Last night I played with Ted Black in a Matchpoint event at the Buchanan Bridge Club. It was a handicap pairs event, which meant that after the usual scoring each pair would be adjusted based on their previously accumulated masterpoints. In fact this time the handicapping didn't make any difference, as the winning pair won by nearly 20%. ]
It wasn't us, far from it, and in fact my featured board involves scoring 0% and a call to the director:
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East opened 1♣ and I had no trouble overcalling 1♦ with the South hand. West had a think then doubled showing the majors, and Ted made the obvious raise to 2♦. At this point East thought for a long time and then passed. I suppose he was thinking about either bidding Hearts or rebidding his strong Clubs. At this point I should bid 3♦ as South, to buy the contract. At the time I was well aware that I should bid 3♦, but tried to buy it on the cheap and passed. As we will see, this strategy backfired badly.
West kept going with 2♠, which East corrected back to 3♣. Now I bid the 3♦ I should have bid the round before, and West bid 4♣. I doubled, for various reasons none of which is particularly good.
I lead my Club and was briefly hopeful, but there are exactly three tricks for the defence leading to 4♣x=. The director was called at this point as East's long pause before passing 2♦ may have lead West to bid on. Is it obvious for West to compete to the four level opposite a partner who passed 2♦ with nothing to think about?
The director said he'd think about it but was later relieved of this duty as we withdrew our claim; it's a bit woolly for anything definite, though still annoying. Though perhaps it's mostly annoying as I doubled a making contract.
My second featured hand is against the runaway winners, Neil Wylie and Iain Liddell:
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I sat North as dealer with a poor eleven count. I decided to be prudent and pass, but then felt the need to catch up and overcall West's opening bid of 1♦. The opposition quickly got to 3NT and Ted dutifully lead my suit, kicking off with the ♥J. Needless to say, my suit was the very worst one to lead.
Dummy covered the ♥K and I took my ♥A and rapidly reassessed. It has been an evening of opponents running long suits in NT and I fully expected all six Diamonds to run - either declarer had the ♦Q or it would be finessed. Declarer also seemed to have at least three Heart tricks, bringing his total to at least nine.
So I found the bold switch of the ♠2. Declarer did the natural thing of playing the ♠J, so Ted took his Queen and returned a Spade to my Ace. It was now time for another rethink. Declarer still had all of his Diamonds and Hearts, plus maybe a Spade, so our only hope was a Club. I switched to Clubs and Ted took his Ace for the fourth and final defensive trick.
I had defended boldly and all of my assumption has been correct. For this we got another 0%.
The reason for the poor score was that the one other table in 3NT had gone down , and everywhere else East-West were playing in a part score. In fact with only 22 points between them East-West need a bit of help to make 3NT, so although we did well to take four tricks after the Heart lead, we were already doomed.
I think perhaps we were unlucky to get 0% there, but I can't really complain, as the unluckiest pair were surely Laurence & Sandy, the only ones to bid to this excellent 7♥, when everyone else, including us, stopped in 6♥:
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Although seven can be made, it requires an inspired Club finesse.
In our auction I opened 1♥ and Ted splintered with 3♠. Although I later found out we had all the keycards I was cautious and stopped in 6♥, as I was worried that with all the high trumps in dummy I wouldn't be able to ruff Spades and draw trumps (which turned out to be roughly true). I was also cautious as I was a bit too tired to investigate a grand slam, and the two-board Howell movement meant we always seemed to be running late and I felt quite pressed for time.
Not long after this I hit a low point by revoking to produce a minor penalty card (the ♥5). This allowed declarer to sneak a Heart past my known King and win unjustly with his ♥Q in dummy. It was painful to see, and a good reminder of the importance of always following suit when you can.
Our score of 51% was good enough for 4th before the handicap and 6th after it.
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