a diamond, I take the ♦️AK, and my hand is high.

A trump squeeze has come to my rescue, and we are +1510. The full deal:

The result at the other table made my 7♥️ adventure look silly. There, North opened 1♦️, and my teammate in the East jumped to 2♠️, preemptive. South bid 3♥️, and West passed. North couldn't think of an intelligent way to try for slam, and for all he knew, South could have held J5, AJ872, J3, KQ73, and 5*H* would be in jeopardy. So North settled for a raise to 4♥️. 

Though South might well have tried for slam with a 4♠️ cuebid, North could have held AJ2, 742, AQ54, Q42. So the rest was silence, and North-South were +510. Losing contracts often result when both players take reasonable but slightly conservative positions.

Bidding speculative grand slams is against the odds -- in more ways than one. As it turned out, we would have gained 11 IMPs for playing at 6♥️, +1010. Our grand slam gained us only 3 IMPs more and would have lost 11 if it had failed.

-- Frank Stewart

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