Such a comment refers to the match I played in on Friday night; Banchory v Ellon. Ellon's Captain, my Dad, has a continuous struggle to get the club's best players (from a small club in the first place) to play in the Teams of 8. In my last entry I spoke of the joys(?) of being Captain of a junior team. My Dad has the joys of getting players to agree to play, and since some of the better ones didn't, I was drafted in as a substitute from a lower division. Playing with someone who I will just call "West", as this was his position all night, I had a new system to learn. In previous times playing with West, we had played the Asking Club, given it is so simple. But West has recently made clear his hatred of said system, so I decided that, as a better, more experienced player (West will back me up on that; it is not my ego talking), I'd play his.
The system in question was Schenken. This had a lot of gadgets such as a 17+ 1 Club Opener, 12-16 1 Diamond Opener and artificial responses to both. Not that I have anything in particular against the Schenken system, but it is quite complicated. I had five days to learn it and I was also pretty sure that the complexities of such a system could not be covered by one sheet of A4 Paper, which was all I had.
Cue a number of questions sent to West via email on Thursday night and a response on Friday morning. Luckily we were travelling to the match in the same car and had more discussion then. Did the things we discussed come up? By and large, no - of course not.
We spent most of the first round passing, which was all right except for the -930 on our scorecard. We felt the boards were uncontroversial, and certainly the team in the lead after the first six boards were not too far ahead - I actually forget who led at this point.
It doesn't matter what system you play, you have to play the contract the system lands you in and on the second set we allowed a woeful swing out when, despite bidding quite calmly to a solid 4 Heart contract, West lost his head completely and went one down. Such disasters happen, but you have to roll with it and carry on regardless. Unfortunately, West did not take his head up until the half time tea where I made it clear I wanted it out of his mind. We were a couple of hundred points behind at this point.
The third set was where some real points about bidding came up. First up (of note) was this:
Our opponent's bidding was natural, so the 1NT showed at least one heart stop. My 2 Hearts bid was (as agreed) a very weak raise. In other words, I was willing to compete as far as the 2 level so that they couldn't play there. But I reckoned without my partner - who raised to 4 with a hand not unlike the hand you see above (I can't vouch for the exact layout but I guarantee the heart holding was no better. I also don't remember my partner having that many points and quick tricks but he must've had something). Partner's excuse? He thought I had 3 hearts (as opposed to 2). Exactly how much of a difference that would've made to the eventual -800 missing the three top honours in trumps with a 5-1 split is an open question, but I would suggest the answer is zero. Or, to put it another way, I, a notorious over-bidder, would never raise to 4 Hearts there.
Now, we were never going to recoup that in the remaining boards of the set, but we gave it a go:
Again, my exact holding and the exact bidding are maybe not as represented above, but it was not far off this. I know for sure that North had bid clubs, and South diamonds (whether there was a jump or not is another matter) and that I doubled 2 Diamonds for takeout, as we must have a 7 card major fit. Agreement failed us again as my partner passed this, but North was suitably scared enough to pull to her clubs, and this time I did double for penalty holding a long club suit. +500 when the dust settled.
At the end of Round 3 we had chipped away at but not overhauled the half-time defecit, and went into the last round -140. In Round 4, it was all to play for - and thankfully, it was more play problems than bidding problems that I had to deal with, although overtricks were all I could collect for my efforts. In particular, two 3NT contracts, one of which went +2 on a pseudo squeeze, and one of which went +4 when I held AQ in their suit and every queen fell whenever I clicked my fingers. (In bridge terms: Catching it out even before I had to finesse it out).
One has to be careful when taking scores. Our pair at Table 1 were -400, which seemed passable as we had +510 sitting the other direction. I went to Table 4, where our pair were sitting the same way as us, and when they told me their score was 1120 I promptly congratulated them on a great score - and then they told me it was a minus. Somehow, the other pair on our team amassed +1130, but we still lost the match by the narrowest possile margin: 20 aggregate points. Any closer would've been a draw.
JUNIOR CAMROSE AND PEGGY BAYER
As a junior player with International interests, I really have to mention these competitions. This year, England did the double, winning both events, although Scotland were outright second in both events and took it to the last match in the Junior Camrose. The English Under 20s were in devastating form and looked like they would take the maximum 225 points until the Scottish team stepped up in the last match and scored 8VPs against them. It maybe doesn't sound like much, but coming second to England is no disgrace, and being the only team not to be whitewashed 25-x VPs in three matches takes some doing. Neither Irish team got a look in at second place and that is a measure of achievement for Scotland.
Things were closer in the Junior Camrose, where going into the last match Scotland could've finished anywhere between 1st and 3rd, with Northern Ireland snapping at their heels. Scotland needed to beat ROI by 3 more VPs than England beat Northern Ireland, but England achieved 23, so how well the Scots did against ROI became irrelevant.
The event was well covered on BBO and by the ABU, and I only missed a couple of matches in the time it took to go to Pittodrie to see Aberdeen win 5-0 (well come on; you don't see that every day!) and get home again.
Congratulations England.
Still, it's not like the Scottish juniors are winning nothing. Two weeks ago I won the Forbes Trophy at Ellon, and on Monday the 13th I was part of the almost-junior team (lessurl is not a junior, even if we put trainers on his knees) that won the Reid Trophy (pictured below). The fact that we were probably favourites, and the fact that there were only 6 teams competing, does not take away anything from the achievement. 009domino, Jun and I have been competing in the Reid Trophy since its inception (apart from last year for Jun and I; since it clashed with the Men's Teams), and it was great to finally lift it.
I feel somewhat defensive of the Reid Trophy and the prestige of it. Granted, it's not the Scottish Cup, and there is always some detraction from glory when only 5 Star Masters and below can enter. But entries have somewhat declined in recent years and people need to be encouraged to play in it. Apparently, the reason for the lack of uptake boils down to the fact that two and three years ago, some inexperienced juniors were playing, with some highly experienced players sitting beside them to "help with their bidding". Of course, despite the experienced players denying they had any involvement in the play, this was untrue and effectively there were experts playing with the juniors as puppets. Thus, nobody was surprised (or very happy) when the "junior" team won. The juniors in question were the most annoyed, and quit bridge altogether not long after. No self-respecting junior will allow or receive such help in such a competition nowadays, so I think it is time to say it's in the past and will not be happening again.
It is often said that it is harder to beat "weaker" players because they are so unpredictable. Being favourites certainly did not give us automatic claim to the trophy. In the end, our opponent's unpredictability was well received, with swings coming from nowhere in the form of a couple of games and one slam that shouldn't make; lessurl delivering a finely executed (although somewhat fortunate) pseudo squeeze in the case of the latter.
Left to right: 009domino, lessurl, Jun, me, Sally Reid
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