The ZZZ effect

I am fortunate, I guess, that I get to play with, amongst and against some of the best players in Australia. I see firsthand some of their errors, some actions that a club player would be embarrassed to admit to. At one point, I considered writing a post listing some of our top players and a "memorable" hand featuring each one of them. There was no shortage of good data.

I decided against that write-up because other than the hands being obvious delivery issues, there was no unifying thread between them.

Now consider these three defensive exhibits.

Hand 1



North played 4S on the lead of a diamond to the ace and back won in dummy. Declarer finessed the spade, cashed SA,unblocked the DK and played a third spade. East won and returned a diamond, declarer pitching a club. Declarer played the heart ace and claimed as east ruffed.
A club return upon winning the third spade sets the contract.

Hand 2


South played 3NT after West opened 1H and led the SK. Declarer won the second spade and played a club to the jack. East ducked. And nine tricks rolled in.


Hand 3


North played 4H on a club lead won by the Ace. Declarer called for a heart and West played the ace of diamonds, which became a major penalty card. Soon declarer wrote down +620.

These three hands occurred in the last couple of weeks. The culprits on defence were players who have represented Australia on numerous occassions. For all these hands there was an underlying similarity which, to my mind, was the definitive cause for their error.

In each case, declarer took a disproportionate amount of time playing the hand. Over various periods, at least five minutes were taken by declarer just "thinking".

The cause of the delivery failure for the defence was a simple one :
Declarer put them to sleep !