Wanderers vs Lyndoch

After last week's warm up at Buchanan Martin and I took to the table again for a Glasgow League match against Lyndoch. This being our third time playing together we had developed a reasonable system of 15-17 NT, 5 card majors, Puppet Stayman, basically everything I'm unfamiliar with.

On the first few hands I felt very warm but also shaking with the cold and made repeated pre-empts. At one point, when asked, Martin said "he's probably got a reasonable hand as he's vulnerable". But I didn't have a reasonable hand at all.

When I was dealer with the West hand below I was also vulnerable and a little too weak, but weighed in anyway. The auction is best done as a description: they competed to 3♦ and Martin doubled. I trusted that after my pre-empt his double was penalties and passed. They ran to 3♥ and he doubled, they tried 3♠ and he doubled, and were finally back in 4♦. At this point I doubled as Martin had run out of double cards, and by now I was feeling pretty confident it was going down.

W N E S Danny N Martin S 3♣ x - 3♦ - - x - - 3♥ x - - 3♠ x 4♦ x - - -

I was pleased they'd finished with Diamonds as trumps, as I had a clear lead; the ♥J. Martin won two rounds of Hearts then returned the ♥2, as a signal for a Club ruff. We took the first six tricks then the ♦K to come for 4♦x-4 and +1100. In aggregate this is a huge score, and is actually one of the reasons I don't like aggregate as a few hands can dominate the scores.

Luckily our opponents were experienced enough to take this in their stride and got right back into it, beating us on a series of marginal games. Towards the end of the evening I was getting rather tired, and was quite unprepared for this big contract:

Danny N Martin S W N E S 1♦ 2♥ 6♦ - - -

I opened 1♦, which is the agreed bid in our system. This is the only distribution where I could have only three Diamonds. North made a weak jump overcall in Hearts and Martin thought for just a few seconds before popping down 6♦. North lead the ♥J and dummy came down.

This was only my second hand of the evening and I was really hoping it would be easy. But there was work to do. My hand is not very suitable, with only three Diamonds and wasted ♥AK. I have a certain loser in the trump Ace and must therefore avoid losing to the ♦J.

After a considerable pause I realised there was also no way I could get rid of all my Clubs on the Hearts, so I would need the Club finesse. Assuming the Club finesse was working, and considering North's pre-empt, South was likely to have long Diamonds. So, I won the Heart lead in hand and crossed to dummy with a Spade, then followed my instinct by leading a Diamond to the Nine. This heldm and after that everything fell into place. After a few more long pauses, 6♦ was home.

In the end we won the match 9-7.

Matchpoints with Martin

As a warm up to next week's ur league match Martin Bateman and I played Matchpoint Monday at the Buchanan Bridge Club. It was a good night and we finished on about 56%.

I've two regrets. The first was not entering the score for the last two boards, which were therefore recorded as 'not played' and both pairs got 40%. This is particularly harsh on our opponents, for which they were two good boards. The three previous boards, which I did remember to score, were good for us. In my defence it was the end of the evening and I was tired.

My other regret is letting through this doubled contract. This is one of those where from declarer's perspective you can't believe your luck as you sit there and the defence do everything they can to help you. It was a debacle:

W N E S Martin Danny - 1♠ 3♣ 3♠ 4♣ - - x - 4♠ - - 5♣ x - - - -

South took a conservative view and passed her 12 count. West was less conservative and opened 1♠. I was sat East trying to remember the Bergen responses when North saved me by bidding a textbook 3♣. I settled for 3♠ and when 4♣ came back to me decided to double, based on my partner's opening bid and my ♥AK. Martin put us back to 4♠ but when they ended up in 5♣x I thought we'd done very well.

I was expecting us to take at least two Hearts and a Spade. I lead the ♥A for attitude, then immediately wished I'd lead the ♥K for count, as I didn't know whether another Heart was cashing. I switched to Spades, and here comes my second blunder. I boldly lead the ♠Q, to make it easier for partner if he had the suspected ♠AJ. Of course declarer covered with the King, promoting the Jack in his hand, and Martin then returned a Spade suspecting it was me who had lead from ♠QJ. A ruffing finesse in Diamonds later and declarer had 11 tricks and 100% of the matchpoints.

Pre-season warm up

Last week I had the pleasure of playing bridge twice. The first was the pre-season social for the Wanderers team, who play in Division 1 of the Glasgow League. I played in a new partnership with Ronald Gaffin. We had 'the run of the cards' and did quite well.

My only regret was Board 1 with a trump suit of ♠AKTxx opposite ♠xxx. I could afford one loser and there were complications in the other suits so I thought it simplest to play the Ace-King. But in fact the winning play was to insert the Ten, which I nearly did as it just felt West might have lots of Spades.

The highlight was not bridge related, a delicious tiramisu provided by our host John DiMambro.

On Monday John and I played together at the Buchanan club. There was early excitement, as I picked pick up the monster hand of

♠AKQ642 ♥AKQJ6 ♦JT ♣-.

What do you open the bidding with? Well it doesn't matter, as partner opens ahead of you, with 1♥!

My response was rather unusual. I bid 3♠, which was correctly alerted as a splinter. I'd mis-sorted my hand, leaving one Spade on it's own. I saw that singleton Spade and bid the splinter. In the end it didn't matter, as we quickly got to 7♥ when opener showed both missing Aces.

The theme of the evening seemed to be the opponents opening with a weak bid, passed round to John who passed or doubled, leaving me with a decision. This was a tricky one for both of us:

W N E S Danny John 3♥ - - x - 3♠ - - -

West opened a strong 3♥ and I passed as North. East passed and South had a decision. John went for double. I have a good suit but was trying to do the sensible thing so went for a conservative 3♠.

East predictably lead a Heart and there was the potential for lots of tricks, or not very many if I lost trump control. I ruffed and played two top Spades and was glad to see them split 3-2. I cashed the ♣K and now have loads of Clubs winners with just one top trump outstanding. I'm pleased to say I was careful and drew that last trump to prevent them ruffing in at the right time and cutting me off from dummy.

In the end we got 3♠+2 which scored slightly above average, beating the pairs defeating 4♥ but losing to the pair in 5♣.

On my other featured board I went into a deep think about a bidding decision which in the end I never had to make:

W N E S Danny John 3♥ - - - -

As before West opened 3♥, passed round to South. I was North wondering what I would do if partner doubled. The options are 3♠, 4♠, 3NT or passing the double. In the end John passed it out and we defended 3♥-4. East informed his partner afterwards: "It's best to have two of the top three honours for a pre-empt".

+200 scored below average as several pairs were making 4♠.

In the end we finished on a decent 62%.

Sole Bay & Halewsorth

This last week Anna and I were lucky enough to play at two different bridge clubs. The first was a return to the Sole Bay Bridge Club in Southwold, where we'd last visited in 2016.

We arrived promptly for the Wednesday evening game and made up an extra half table. Anna warned me "It's a while since I've played" but actually it went pretty smoothly. I bid a bold slam early on then got a bit lucky on the deal below.

No one is vulnerable, East deals:

♠ A K Q ♥ x x ♦ x x x x ♣ K x x x ♠ x ♥ K Q T x ♦ A K Q x ♣ A J x x 12 19 6 3 ♠ T x x ♥ A x ♦ T x x x ♣ Q x x x ♠ J x x x x x ♥ J x x x x ♦ J ♣ x

W N E S Anna Danny - - 1♥ - - 1♠ - - -

I picked up the weak South hand with 6-5 in the majors. I decided that if East opened I'd make a Michaels Cue Bid, as that was the one thing we'd discussed on the walk over. But when East passed I decided I couldn't really open a Weak Two, so passed. West opened 1♥ which came round to me. I should maybe pass, as I have five trumps in defence, but I felt like bidding so bid 1♠.

West thought for a bit then passed (they played penalty doubles so she couldn't double for takeout), and Anna sitting North made a disciplined pass with her excellent trump support.

Wehn dummy came down I realised I'd hit the jackpot; there should be six trumps and assuming the ♣K was onside that would make the seven tricks I needed. In fact I made nine, with a Heart ruff and the ♥J becoming high leading to 90% for 1♠+2. A couple of East-West pairs made a very dubious 3NT;, which makes as the Spades are blocked.

We finished with two bad boards (Doug making 3NT+3 against us, twice), but did enough to finish 1st with 65%.

The next Friday we went to the afternoon session at Halesworth Bridge Club. It was a friendly informal atmosphere which perhaps lulled us from maximum sharpness. This time we finished 3rd with 59%. Featured below is an early setback where, unusually, both Anna and I undervalued our hands and missed the game.

No one vulnerable, South deals:

♠ A T 7 3 ♥ T 9 7 6 4 3 ♦ K 6 ♣ 6 ♠ J 8 4 2 ♥ Q 5 ♦ T 9 8 7 ♣ J 9 5 7 4 16 13 ♠ Q 9 6 ♥ - ♦ A Q J 4 2 ♣ A K T 4 3 ♠ K 5 ♥ A K J 8 2 ♦ 4 3 ♣ Q 8 7 2

W N E S Danny Anna 1NT - 2♣* 3♣ 3♥ - - -

Anna chose to open the South hand 1NT, which sometimes works well but backfired here. I had the weak North hand and bid 2♣ as a weak version of Stayman, intending to correct a 2♦ response to 2♥. East thought for a while then bid 3♣, over which Anna bid 3♥. I re-evaluated as North. Only seven points, but with partner having four Hearts and opponents bidding Clubs it looks pretty good, so maybe I should have bid 4♥. But my general strategy was not to bid marginal games so I passed out 3♥, which of course made 10 tricks.

Turns out the rest of the field didn't think it was such a marginal game. Almost all of them got to 4♥, so 3♥+1 was worth only 17%.

At the break we had a cracking cup of tea and Anna took the chocolate Hob-Nob and fig roll.

Aggregate at Buchanan

I was lucky enough to get a game with John Di Mambro at the Buchanan Bridge Club this week. After several attempts to arrange it we settled on the Monday night aggregate. For a one-off game we had a fairly detailed system card but needless to say none of it came up, and as it happened all we needed was 5 card majors, strong NT, standard attitude in defence.

There were a couple of times when I was glad it was aggregate, as I didn't have to worry too much about the very best defence to get the contract two down. Once I took five minutes thinking about if I could make an overtrick with a squeeze, decided I couldn't, then realised we still had one board to play and apologised to the opponents for taking so long.

This was the most pleasing board, a 16-point game that I didn't expect to make:

Danny John W N E S 1♦ 1♥ 2♦ 2♥ 2♠ 4♥ - - 4♠ - 5♦ - - -

I've just been teaching the pupils at school about bidding two-suited hands and so was delighted to be able to pick up the North hand and show the shape by bidding Diamonds-Spades-Spades. Not surprisingly we ended up in 5♦ rather than 4♠. East lead a top Heart then switched to a low Club to West's King. She tried another Heart, which I ruffed.

My first thought was "we've only two losers" and my next thought was "how do I get rid of all my Spades?". I could ruff all four in dummy, but that would require Spades to split 4-4 (to prevent an over-ruff). This would effectively be a cross-ruff, making the Ace of Spades and ten trump tricks. This line could be beaten on a trump lead, but was still an option for me.

After West won the ♣K I saw another option. Presuming that East hadn't underlead the ♣A it must be with West, meaning I could take a ruffing finesse in Clubs and set them up. I checked I had enough entries, then drew trumps in two rounds (if they're 3-0 I'm down), ruffed a Spade, lead the ♣J (covered) then crossed back to dummy with a final Spade ruff.

It's only occurred to me now that it might be best for West to win the first Club trick with the Ace, disguising the location of the ♣K, but in fact on this layout everything is nice for declarer.

On the other tables there was another Diamond game and one pair managed 5♦x+1 (on the lead of ♥AK I think). Mostly East-West made nine or ten tricks in Hearts.

Overall we finished mid-table, missing a couple of 50-50 slams and bidding one that went down.

Gilmorehill vs Maccabi

For my next league match I had another new partner, and agreed a simple system with Martin. We had a poorish start, the low point being this agonising decision I got wrong:

♠ Q 7 4 3 2 ♥ 8 7 3 ♦ 6 3 ♣ A J 6 ♠ A 8 5 ♥ J ♦ A Q J 8 5 4 ♣ Q 8 2 7 14 16 3 ♠ K J 9 6 ♥ A Q 9 ♦ K ♣ K 7 5 4 3 ♠ T ♥ K T 6 5 4 2 ♦ T 9 7 2 ♣ T 9

W N E S Martin Danny 1♦ - 2♣ - 3♦ - 6♦ - - -

West opened a precision 1♦, which is limited to about 15 points. He then rebid 3♦ and East went into a very long think. He had faith in his partner's bid and chose 6♦. West wisely made no comment.

On the first trick Martin found the excellent lead of a Heart and declarer finessed, my King winning. When declarer had to follow suit with the ♥J it was clear that he now had two Heart discards in dummy, and I needed to get the right switch. Could I find my partner's Ace and defeat the slam?

I came close to leading a Spade, but finally settled for a safe trump lead, reasoning that gave almost no chance of declarer making it. However, the spade finesse is onside and furthermore North is squeezed into discarding Spades, so only one finesse is needed for four Spade tricks, and all three Clubs can be discarded. Declarer took full advantage of my generosity and the favourable position and brought home the slam.

At the half way point we were down about 1000 points on each table. Certainly our opponents had got the better of us so far. Captain John Di Mambro reminded us that at this stage in the league the match was effectively a free shot. We took this advice to Heart and after the break brought in consecutive 6NT slams. Both times I began a Puppet Stayman sequence then realised I didn't know the continuations so had a punt. It would have been three slams, but I underbid on this one:

♠ K ♥ T 5 3 ♦ Q 9 6 ♣ Q J 9 8 6 3 ♠ Q J 7 ♥ J 6 4 ♦ K T 4 3 ♣ T 7 2 8 7 10 15 ♠ T 8 ♥ A K Q 9 8 2 ♦ J 8 7 5 2 ♣ - ♠ A 9 6 5 4 3 2 ♥ 7 ♦ A ♣ A K 5 4

W N E S Martin Danny 1♥ 4♠ - - -

East opened 1♥ and I bid an immediate 4♠. When I saw dummy I realised that 4♠ had excellent play, but that 6♣ was even better. On Ronald's table he began with a double from the South hand, and after partner jumped to 3♣ East-West competed but he was able to play in 6♣.

My thinking was that if I double I let East-West into the auction, and I knew by this point in the evening that they certainly weren't afraid to compete. They could have found a cheap sacrifice, especially if they find the double fit. With my values in South I could well have ended up doubling 5♥ off two, which is actually worse than making a vulnerable 4♠.

We defended quite nicely sometimes. My declarer play was rather shaky but here's one that did go nicely:

♠ Q J T ♥ J 8 7 ♦ 4 2 ♣ J 7 5 4 3 ♠ A 7 6 5 3 2 ♥ 5 2 ♦ 9 5 ♣ Q 9 8 5 6 13 16 ♠ K 9 8 4 ♥ 4 3 ♦ A Q J T 8 ♣ K 2 ♠ - ♥ A K Q T 9 6 ♦ K 7 6 3 ♣ A T 6

W N E S Martin Danny - 1♥ - 2♥ - 3♠* - 4♥ - -

I have the lovely South hand and opened 1♥. An advantage of playing five card majors is that North was able to scrape together a raise. I pictured a perfect hand opposite and tried a Splinter in Spades. At this point Martin regretted even responding and signed off quickly in 4♥. I got a trump lead, and taking a leaf from my opponents' book took some time to consider the hand.

I could win the heart lead in Dummy and lead up a Diamond. If the Ace is onside I'll get my ♦K plus one Diamond ruff (assuming they can continue Hearts) which still only adds up to nine tricks. I could establish a Spade by force but don't have the entries. But if Clubs are 3-2 I'm home, using two trump entries to dummy. So I won the first trick in dummy and lead up a Club, the ♣T losing to the ♣Q (is this a situation where East should maybe play the ♣K?). I was later able to establish the Clubs, and the ♦A was onside so that was in fact eleven tricks.

After the Red Velvet cake in the last match I played today our captain had produced an excellent lemon sponge. It inspired our half-time comeback but the match was still lost 9-7.

Maccabi vs Wanderers

After what surely must have been an enormous number of illnesses and unavailable players I was asked to join the Wanderers bridge team, based out of the Buchanan Club in Glasgow. I agreed, then checked the league table; Wanderers sit sixth in Division One. Having not played in any league for many years this was going to be challenging. Last Wednesday I drove out to Maccabi club in Giffnock to meet the team.

Fortunately, I had a good partner (Mark Menzies) and the cards were friendly. My first contract was a 5♣ with 11 winners missing two Aces, and most of the rest were similar. I had a few 3NTs that could have been tricky if a key suit didn't split, but it always did.

The table played quickly and at the break it looked like we'd done OK. We had one big slice of luck, when I made a terrible blunder and got away with it:

♠ K T x x x ♥ T 9 8 ♦ A x ♣ A J x ♠ x x x ♥ x ♦ x x x x x ♣ x x x x 12 0 9 19 ♠ Q J x x ♥ K x x ♦ K x x ♣ x x x ♠ A ♥ A Q J x x x ♦ Q J x ♣ K Q x

W N E S Danny Mark 1♥* 2NT; - 3♦ - 3♠ - 4NT; - 5♦* - 6♥

Mark opened 1♥ and I had the North hand. I was about to reply 1♠ when I remembered we'd agreed five card majors. In the five minutes before the match most of that time was spent discussing Jacoby 2NT so I bid it here, showing a game forcing hand with exactly three trumps. Mark bid a natural 3♦ and I bid a natural 3♠ then he bid Blackwood.

I knew I had there good cards in my hand and so bid 5♦, showing three Aces. But I only had two. I realised almost immediately what I'd done and started to worry. Mark, who is a quick bidder and player, was in a deep think. I was desperate to put the breaks on, and was fearing what bid he produced. Whatever he bid, it was going to be one level too high.

Thankfully, he took the conservative route and settled for 6♥. West lead the ♠Q and I put the dummy down. The conversation went:

"Thank you partner"
"Sorry."
"You know you're supposed to have three keycards."
"Yeah I know, sorry."
"Thank you partner"

As the hand went on I waited for it to be one down, and was hugely relieved when Mark made it. I apologised to the opponent's and we moved on.

My other hand of interest is where we missed a game. I've rotated it so I'm South this time:

♠ T x ♥ A K x x ♦ T x x ♣ A x x x ♠ A Q x x x ♥ Q x x x ♦ A K ♣ x x 11 15 1 13 ♠ x x x ♥ x x x ♦ J x x x x x ♣ x ♠ K J x ♥ J x ♦ Q x ♣ K Q J T x x

W N E S Mark Danny 1♣ 1♠ x 2♠ 3♣ 3♠ 4♣ - - -

I opened the South hand 1♣, West overcalled and partner made a takeout double. East made a courtesy raise and I bid 3♣, showing a genuine Club suit. When West bid &Spades; again Mark bid 4♣ where I played. If he'd have doubled again I would have bid 3NT with ny good Spade stop.

West lead a top Diamond and dummy came down. It looked like a pretty clear two losers in Diamonds then I have to guess Spades for one loser. But, after cashing the ♦AK West cashed his ♠A and the hand was over.

At first I thought that we had done well to avoid 3NT, but actually Diamonds are blocked and we have time to set up a Spade trick, so it always makes.

Overall, we had most of the cards sitting North-South and got a good score. This was matched on the other tables and Wanderers won the event 11-5.