European Youth Teams Championship - Match 8 vs Croatia

For our last match of the day we had the excellent Croatia team. I watched them in the first round and was impressed by their composure. Halfway through a hand the declarer paused, put down the screen separating the players, and asked a few questions of his screen-mate. He then lead out trumps in just the right way to pick up a singleton Jack and made the contract exactly. That shows some experience; identifying the crunch point of the hand, stopping to confirm the opponent's bidding and carding agreements, then deducing the winning line.

This looked like it was going to be another 20-0, up until we briefly rallied near the end. This was a tough board:

On one table our South (Michael) opened 1♣ and West overcalled 1♠. North (Donald) wasn't messing around and bid 5♣. East had a think "for about five minutes" before doubling. 5♣x has good trumps but not much else going for it and went three off for minus 800.

Afterwards Donald blamed himself for the bad result and said he spent a while regretting it. Of course 5♣ is a terrible bid, vulnerable and with no shape. However, East was surely very close to bidding 5♥, and certainly that's what I might have done. That would have been a much nicer result for us.

On the other table Jack and Lydia stopped in 3♥. This seems conservative but is actually the limit of the hand; South cashed one Club then switched to a trump and declarer is stuck with just nine tricks.

My last featured hand is a good example of a well-judged pre-empt, unfortunately by Croatia:

After South (Michael) opened 1♦ West weighed in with an immediate 4♠. This hits a very unfavourable East hand, with nothing in your suits and lots of defence in the other suits. However, when North doubles the 4♠ South bid on with 5♥, corrected to 6♦ by North. This is doomed, but note the careful pass by East - doubling 6♦ could give away the trump position.

Afterwards Michael asked me if the double of 4♠ was takeout or penalties. I don't think he wanted my vague answer, that at that high level it just shows a good hand, and it should normally be passed out unless you have a very distributional hand. 

On the other table our West (Jack) overcalled 2♠ and North had an easy 3NT bid, making.

This was indeed a heavy loss, 77-20 IMPs. We do not leave empty-handed though.

Round 8 Victory Points: 0.5

Total VPS so far: 17.32 (17th place)

Although the team have not been playing a huge amount of bridge, I sense there has been some fatigue, and the mental effort is perhaps taking it's toll. Even though some of our pairs are more experienced than others I have been roughly rotating our three pairs. Today I experimented giving Jamie and Tamsin a longer rest, and they were clearly rejuvenated as in the evening they were keen to practice some slam bidding. I look forward to seeing what they produce tomorrow morning against Netherlands!

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