Peggy Bayer 2023 - Round 3 Scotland vs England

I sat behind Jamie and Harry for this match. On the first board I saw England got into something of a mix-up (I think someone overcalled 1NT with 2NT, which their partner didn't expect), but got out of it in 3♥=. Lucky kids. On the second board Scotland badly overbid this hand:

Jamie		Harry
W	N	E	S
			1♣
2♠	-	3♠	-
4♠	-	-	-

After the English South opened 1♣ Jamie made a weak jump overcall of 2♠. You have four Hearts on the side but I'm OK with this. Harry made a standard raise with three cards. As our bidding gets more sophisticated and we move from all raises being natural, to using cuebids for raises, there's bound to be some confusion, and this was the case here. Jamie raised 3♠ to 4♠.

This is a bad idea as Harry might have had nothing but a few trumps. Here he has a decent hand, but unfortunately his strength in Clubs is opposite the void. The defence took two Diamonds then East South made the strange switch to a low Club and North played low. At this point the contract is actually makeable. You win the Club cheaply in dummy, and rattle off three more Clubs, throwing all your Hearts. North ruffs, but if you guess trumps right you hold your losers to two Diamonds and one Spade. This didn't happen though and it went two off.

At the other table East-West played 3♠-1, so a small loss on the board.

We lost the match by 28 IMPs to lose 4-16 in Victory Points and stay second behind England.