Yesterday I took twelve pupils from the HSOG bridge club on the train across town to face Hutcheson's Grammar School. This was the return match of the friendly we played last year. They beat us comfortably last time, but this time we prevailed. In the top match they narrowly beat us, and it was also close on the novices match, but a mismatch on the second match led to a comfortable win overall.
The match was very well organised, with just the right amount of boards (not many) and a decent break in between them for some sandwiches.
It was interesting watching the different standards. For example, on one hand I watched on the top table our pair bid to a solid 4♠ gaining when the other table stopped in an overly conservative 3♠+1. In 4♠ our declarer confidently won the opening lead, drew trumps, unblocked a suit, crossed to dummy, discarded a loser then took a losing finesse and claimed ten tricks.
On the third table things were much more unpredictable. My new players had moments of inspiration where they made thoughtful plays (e.g. overtaking a winner to get to dummy), but then also did inexplicable things (discarding an Ace). At one point I suffered the sensation that must be common to many bridge teachers of watching a new player set up a winner, thinking "he's done that well" only to see him neglect the winner as he hasn't realised it was high.
Our bridge club is much less developed than the Hutcheson's equivalent, and in the bidding the pupils rely more on instinct than counting points. I hope to introduce more accurate bidding and, more importantly, more thoughtful declarer play and defence in the future.
The IMP scoring (and in fact, any scoring), was new to several of them. The two boards below demonstrate it in action:
|
Looking at all four hands you would expect East-West to reach a contract in Hearts, and indeed that is what mostly happened. With his solid-looking Hearts West might get overboard, but the hand is flat and the defence have three Club winners along with a Spade, Diamond, and even a trump in North, so 7 tricks looks about right. In reality between 6 and 9 tricks were made when playing in Hearts. Two Wests instead played in NT.
In our match Tables 1 & 2 were paired, as were Tables 3 & 4, and Tables 5 & 6. The table below showed exactly what happened at each table, with all scores from our perspective:
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On Tables 1 and 2 our team made 1♥= on Table 1 for +80, but conceded 2NT= on Table 2 for -120. This lead to a 40 point loss overall on that board for that match, which translates to a 2 IMP loss (IMP lookup table here: https://www.bridgehands.com/I/IMP.htm). In the next match we conceded 100 on Table 3 going off in 1NT but gained spectacularly on Table 4 when our North decided he was worth a double of 4♥, and took it four off for 1100. The net 1000 point advantage lead to a 14 IMP gain. In the final match we lost points on both tables leading to an 8 IMP loss. So overall, across the whole match, that was a 4 IMP gain (all down to the big penalty on Table 4).
The next hand had a greater variety of contracts:
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Looking at all the hands East-West have a game in Spades, but that was bid only once. On the table I watched East played in NT, and although the defence got off to the best start in Hearts they somehow let declarer take a trick. But rather than go after the Spades, declarer then went for the short-term gain of cashing all her winners and finally finished minus one.
The table below shows the final results from the different matches (again from our perspective):
| Match 1 | Match 2 | Match 3 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First half | -13 | +21 | +7 | |
| Second half | +1 | +27 | +1 | |
| Total | -12 | +48 | +8 | HSOG win by 44 IMPs |
