Sunday, 22 November 2020

Warming up

Before our first league match next Wednesday Anna and I had another go at the Saturday night SBU pairs. There are some very good pairs playing, but you also get given a few gifts (and we give plenty too).

On the very first board Anna and I defended 3NT in such a way to concede 12 tricks, when at every other tables 9 tricks was the limit. That means W we were at least three tricks worse than every other pair in defence. Some even defeated 3NT; we conceded 3NT+3. Fortunately (as I discovered at the end of the round), it was cross-IMPs rather than matchpoints, so it was only a bad score and not a zero.

We also seem to do badly on the first board. And the first match in fact. After that we recovered, with some good defence steady bidding (meaning I underbid and we missed some slams, but so did everyone else). The hand below was a missed opportunity:

I sat West. North opened 1♣, passed round to me. Rather than let it get passed out I bid 1♠. This seems the obvious bid, but I was slightly nervous as on the hand before when I did that Anna raised me straight to game (which made, to my surprise). But this time Anna just made a raise to 2♠ and there I played.

The chances look good. Clubs and Spades should be onside, leading me losing possibly just little as one Heart, two Diamonds and one Club loser. I got the ♣K lead.

My first thought was to duck the opening lead, thus creating a finesse position (North surely holds the ♣Q too). That will put North off continuing Clubs. But instead I played the ♣A of course, then had to lose six tricks.

Overall we finished on +26 IMPs for 5th out of 56 pairs.

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