Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Team Buchanan vs Hamilton

This Glasgow league match started at 1930 to accommodate us and I just made it on time, after finding a parking space on Cadzow street. When I reassured the rest of them that John was arriving soon on the train there was general uproar: "The train?" but he got there in time to start.

In the first half we barely had any hands. In fact the strongest hand I had all night was 14 points. So lots of defending. Once when declarer in 2NT finessed I smoothly ducked my King, and the contract went down one. Afterwards John explained that if I just defended normally and took my King and returned his suit it would have gone two off.

This was a rare hand I got to play:



I opened the South hand 1H and rebid 2H. 

On seeing dummy it looks like I possibly have one loser in each suit. But when the lead was a Club, I thought I was going to take 10 tricks. Heart to the Ace revealed the bad news, and now as well as two Aces I now have three trumps to lose, which luckily I can afford as I'm only in 2♥.

I made 2♥= but possibly we should have been in game. Twice more we stayed low, once making 3♥= then 3♠+1, so maybe we were slightly underbidding.

Apart from that things went well. I got rather warm and might have been sweating a lot as one of the opponents tactfully said that I was very warm-blooded.

On the final hand the opponents were about to play 2♥, but I made a takeout double. The opponents were shortly in 5♥, which I felt obliged to double. Obviously it then made, for a bad finish of -550 points, but overall Team Buchanan had done enough to win the match 15-1.

 

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