European Youth Teams Championship - Match 2 vs Hungary

I'm pleased to say our team is up to maximum strength after Lydia arrived this afternoon, 20 minutes before her first round match. She was greeted with this board, which produced a few different outcomes:

The full auction is lost in time, but we know that at some point West bid 2♣ and East ended up bidding 3♣. South greedily doubled this and it went off three. 

On the other table Donald and Michael got to a difficult 4 Spades, which went narrowly one off. So overall the board cost us 11 IMPs.

After this things settled down, and I dared to look at the scores for this match half-way through and we were nearly drawing, mostly thanks to picking up a tremendous 13 IMPs on this board.

3NT fails as West can lead a Heart, setting up the suit for when East gets back in, or even a Spade, setting up 5 tricks for the defence. 5♣ is unbeatable though. 

In our earlier match against Sweden we were guilty of playing a hand in 5♦ with two balanced hands where 3NT was clearly better, and afterwards talked about when you would ever want to play in 5 of a minor. "Only with very distributional hands", I said. So I'd like to take credit for the team's decision to play this one in 5♣, except for the pair who bid it (well done Donald and Michael) weren't at that discussion.

This was the auction for Donald and Michael:

SOGOR	Donald	SZABO	Michael
W	N	E	S
-	3♣	3♥	3NT
4♥	4♠	-	5♣
-	-	-

North (Donald) opened 3♣, East bid 3♥, South (Michael) bid 3NT, West 4♥, North 4♠, South 5♣, making!

I like Donald's 3♣ opening even with the four Spades, though it is very much a maximum hand (two Aces and a void). Michael's 3NT bid is excellent - if partner has the ♣AK as he might well at this vulnerability then he can count 9 tricks, and expects a safe Spade lead. Once they get to 4♥ it would be nice to penalise it (at least two off), but I can understand Donald bidding 4♠, then it's obvious for Michael to correct back to 5♣.

Donald got a lead of Ace of Hearts, which meant he only needed to ruff one Spade and the play was easy.

After this excitement we slipped a bit and lost the match 40-22, translating to a 15-5 VP loss. Which I'm counting as a win. 

That's all the bridge for today, three more matches tomorrow.

Round 2 Victory Points: 5.6
Total so far: 5.6 VPs (17th place)

Table here.