A Common Mistake

There’s one particular type of mistake that occurs rather frequently. Many people, myself especially, tends to only approach a problem from a direction. Even when checking the answers, many did not consider the possibilities of solving the problem through other means. As such, many errors are overlooked.

This kind of error is critical in almost all aspects. Annoyingly, such careless mistakes is often disguised under the veneer of a self-perceived “superior working”. Here’s a hand that I held on BBO.

S Axx
H J10x
D xx
C KJxxx

Not a very interesting hand, especially after hearing a 1C from the dealer on your right. I passed, LHO passed, and my partner bid 1D. The bidding went on as below:

S W N E
1C
/ / 1D /
1NT / 2S /
3NT //

Expecting a dummy with 16-17 hcp, 3NT was not a hard decision. Dummy was

S KQxx
H Qx
D AKQ109x
C x

West led a small heart. After east cashed the ace and king of hearts, all followed small. East then returned a small heart and a club is discarded from the dummy.

What is the danger? It is not hard to identify a safety play often described in books. The risk is that west may be holding 4 or more cards in diamonds. If diamonds were to be cashed from top, you have to surrender a diamond trick to west and he will cash 2 heart tricks. As such, the safety play is to finesse the jack of diamonds (one should finesse directly instead of cashing a top honor, which will fail in case of 5-0 split). It is almost impossible for west to have an entry since east opened, which most likely leaves west with no more than 3 HCP.

So yea, luck favors me and the finesse worked. At this moment the error occurred. Can there be any error when all you have to do is to cash your top tricks?

It turned out that there was an automatic squeeze in clubs and spades. At that moment, I simply cashed the spades to check for split without cashing the diamonds! As a result, I missed an overtrick (and a chance to satiate my ego ><)

Such errors may mean nothing to many people. Sadly I am unable to tolerate such mistakes. Blame me for being a perfectionist. The fact remains that people judge you by the errors that you make and the resultant outcome. I have been so irritated by all the careless mistakes I made, be it in Math Olympiad, Chemistry and Physics Olympiad, Bridge, common tests, etc etc etc. It’s really heartbreaking to think that you have arrived at a splendid solution to a problem, yet a careless mistake such as calculation error undermine your efforts.

Missed a chance to win an iPad today... I guess I will have to blame my carelessness again.