This started on Monday night when my partner decided that my discarding a high diamond followed by a low one when we play Reverse Attitude meant I wanted diamonds on the first hand, but on the second hand the Guardian Angels apologised for turning up late by giving me this Declarer problem:
Q x x x
J 10 x
9 7 x
K x x
A K x x
Q x x
A K Q x
Q x
Contract: 3NT (by the bottom hand). Lead: A small diamond.
There is certainly play for 9 tricks here. Spades and diamonds provide three top tricks, with chances of a 4th in each. If that works, either one of the rounded suits might provide the 9th trick. But obviously, the first task is to bore into LHO's mind and work out what he led from. Do I play the 9 or 7? If this is a 4th highest lead, I might as well play the 7 - which holds. LHO had led low from J 10 8 x x (!), so I was never going to guess wrong.
Four tricks in diamonds are coming in, what about the spades? If they break well, then nine tricks are in the bag with a club exit. But the Angels have taught me pragmatic pessimism, if I haven't learned it from life in general. Sure, that works if spades break, but what if they don't? I'm going to need clubs stopped; there's always a chance hearts break 4-3/3-4 and they can't run against me. So I play the Jack of Hearts.
RHO wins with the King and returns a diamond; exactly what I was hoping for. I can now knock out the heart Ace without concern about clubs. RHO wins and plays another heart, and I'm happy to see LHO follow too. RHO has a heart winner once he gets in, but not yet.
I cash three diamonds, and note that spades are never thrown. Wouldn't you know it; they are 1-4. Good thing I decided to set up hearts. I can still set up clubs and make a total of nine tricks. It was one of those hands where everyone in my seat played in 3NT. The others went one or two down - this included the other Declarer fortunate enough to get a low diamond lead.
Unfortunately that did NOT set the tone for the evening. There is still a lot of work to do - that's undeniable when partner decides to play in 4 Hearts on a 5-0 trump fit. By sheer graft we managed to take second place; I doubt we can say there was much finesse on out part.
But if that was bad, Wednesday night was worse. Somehow we scraped as many outright tops as outright bottoms, and partner was lucky that bridge crimes do not earn time in prison. Whether it was showing strong hands with plates of mince, or passing when he actually had one, there were some decisions made to which utterly no logic or rational thought made sense at all. All of which I can tolerate if partner was gracious enough to accept it, but when it all is somehow MY fault, I think I'm entitled to vent about it.
In fairness (?) to partner, it was the BGB, which meant computer-dealt hands. That winds him up for a start. He doesn't know the difference between "computer dealt" and "fixed" - to him it's all a fix. So we can seldom expect a good night in a BGB event, but we still play them, because once every blue moon I might get some Green points for it.
{To the uninitiated: Green Points = Red Points = National Master Points. 100 Black points = 100 local points = numerical value of 1 Green/Red/National Point. Easy. EXCEPT, I heard the other night that the EBU are now considering inventing Blue Points which, apparently, will be equivalent to a part award in Greens and Blacks. If anyone out there capable of logical and deductive reasoning can explain to me what in the name of sanity the EBU are doing, I'd be very interested in understanding, or at least attempting thereof.}
At least the afternoon school's session was good. They still need a lot drummed into them before being unleashed on the bridge general public, and developing the teams we want is going to be an epic challenge, but I am hopeful we will rise to the occasion. The highlight was when one of Phoenix Rising's newest players made 12 tricks in 4 Spades, testament to the fact that she should have been in 6.
Thursday night, and things improved, just a little bit. It was not evident to start with when I had this hand early on:
Q J
A J x x
A K Q x x x
x
Partner opens a (Weak) 2 Spades. RHO bids 5 Clubs.
My feeling was that I can construct possible hands for partner where 6 Spades will make, and on most of the occasions that it doesn't, 5 Spades won't make either, so, in keeping with our style, I blasted it. (I should probably explain that this was not my regular partner, but a Life Master notorious for bidding everything. The philosophy is that it is okay to come down in contracts on a regular basis as long as no Games or Slams are missed). Unfortunately, this did not work. To make matters worse, 5 Clubs turned out not to make either.
Other things went wrong too; the pick of these was when partner opened a Weak 2 Spades (again), and with RHO making a strong bid, I decided, holding two points, that I would pre-empt them out of a making slam. This was initially working when LHO picked a sub-optimal Game contract, but partner decided to double, which caused RHO to rescue to a slam in her suit. The subsequent second double from partner resulted in -1190 on the score card and -6 IMPs.
But, the Guardian Angels were not quite idle. Observe this hand:
Q J
A Q 10 x x
-
9 7 x x x x
Partner opens 1 Diamond, playing 5 Card Majors with a short club. I reply 1 Heart, as 2-over-1 shows 11+, so 2 Clubs is out. Partner bids 1NT (12-13). Here, I think the reasonable option is to Pass. Sure, it'll be wrong sometimes, and is unlikely to be the optimum contract. But anything else will risk a bigger mess, as I shall now demonstrate.
Deciding that I just would not pass a contract when I knew it was unlikely to be the best spot (if not the least ridiculous), I set out in search of the perfect score. I bid a Checkback 2 Clubs, which by agreement could show a GF hand or an invitational hand. I am hoping partner will bid 2 Hearts now. But of course I ought to know what was coming; partner will inevitably in these situations make the bid you don't want - 2 Diamonds. Okay, so that's things gone belly-up; let's now compound the error; utterly screwing myself over by bidding 2 Hearts. This really was going out on a limb; of course if partner has 5 Diamonds and 3 Hearts, he'll show the 5 diamonds first. He could still have three hearts. He doesn't. He bids 3 Diamonds. Now what? Sigh. 3NT. I should've just passed the b****y 1NT.
Not if the Angels had their say. 3NT romped home with an overtrick, swinging +8 in the IMPs column when our counterparts made 2 Diamonds on the nose.
The last hand from the session I will note:
10 5 4
x x
A Q x x
A 10 x x
A K 8 7 6 3
A K J x x
-
Q x
Yes, of course we got to 6 Spades on this. The question is, how do you go about making it on the Jack of Clubs lead? Obviously you start by winning with the Ace in dummy and pitching the queen of clubs on the Ace of diamonds. Trick 3 requires an important choice. I considered two different lines here. I took the one that looked best at the time; on the actual layout, both worked. Thoughts?
Anyway, when all said and done, we won 5 matches and lost one - enough for second place. It was all quite formal, with the top team winning every match, us only losing to them, and 3rd place only losing to 1st and 2nd place. So, on the way back up again. After Thursday it became a case of hoping to go one better in the....
RAYNE TROPHY FINAL
Hence, the inspiration for the title. Above? That was just the preamble(!). I didn't mention the Rayne qualifier in my previous post, because I can catch up with it here.
It has been difficult of late to secure a steady team for the Rayne. This year, in terms of organisation, we went one better, when the Convener knew I wanted to play, and put my name on the sign-up sheet without checking if I actually had a team, which I didn't. However, lessurl and I managed to find two others that were willing to play 42 boards on a Sunday afternoon, and we went into the qualifier with no aspirations and no pressure on our shoulders.
I find it sad that out of the entire District, we can only amass a grand total of eight teams that were interested in playing in one of the biggest teams events on the calendar. Montrose Bridge Club (won't mind me mentioning here that they) got TWELVE tables! How is it that a CLUB manages to get 50% more entries than a DISTRICT?
Some of you might read that last part and say "don't act as if you don't know", while others would challenge me to do something about it. I guess it is a subject that I have touched on before, and yes, I do have theories. But really, I guess I should vent my spleen about that in a separate blog post.
So, anyway, we had eight teams, and played a Thurner movement with 6 board matches, with a mandatory break, because of the SBU's directive that players that qualify for the final must have played in two sessions prior to it. I do see the logic here, but really, all this is doing is dissuading players from actually entering, and this is counter-productive for all concerned.
Of course, there was only one qualification spot available, and we could hardly be considered favourites to get it. With a lack of entries, the event was chalk full of players actually intent on qualifying. On paper we might have been as low as the sixth strongest team.
However, the team showed from the outset they were not here to make up numbers. Our team-mates (who had never played together before, ever) had one disaster in 42 boards, which is a terrific return. Lessurl and I were working our socks off meanwhile, and didn't take many prisoners. There was even one match where we had a Grand Slam against us on the first board and we still won 20-0. We won five matches, and a score of 87 VPs was just enough to take First place. None of us had expected that, but it became official very quickly.
And so on to the Final in Dundee.
Our drive down worked like clockwork, and we arrived in plenty time to stretch our legs and double-confirm that our team was in the Silver bracket. This was not the first Final in Dundee where my team was in the Silver bracket by virtue of one Scottish Master plus three Bronze bracket players. So, we knew what our target for the day was: The Silver Award. More on that later. First, some hands.
Anatomy of a Match
The format was a 12 team Thurner; 11 matches of four board; 44 boards in total. Lessurl and I gave ourselves the easy job of sitting all day. Out of 44 boards in a National final, there are bound to be some interesting ones, but the task I have set myself here is to find some interesting boards from the same match, in the hope of giving an insight into how a Silver team might go about attempting a good score. I have selected two; the matches against McCreadie and Campbell's team. I would also include the match against Wickens, but that means I'd accidentally have picked the three matches where we scored best, which I don't think it's the done thing to do.
First up is Board 21 against Stuart McCreadie's team. This is a very competent team. They knocked us out in Round 1 of the Scottish Cup Plate last year, although I felt that on the top of our game there might have been a different outcome. So I was keen to see what we could do here in the space of four boards.
I opened a weak 2 Spades; lessurl raised this to 4. This could either be with the intention to make, or the intention to stop East-West finding the right spot. Stuart now bid 5 Diamonds, which my partner doubled at his turn, and 5 Diamonds doubled was the contract. This is the cue for some nervous card-play, for if there are two things Stuart can do really well, it's judge an optimum contract, and play the cards. (Or to put it another way, the two best aspects of his game are bidding and card play. Hmm) As it was, there were no voids, and lessurl held three aces. We took the contract 1 down. We'd hoped for more than +100 when we had bid to a making Game, but as my partner pointed out, 4 Spades makes ten exactly, so that was the best we could do. He was proved right when our team-mates brought back +100 for beating 5 Spades. 5-0.
Board 22 was the big one.
John Lessurl Stuart Me
Pass 1S 2C 3D*
In 44 boards, our special defence to simple interference of our 1 of a Major opening was used twice. This was the second occasion, on the sixth board of the day. The 3 Diamonds bid shows a raise to 3 Spades with 4+ card support. I actually had a 5-5-3-0 shape, so when Lessurl bid 3 Spades, I calmly raised to 4. Let's look at it from Declarer's point of view:
Q 10 6 3 2
A K 10 8 2
10 8 2
---
A K 9 5 4
J 6
J 9 7 4
K 5
There is only one thing for it. Spades have to come down in two rounds, so that he can get ten tricks with two rounds of spades, five cross-ruffs, two hearts and a left over spade. That is exactly what happened; 4 Spades made.
The key thing about the 3 Diamonds bid is that it set us on our way to our optimum Contract, whilst cutting East-West out completely. Our team-mates found their way to 5 Clubs, got doubled, and made for a better-than-Double-Game-Swing. After two boards we were 20 IMPs to nothing ahead, and our opponents hadn't really done anything wrong.
Onto Board 23.
I hold:
A Q J 10
K 10 6
J 6 4
Q 5 3
I open 1 Club (Better Minor), and John overcalls 1 Heart. Lessurl bids 2 Diamonds, and I am happy to raise this twice in a competitive auction, so Lessurl plays in 4 Diamonds. What I did not know was that he had 5 Diamonds and 4 Spades, which meant that although he got ten tricks in diamonds, he had the same ten tricks in spades. A vulnerable game swing against us made the score 20-10.
On Board 24, I overcalled Stuart's opening with an Unusual 2NT. Although they found their 4 Heart spot, Lessurl had 5 Clubs and that was also the contract he raised to. 4 Hearts makes, but 5 Hearts doesn't, and when our team-mates semi-proved that by making 11 in 4 Hearts, we'd regained the ten IMPs, which for a 4 board match gave us a 20-0 VP victory. I think that shows how cut-throat a four board match can be. Our opponents certainly have cause to feel unlucky.
The second match I'm choosing to share is the match against Beryl Campbell's team. Again, this is purely because of the boards of interest and nothing to do with the score. Seriously, I've looked at the two matches we lost 20-0 and don't think they're worth writing up.
So, Board Five.
This board was interesting for what didn't happen as much as what did. The boards are on the Central District website, and board 5 is worth a look. For convenience I'll post East and West's hands:
Q J
Q J 9 7 4
A K 6 5
8 5
A 9 7 5 2
---
7 4
A K J 7 6 4
(West at the bottom)
At our table, East opened 1 Heart, and Lessurl (South) overcalled with a strong 1NT. From his point of view, this is entirely reasonable, but unfortunately for him, if they double this for penalties they can easily take 1100, as did happen to one unfortunate South. That is almost a good save against a slam in clubs. Every finesse works, as the 1NT bid suggests, but East-West are hard-pressed to find the slam. How do you proceed after the 1H-1NT start? With us, West bid 2 Clubs, and ended up just playing 3. She made 13 tricks for 190, and we thought we were quids in. Unfortunately, our (by now rather tired) team-mates were in the same contract and only made 11, so we were 0-1 down after this board. Most East-West players found Game, but none found the slam.
On Board 6, our opponents did not make the best of things, playing in 2 Hearts on a 5-0 fit. I'd best gloss over this one I think; I'm eager to get to Board 7, which we did with a 3-1 lead, thanks to our team-mates pushing to 4 Clubs, down 1.
Here is Board 7:
Lessurl and I unanimously agreed this was our favourite defensive board of the day.
Off the cuff, does it look like West makes 4 Spades here?
Deep Finesse will tell you the answer is "no", but the defence is not simple.
The credit goes to Lessurl for implementing the plan; I simply followed it.
I led the ace of hearts and another. Partner won with the King and fired back a heart. Declarer, alert to the danger of losing a 3rd trick to a ruff when the ace was outstanding, ruffed with the queen and immediately pulled a round of trumps: small to the King, beaten by the ace.
Lessurl now played another heart, a trick some defenders would not find owing to the taboo of conceding a ruff and discard. But he has worked out the best hope for the defence is that I have the ten of spades, after which, by ruffing (whatever West plays) with the ten, forcing the Jack, we've had a successful trump promotion.
I don't know if our team-mates got the same defence, but they were in 3 Spades making, for 6 IMPs and a 9-1 lead.
On Board 8, I held:
10 4 2
10 6
K Q 6 5 2
K 6 5
RHO opened 1 Diamond; I passed and LHO bid 2 Diamonds. Lessurl Doubles, which I know is takeout, but when RHO passes, I can't resist a penalty pass. Remember, we don't have a barometer; I think we're well ahead in the match and that 2 Diamonds Doubled is not a double into Game, therefore relatively safe.
I lead the Ten of Hearts, and see this dummy:
Q
A 5 3
J 10 9 8
J 10 4 3 2
Gulp. Declarer wins with the ace and plays the spade; lessurl covering with the King. She wins with the ace and now plays the queen of clubs. I pause for thought, and ultimately take the wrong option, cashing my King, fearing the Chinese Finesse. I give partner his King of hearts. Now there is nothing else to do but bide our time as Declarer cross-ruffs in spades and clubs, but with two diamonds left in dummy, she ruffs a club with the 4. I can win with the six, exit with the King, and ruff back in, draw the last trump from Declarer and dummy, and cross to partner's hand to beat the contract by one. Our team mates beat 2 Spades, and we collected another 4 IMPs; 16 VPs.
We scored up our eleven matches, winning five. I was pretty sure that was enough to win the Silver bracket - mainly because we were the only Silver team in the Final. I think, given the field, we did at least earn it. Not only did we get 5 wins in the Final, we qualified in the first place. I was dreading losing every match; it would have been very embarrassing to collect "Silver" then.
Target achieved, I feel. I went home with a 40p profit for the day, another "Silver Team Award" to go with the Men's Team's Silver in 2010, and a happy team. It was especially good going given that the qualifier was our team-mates' first ever game together, and the Final was their second. The pressure was off in terms of gain; but it was on in terms of deserving. I think we all enjoyed testing ourselves against the best, and giving a good account of ourselves as the only team from the North. Hence, I make no apologies for the cheesy title! :-)
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