Wanderers vs Lyndoch

After last week's warm up at Buchanan Martin and I took to the table again for a Glasgow League match against Lyndoch. This being our third time playing together we had developed a reasonable system of 15-17 NT, 5 card majors, Puppet Stayman, basically everything I'm unfamiliar with.

On the first few hands I felt very warm but also shaking with the cold and made repeated pre-empts. At one point, when asked, Martin said "he's probably got a reasonable hand as he's vulnerable". But I didn't have a reasonable hand at all.

When I was dealer with the West hand below I was also vulnerable and a little too weak, but weighed in anyway. The auction is best done as a description: they competed to 3♦ and Martin doubled. I trusted that after my pre-empt his double was penalties and passed. They ran to 3♥ and he doubled, they tried 3♠ and he doubled, and were finally back in 4♦. At this point I doubled as Martin had run out of double cards, and by now I was feeling pretty confident it was going down.

W N E S Danny N Martin S 3♣ x - 3♦ - - x - - 3♥ x - - 3♠ x 4♦ x - - -

I was pleased they'd finished with Diamonds as trumps, as I had a clear lead; the ♥J. Martin won two rounds of Hearts then returned the ♥2, as a signal for a Club ruff. We took the first six tricks then the ♦K to come for 4♦x-4 and +1100. In aggregate this is a huge score, and is actually one of the reasons I don't like aggregate as a few hands can dominate the scores.

Luckily our opponents were experienced enough to take this in their stride and got right back into it, beating us on a series of marginal games. Towards the end of the evening I was getting rather tired, and was quite unprepared for this big contract:

Danny N Martin S W N E S 1♦ 2♥ 6♦ - - -

I opened 1♦, which is the agreed bid in our system. This is the only distribution where I could have only three Diamonds. North made a weak jump overcall in Hearts and Martin thought for just a few seconds before popping down 6♦. North lead the ♥J and dummy came down.

This was only my second hand of the evening and I was really hoping it would be easy. But there was work to do. My hand is not very suitable, with only three Diamonds and wasted ♥AK. I have a certain loser in the trump Ace and must therefore avoid losing to the ♦J.

After a considerable pause I realised there was also no way I could get rid of all my Clubs on the Hearts, so I would need the Club finesse. Assuming the Club finesse was working, and considering North's pre-empt, South was likely to have long Diamonds. So, I won the Heart lead in hand and crossed to dummy with a Spade, then followed my instinct by leading a Diamond to the Nine. This heldm and after that everything fell into place. After a few more long pauses, 6♦ was home.

In the end we won the match 9-7.

Matchpoints with Martin

As a warm up to next week's ur league match Martin Bateman and I played Matchpoint Monday at the Buchanan Bridge Club. It was a good night and we finished on about 56%.

I've two regrets. The first was not entering the score for the last two boards, which were therefore recorded as 'not played' and both pairs got 40%. This is particularly harsh on our opponents, for which they were two good boards. The three previous boards, which I did remember to score, were good for us. In my defence it was the end of the evening and I was tired.

My other regret is letting through this doubled contract. This is one of those where from declarer's perspective you can't believe your luck as you sit there and the defence do everything they can to help you. It was a debacle:

W N E S Martin Danny - 1♠ 3♣ 3♠ 4♣ - - x - 4♠ - - 5♣ x - - - -

South took a conservative view and passed her 12 count. West was less conservative and opened 1♠. I was sat East trying to remember the Bergen responses when North saved me by bidding a textbook 3♣. I settled for 3♠ and when 4♣ came back to me decided to double, based on my partner's opening bid and my ♥AK. Martin put us back to 4♠ but when they ended up in 5♣x I thought we'd done very well.

I was expecting us to take at least two Hearts and a Spade. I lead the ♥A for attitude, then immediately wished I'd lead the ♥K for count, as I didn't know whether another Heart was cashing. I switched to Spades, and here comes my second blunder. I boldly lead the ♠Q, to make it easier for partner if he had the suspected ♠AJ. Of course declarer covered with the King, promoting the Jack in his hand, and Martin then returned a Spade suspecting it was me who had lead from ♠QJ. A ruffing finesse in Diamonds later and declarer had 11 tricks and 100% of the matchpoints.