Perhaps I know what my New year resolution can be - update this properly. This is going to be yet another whistle-stop tour of everything I've done in the bridge world since November 4th, over two months ago. Oops. I had intended writing in late December, but never got there, and sank into bridge hibernation as Christmas and New Year passed. Eventually, last Tuesday, I raised my head out of the burrow to indulge in bridge once more, and won the session, playing with McLeod senior, with a score of 65%, which I was pleased with given some gross mistakes along the way.
But enough of that. Let's go back to the start.
We are still hangers on in the Phoenix Cup, having finished 5th = in Round 3 whilst the leaders took 3rd place. I haven't done the mathematical workings, but I am fairly sure we are still 2nd in the running. However, there is no margin of error, and we are moving towards the outside lane. It is difficult to get this particular pair of favourites to surrender the lead once they have it.
DISTRICT TEAMS OF FOUR
Rounds 2, 3 and 4 have been played. For Round 2, we drafted in a substitute to replace one of our players who unfortunately had to cancel out at the last minute. This made an already quite difficult task much harder. Our Round 2 opponents were HAY and WATSON - last year's winners and this year's only Ellon entry respectively.
As East-West, Lessurl and I played against the HAY team first. Last year, Jim Hay, who I credit as a coach and important influence on my bridge career, had a team that went through the entire competition unbeaten. Most of this team has still had some participation in this season, so his team were installed as favourites by the Conveners (half of whom is me). This year, however, there are chinks in the armour. They scored 26 out of a possible 40 in Round 1, losing their unbeaten run. Lessurl and I had a reasonable match against the North-South pair (Jim and Jun being out counterparts), although it might have been better had I taken the right view in a slam contract. In the end, we scraped 11 VPs.
We were firm favourites for our second set of twelve boards, against WATSON. This team finished 15th of 16 last season, and were seedings to be used throughout, would've been seeded 12 of 13 this time round. Obviously I have a soft spot for them as I know them from Ellon. Of course, there is a difference between being favourites and getting an "easy" match. The problem, as any "top dog" will tell you, is when the underdogs play a solid game. Certainly, they did not seem to be giving away anything spectacular. What was important was that we matched their solidity, and eventually wore them down. Things went right for us and we eventually did squeeze every IMP we could, taking a 20-0 win.
Round 3 was a mixed/mediocre affair. We won the match in which we were underdogs 17-3, but lost the other match (in which we were still underdogs, but not by as much) 16-4. I don't think we played well or badly; not much to write home about. After this we were 6th.
Round 4 was last night. Lessurl was given the night off, for happy reasons that I won't go into here. Thus I played with our second substitute of the season, and we had a lot of fun, trying to work out what each other's bids meant. This was especially evident in the first match we played, against USHER. Quite a few times we couldn't explain what partner intended, but we did at least manage to find the optimal spots, save for one Game that was just a stretch too far. We managed a thin Semi Slam and also picked up an 800 and 200 courtesy of tempting our opponents to go too high and bringing out the red card. Our team mates went rather overboard, bidding three slams, but at least they made one of them, and when the dust cleared we collected 18 VPs.
Our second match was against this season's leaders. Here, our bidding frailties were shown up and when we missed a slam, and then a Game, on consecutive boards, we were 13 IMPs behind with half the boards played. Cue the comeback.
After RHO opened 1 Diamond (third in), I made a takeout double based on my 4-4-1-4 shape as it was NOT based on my points. I felt this was safe as both LHO and partner were passed hands; my plan was to pass whatever partner bid. In fact he chose 2 Clubs, which suited me holding KQxx. RHO then got across his hand with a 4 Diamond bid. Pass-pass-? Partner thought a little bid, and eventually produced a double. I will remember to ask my regular partner how we play this, as I am not 100% sure and certainly wasn't sure with a first time partner. I was leaning towards penalties, simply because now is a strange time to look for another suit, when I have taken no action after my initial takeout double, and if he wants to play 5 Clubs, he has the option of bidding it. But I never had a dilemma. RHO now bids 5 Diamonds, worried that we are about to find our heart fit. It is a phantom sacrifice, as LHO has 6 hearts. When the bidding comes round to West, my somewhat surprised partner makes another double. Everyone knows this is business. Three off for 500 does nicely.
We then bid to a Game that wasn't there, so shipped out 7. After I opened 1 Spade on the next board, and responded to 1NT with a forcing 3 Spades which was passed, that really did look like the killer. I made 12 tricks for +230. Imagine my surprise when we scored that one up and gathered 7 IMPs. Thank you, team-mates, you've bailed us out again. A flat Game was next, followed by an unexpected +3. My partner was not happy with how he played a 1NT contract on that board, and the upshot was, completely unknown to us, going into the last board the match was tied at 24 IMPs each.
Partner opens 1 Heart (5cM). I hold:
x
x
Q 10 x
A K Q 10 9 7 x x
2 Clubs is my bid. (That was easy).
Partner makes a reverse bid of two spades. Hmm, I think I'll bid 3 Diamonds 4sf.
Partner bids 3 Spades. What now?
Have you worked out what your bid would be? This is not a test; I'm just interested how many people would've done what I did here. (I realise a fair number may not have agreed with my first two bids). My bid was... Six Clubs. Ace of diamonds lead; here is dummy:
A Q x x x
A K x x x x
x
J
I could not have really asked for better. If this was a play problem, the question would be: how do you play once LHO switches to a club at trick 2?
Instead, LHO continued a low diamond. I ruffed with the Jack in dummy, cashed the ace of spades and ruffed a spade with the 9. I claimed: draw trumps in as many rounds as necessary, cross to the ace of hearts and pitch the diamond on the king. 10 IMPs here got us 14 VPs.
When the results are all accounted, we see there is something of a gap in VP totals between 8th and 9th - in other words, the top 8 and the bottom 5. Some will argue that any of the top 8 are still in with a chance of winning. Since we were playing the best team in the bottom five, who are more or less guaranteed a 9th place finish the way things are going, and the team that has led from the outset (although they were 1st= after round 1), we consider 32 a great night's work. We currently lie 5th; not high enough to trouble the leaders I feel, but what else is there to play for?
The aforementioned WATSON and HAY played each other last night, with a 13-7 win for WATSON. Congratulations to them; that is the biggest shock that I can remember in this competition. I will say I know nothing about the match or how the result came about. Others will say I could've stopped after the first six words of that last sentence.
Things are certainly interesting. It still remains in MOWAT's hands. Their grip may have slipped a little with a defeat last night, but we are the only team that has managed to beat them so far, and every other team has lost more than one match so far. We are one of only three teams that have only lost two matches. The resurgent ROSS team has come back from a disastrous 6/40 in Round 1 to climb into second place with scores of 37, 38 and 35. HAY sits 3rd and will play MOWAT and ROSS on the final night. McGUIRE, who hammered us 17-3 on the first night, still have title aspirations, and we sit 5 behind them. Don't get me wrong - I intend to win the Sybil Hay District Teams of Four one day. But I'm not putting money on it being this year.
HIGHLAND BRIDGE CONGRESS; COYLUMBRIDGE
This Congress is already a favourite of mine - perhaps because of everything that comes with it. (The company, etc, etc). It really deserved a blog post of its own, but unfortunately I never got round to it, and giving hands from it now seems just a wee bit off - although there are plenty good ones.
Having missed out on the Pairs Final by one place last year, we made sure of it this time, qualifying as First in our section. Our bridge was solid for the first two thirds of the evening, and it seemed that was enough. By the time McLeod Senior broke free of the reins and took some actions that I'd rather he didn't, we must've been in the Final.
We even started the Final pretty well, but before we reached the half way stage, partner suddenly decided he wanted to play in a Slam missing an ace and three kings and came crashing down. Now we all know that playing Match Points, all you do is get back up and carry on. But a combination of bad luck and bad bridge ensured we never really did that, or by the time we did, we finished just shy of the top 3rd. Apparently this was just high enough to get 2 reds, which I gratefully accept. Phoenix pair Bill Ross and Emily Garden were Runners-Up for the 2nd year running.
The teams went well too. I thought we had a predominantly good card, and whether right or wrong about that, we qualified for the final. We raised our game for the final, and were rewarded with a 3rd place finish.
LEAGUE TEAMS OF EIGHT
So far, not so good for Phoenix Rising this year. It has been a hard battle just getting the matches organised, not to mention actually playing them. We agreed 18th December to play Banchory, and despite snow finally hitting Aberdeen on that day, we played the match. We fielded our youngest ever team and, in fairness, it showed. Division 2 is a step up in class from Division 3, one that some of our players were not quite ready for. We lost 17-3, and are rooted to the bottom of the table. For avoidance of doubt, our season's objective is to stay up.
On the plus side, we have a match in hand over most teams. Our match with Fraserburgh has been postponed until the spring. There is still a lot to play for. Our next match is against Torphins, and I will field as young a team as I can for that one too.
PHOENIX TEAMS OF FOUR
This is the Phoenix Club's premier event, and two rounds of three have been played since I last checked in. It is run as a Double Elimination event, with sixteen board matches. The first round was a random draw, and as we were drawn against one of the possible favourites, one win and one draw was the best we could hope for. It was close - the one win was by 2 IMPs; we scraped into Section B for Round 2.
This was slightly different. One potential winning team was in our section, but the other team we were up against was an outright underdog. Lessurl and I did not cover ourselves in glory, but somehow (I think with a lot of thanks to our team mates), we won the match comfortably. While Lessurl and I played the underdogs, there was a change to the team line-up of the other team, which suited us as it turned out. We won both matches on the night and therefore qualified for the Semi-Finals in Round 3.
CAMROSE
I write this with three of five matches completed in the first weekend of the Camrose. Scotland emerged on top in the battle between themselves and the SBU, although I understand it went right to the wire. Both Scottish teams got a crack at England today. SBU led by more than thirty IMPs half way through, but eventually lost convincingly. Scotland were down at Half time, but could (and should) have grabbed a draw in the second half.
This morning, Scotland found themselves 41 IMPs behind Wales before all of us were wide awake and ready to watch. The deficit was shortened by the end of 32 boards, but Wales still took the spoils. They followed that up with the aforementioned narrow defeat to England, so I'm crossing my fingers that they fire on all cylinders against both Irish teams from the outset tomorrow.
As for the SBU, they finished the day by grabbing their first win, against ROI, so hopefully the improvement continues into Sunday.
Bottom line: Neither Scottish side are doing well right now, but there is still time for that to change completely. Fingers crossed.
So, Happy New Year.
I hope 2012 is very prosperous.
As for the Bridge, I live in hope. We (my Dad & I) followed up our Tuesday win with a win at Phoenix on Thursday, with significant help from our team-mates. Coupled with last night, it seems I'm unbeaten in 2012, so long may that continue. After all, it's the final of the Rayne next week.
