This hand was the start of our downfall in the Tuesday-Wednesday KO at this year's Easter Regional in San Diego. It came early in the semi-final round against the eventual winners, Gillian Miniter, John Hurd, Joe Grue, and Geoff Hampson. I declared 4♥ against a small heart lead from John Hurd, which I let ride to my hand in order to start clubs toward dummy.

 To my surprise, John showed out on this trick, pitching a small diamond, and Gillian won the ♣A. Since her partner clearly didn't want to ruff, she quite reasonably returned a second trump to protect against spade ruffs in dummy. When John followed with the ♥9, It seemed that I was on my way to an easy make: Pull the last trump, pitch my last club and losing diamond on the two high clubs, and then drive out the ♠K, giving up two spades. As long as spades were 4-3, this simple line would yield ten tricks. I couldn't immediately see a way to succeed if spades were badly split, even though the ♠K was likely to be on my left. And I might set myself in a cold contract by trying a more complicated line.

That type of mental laziness is probably my worst trait as declarer, and I paid for it here, as John's hand included ♠KT987, along with the ♥J9x.

Do you see what I should have done? It's true, there is no sure make, but I could have added to my chances by continuing clubs. LHO must wait to ruff the third round, and then he must lead a pointed suit. A spade return would give me two high spades and a ruff in dummy, so he is forced to play a diamond. Worst case, his partner holds the ♦A over my K, and I must fall back on spades being 4-3.

 In actuality, John also held the ♦A, but leading it now still sets up my tenth trick.

The moral of this story is that I could have taken care of half the bad spade split hands at no risk to my original line!

4♥ was made at the other table, where our teammate overcalled a forcing 1♣ opening with 1♠, exposing the bad split.