Resulting

The school bridge club that I look after has come on leaps and bounds, as we've been meeting twice a week this term. The focus has been on play and defence and I've left the bidding to be natural, only emphasising the value of the game bonus.

We've had a couple of three-board Team's Matches, which is the first time I've been able to get anyone interested in scoring. More importantly, I was able to introduce the notion of resulting, which is when you decide what people should have done based on unknowable factors. For example, saying "I should have bid 4♥" just because 4♥ happens to make on a lucky layout.

In our match I was impressed that on all three boards reasonable contracts were reached on both tables, despite the lack of bidding sophistication. This was the one that decided the match:

Board 3 Dealer: S	North ♠ 7 ♥ J974 ♦ T ♣ AK96432
West ♠ 4 ♥ Q32 ♦ K9862 ♣ QJT5	8 8 11 13	East ♠ KQT965 ♥ T85 ♦ AQ74 ♣
	South ♠ AJ832 ♥ AK6 ♦ J53 ♣ 87

On one table South opened 1♠, West made a 2♦ overcall, North bid Clubs and after a good competitive auction ended up in 5♣. When this came round to West she doubled. The kids love doubling, and tend to do it far too often, but I think this time she had her bid.

In 5♣x declarer ended up losing two trump tricks, along with a Diamond and a Heart. It is possible to avoid losing two Clubs with an early finesse, and you might avoid a Heart loser with some fancy footwork, but that's beyond us at the moment and the result was 5♣x-2. On the other table North played a sedate 3♣= for a big gain on the hand.

Afterwards North was roundly blamed for overbidding in getting to 5♣. However, if the trumps had split 2-2 he would have made it. So that was my lesson for the day - just because a contract fails it doesn't mean it's a bad contract.