Saturday 22 May 2021

SBU Bronze League 6: HighSchoolOfGlasgow vs Buccaneers1

Since the Peggy Bayer junior internationals my secondary school team have been competing in a Wednesday night league on Bridge Base. As I am technically Bronze too I have always been on standby, but so far not been needed. This week with school exams we had only three so I offered to play (actually I offered to reschedule but the other team preferred to go ahead and play, obviously not very intimidated by the thought of playing me!)

I don't think having one experienced player makes a huge difference; certainly a lot less than an experienced pair would. I bid sensibly and made my contracts, but think actually most of the IMPs were generated at the other table.

This is a nice hand that my partner, michaelwk bid and played well:

We play a weak NT and four card majors. Michael's 1♠ bid nearly always shows five, but I still felt more comfortable replying 2♥. This is in theory 10+, which I think my hand is worth. The main reason I didn't support Spades was because I didn't know how high to bid - 2♠, 3♠ or 4♠? When Michael rebid 3NT (showing 15+ and a good Diamond stop) it was possible that he had a 4333 hand but I guessed not and corrected to 4♠.

When I saw his hand I was glad we were in 4♠ and not 3NT. Playing 3NT on a Diamond lead you win and take five Spades, but then have to lose the lead and end up losing four Diamonds and two Aces for 3NT-2.

4♠ looks easy but you have to be careful. Missing both the ♣A and ♦A you are going to have to lose the lead, probably twice, and if you do that after drawing trumps you might end up with lots of Diamond losers.

Fortunately, Michael got the ♦A lead which makes things easier. However, if you draw trumps you could still fail. If the defence duck Clubs and Hearts you can't get to dummy and end up still losing two Diamonds and two Aces. So at trick two Michael correctly started on the Hearts. This generates more tricks, and has to be done early while you still have trumps in dummy. He ended up making 4♠+1, just losing two Aces.

On the other table North bid a simple 2♠ after the 2♦ overcall, and South raised to 4♠. Our West (Harry) lead Ace and another Heart. This sets up dummy's Hearts, but once trumps are drawn he can't get to them. Declarer tried playing Hearts before drawing the last trump but our East (Al) ruffed in and played a Diamond through for 4♠-3, a big difference.

We won the match by a big margin and after two rounds are among the top teams in Division 7.

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