European Youth Teams Championship - Match 6 vs Norway

Last night we were treated to a Pub Quiz, with 36 teams from across the bridge teams and coaches. I was curious how the questions would be fair for a European audience, but in fact the bearded quizmaster did a good job. There was a whole round naming the 10 post downloaded Apps last year, of which I'd heard of all of them except Capcut, which the kids apparently use for editing videos on Tik-Tok.

To prevent our team having an illegal seven members I ditched the Thistly Unicorns (Scotland U26) and joined Valentine's Day (Scotland U31). I was right about what country Malala Yousafzai is from, but wrong about the first city to host the Winter and Summer Olympics.

After a challenging music round neither team troubled the podium, with Unicorns 14th and Valentine's 6th. Most of the top teams were Dutch and I think some Latvians won.

At one point the plan was that I come to Eindhoven along with my children, or at least the older one. Zoe is 6 and understands playing cards and games with tricks, but it might have been a struggle keeping her entertained all week.

What both children would definitely have enjoyed is the breakfast. As well as all the pastries and hot food next to the cereals are six little jars of things to sprinkle on top - banana chips, cranberries, toasted cranberries and three types of seed. I also appreciate this and plan to be at breakfast for the full 7am-10am window today. Today following the lead of an Italian child I tried a latte macchiato from the coffee machine - not bad but the lack of fresh milk ruins the taste.

Today we have Norway up first, then a big match against England, and finally Croatia. Three nonzero scores would be most welcome!

As an appetiser for today's action here are two slam hands from our remarkable turnaround last night against Estonia

First Michael (West) and Donald (East) bid 6♥ here. This was a usual result in that 15 out of 18 East-West pairs got to 6♥, although they didn't all have to cope with a 3♠ opening from North.

Then, as if they could telepathically hear me writing that we don't bid enough slams Jack (North) and Lydia (South) found themselves in 6♠ here, after South opened 2NT and North drove to slam.

You can see that it depends on the Diamond finesse, which fails, and the Estonian declarer in 6♠ duly went one off. He had a chance to make it though - after the Jack of Hearts lead won by the Ace Donald switched to a Club (the nine). Although this in theory gives declarer a chance to make it Donald was correct in thinking declarer will always go up with the Ace. One off.

When Lydia's declared 6♠ the defence started the same way; a Heart to the Ace and Club return. She also went up with the Ace of Clubs, and after drawing trumps discarded two Diamonds from hand on dummy's Hearts. She then lead the Nine of Diamonds, which West failed to cover so she could throw a Club. 6♠= and a 17 IMP swing to Scotland! 

Now on to the Norway match. Every morning at breakfast I go over our defence to Multi 2D. I'll be doing it again tomorrow after this one. 

The Norwegian North opened 2♦, showing a weak two in either major. South duly bid 2♥, pass or correct. At this point it's West's turn and you can see that 2♠ works rather well - in fact on a lucky layout you can take 11 tricks just losing a Heart and a Club. Although West might not expect to make game it's a good hand with a good five card Spade suit so has to bid.

However, we passed out 2♥ and that was a swing to Norway who made 2♥= and 3♠+1 at the other table.

Scoring in bridge is not straightforward. First of all the number of tricks is converted to points. Then the points get converted to IMPs, and finally the IMPs to Victory Points. Because of the way the IMP table works it's efficient to have two disasters on the same board - that way you lose about 15 IMPs in one go rather than 10 IMPs and another 10 IMPs. That is the only comfort I can find from this expensive board below:
 

At favourable vulnerability South opened 4♠. This overbid would be fine if partner had already passed, but here led to North getting carried away. He expected much better Spades (in fact he probably needs South to have ♠AKQ which is quite a big ask), and pushed on to 6♠.

Here North bid on and you can see our trump suit is rather weak. Declarer played trumps the right way (low to the King) so on this layout lost an impressive four trump tricks for 6♠-3. 

I told the team to experiment and here we have paid for two lessons: don't pre-empt with a bad suit when partner is unpassed, and don't expect a miracle hand from partner's pre-empts.

The good news is that, with four trump losers, the more normal contract of 4♠ ought to also fail, for just a small loss on the board. 

However, the Norwegian South took a different view and only opened 2♠ which worked out well as it tempted us into the auction. Our West doubled, and North was all over it. He redoubled, and East escaped to 3♣, also doubled. This went six off for 1700. 

I don't think either of East-West did anything wrong, although perhaps they weren't fully aware that South's 2♠ opening showed a decent weak two. I still think West's double is OK, and East's rescue to 3♣ is OK.

So two bad scores but we 'only' lose 18 IMPs on the board.

Combined with many other losses this was a 20-0.

Round 6 Victory Points: 0
Total so far: 12.14 VPs (? place)

Next up - England on Vugraph (watch it on Bridge Base!)

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