It is of course a fun and friendly tournament, and I think most people are glad just to have a bit of bridge and some sort of socialising. But I've been thinking about the scoring system, and it means you are rewarded for being in high scoring matches. A flat board is no use to either team. That's perfect for myself and my partner of last night, Phil Moon. Like me, Phil is an optimistic bidder, and he rarely misses either a slam or a sacrifice.
Our best result was on the final board, where I had a really nice hand for my pre-empt and didn't mind being doubled:
West opened 1♣ and East correctly bid 1♠, showing the major. I had the big South hand. I have the strength for 2♥ but opposite a passed partner bid an immediate 4♥. West has an easy 4♠ bid. Phil then found the winning bid of 5♥. East doubled this pretty quickly, although actually she knows about double fit and might have thought about bidding on. West thought for much longer then 5♥x was passed out.
The defence took two Spades then lead a Club ruffed in hand. From my perspective as declarer, if I can avoid any trump losers I'll make the contract. If either hand has a singleton King then laying down the ♥A works, but if it's specifically West with a singleton Jack then I need to lead the ♥Q from dummy. I considered that was more likely, so crossed to dummy to lead the Queen. You can see that on this layout it still didn't work, but still saved a trick compared to starting with the ♥A.
5♥x-1 felt like a good score. In 4♠ the defence have only two Diamond tricks, plus perhaps a Club ruff. Indeed 4♠ was left in at the other table and made, so we gained 11 IMPs.
Our other high level adventures both involved us bidding on to slam after one partner had made a natural 3NT bid. This is always tricky - is 4NT Blackwood, quantitative, or to play? In the end our 6♦ went down and our 6♠ made, for more IMPs exchanged.
The final score was a narrow win by 43 to 34.
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