Saturday, 19 November 2022

SBU Bronze League Division 2

I found myself involved with the Junior team again last Wednesday, with old friend Phil Moon. Playing with an irregular partner you tend to be a bit more straight-forward with your bidding, but I could maybe have done a bit more here:

I have the nice 5-5 hand and opened 1♥ (higher of two five-card suits). When it came back round to me I was worth 3♦. I think we are game forced now, after Phil has shown 10+ and I've shown a good opener. So Phil's 3♥ should be stronger than 4♥, and he does indeed have a good hand. I should bid 3♠ now, a fairly safe cuebid (Hearts is obviously trumps, and Spades obviously not natural). Showing a Spade control is exactly what Phil needs to here (as he fears two Spades losers), and maybe then we'd get to 6♥.

Assuming you get the expected Spade lead, making 12 tricks comes down to guessing Diamonds. On my table I got it wrong, playing Diamonds from the top, for 4♥+1. Though I like to think if I was playing the slam I'd have investigated a bit more before committing, and on playing a Club to the Ace would see East split (showing King-Queen) after which I could play West for those missing Diamond points.

On the other table, after a shorter auction (1♥-3♥-4♥) they got a Diamond lead so made 12 tricks. So we actually lost 1 IMP. Or rather, because I'd accidentally set up this Teams Match as matchpoint scoring, we scored 0% (I later went through each board fixing it, and we won 52-42).

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