Peggy Bayer 2025 - Sunday #1

The team won against Wales last night to leave us with three wins (Wales, NI, Wales) and three losses (England, Ireland, EBU). The final column below are the current scores.

After six matches we are therefore in fourth place, about half a match behind Ireland in third. Today is a tough day kicking off with the England team, who we are playing as I write this. I sat in the playing area for the first couple of deals, where I saw a classic example of how expensive underbidding can be.

This is Board 2, from my memory:

NS vul E deal ♠ A K x x ♥ A T 9 x x ♦ x x ♣ A x ♠ Q x x ♥ J x x x ♦ K x ♣ x x x x 15 7 7 11 ♠ J x x ♥ K x ♦ Q J 9 x x ♣ J x x ♠ T x x ♥ Q x ♦ A T 9 x ♣ K Q x x

W N E S - 1♥ 2♦ - - 2♠ - - 3♦ - - -

Our North opened 1♥ followed by a very light 2♦ overcall from the young English gentleman sitting East. South has a 2NT bid, with 10+ points and a good stopper in Diamonds. In fact we looked at an almost identical hand this morning at breakfast, but maybe my team were too sleepy to take in my sage advice. 2♦ went round to North, who is not generally guilty of underbidding, and found a 2♠ bid.

South could now bid 3NT but passed. England bid on to 3♦, which went down five.

Although superficially it might feel like we have 'won' the board as we put them off five, it was non-vulnerable and undoubled so only +250 while everyone else was making 3NT with the North-South cards for +600.   

Here is a happier deal from yesterday:

In the match against Wales our East-West pair of Chris and Ailsa bid to the fine contract of 4S. You just lose one trump and two Hearts and claim the rest. Our North-South pair of Rachel and Niamh bid on to 5D. This should go one off, losing two Clubs and a trump Ace, but perhaps West kept trying to cash Spades, so 5D made, for a double game swing to Scotland.

Even if 5D goes off one it's still a good result. This is an example of a double-fit board, where both sides have big fits in two suits (reds for North-South, blacks for East-West) so make a lot of tricks. 

The live scores for our current match against England are thankfully not displaying, so let me recount the Speedball with a twist from last night. Although most people teamed up with someone from another country, I took this opportunity to play with Prajjwal from the Scotland U26 team, who I have never played a hand with.

We agreed a system of Five Weak Twos, or rather I suggested it and Prajjwal agreed. In the end our bidding was generally straightforward, and we frequently finished well within the 7 minutes allocated for the two boards. With bonuses for fast-play finishes we came 5th overall. 

Timon is a citizen of the World, and blends in wherever he goes

My only regrets were one hand I attempted to bid delicately, which inevitably ended in a bad 3NT duly punished by Laura (Scotland U26 captain) and her young English partner, and missing out on a potential squeeze through not paying enough attention. That was for the third overtrick in 3NT which isn't really the thing to worry about in Speedball, but it would have nice to impress my English opponent.

The bridge didn't finish until 1130 pm, another late night for me.