Peggy Bayer 2025 - Monday #1

It's Monday morning now and we have all safely made it to the airport. I had to knock on a couple of doors this morning of some of the older players. I was relieved when they opened them straightaway fully dressed with suitcases. The Scotland U26 team were up late last night playing some sort of five-handed bridge. I talked with the Welsh and Irish while the precocious English children played Trivial Pursuit well after midnight. But they didn't know how old Adrian Mole was or what the answer was to life, the Universe and everything (I think it was quite an old copy of the game).

The banquet dinner last night was good, and one of the players who is a bar manager agreed the hotel couldn't have done any more. They cleaned up a lot of discarded cups and pieces of paper over the weekend.

After the dinner and short speeches there was a surprise, as the England captain put on some shades and rapped Eminem's Without Me with bridge lyrics. My team were baffled and entertained - it was brilliant. I had nothing to add to this performance.

There was a spare seat when Iris went home

Absolutely stuffed

Looking wonderful

I expect we will take a break from bridge for a little while, or at least I won't be doing evening training sessions any more. This tournament has caused a great improvement in my players in the lead up; not just from those at the event but others who have been attending too.

When someone forgets about an Unusual 2NT I don't mind; I'm glad it came up as it means they will know it for next time - you have to see things happen to remember them. And in fact next match the Unusual 2NT came up twice, and the player who'd forgotten before got it right both times.

It's been a good weekend. The Scotland team were excellent conduct and are very easy to manage - they can be very proud of their performance over the weekend.

 

Next year we will try and finish above Ireland. 

 

Peggy Bayer 2025 - Sunday #4

The team were disappointed with their performance against EBU but bounced back with some really good play against Ireland. 

The North-South pair of Rachel and Niamh, our two most experienced players, bid a series of good games and made them all. The East-West pair of Iris and Isla (playing together for the first time) underbid a couple but immediately identified them, an encouraging sign that they are spotting their own mistakes. 

All that remains tonight is the gala dinner, where I fear I may be required to make a short speech. If I am, I will say that "Myself and the Scotland teams have enjoyed ourselves very much. The hotel was good, the food was good, the bridge was sometimes good too. Next year we look forward to welcoming you to Scotland." 

One of our party (Iris) has already left to get the train back to London, so I think there may be an extra serving at dinner for Timon the meerkat.

Final standings for the Peggy Bayer

In the U26 event the team came a bit closer to Ireland, and in the end did well to hold of Wales to secure third.

Peggy Bayer 2025 - Sunday #3

We scraped a narrow win against Northern Ireland and are now getting hammered by the EBU. 

As I can't see the play or bidding I have given limited feedback to my team. One can only speculate about how we might have got to 4H here:

I am only confident that West would open 1S. After that I would like to see 1NT from East, 3S from West, 4S from East, but who can say what really happened.

Time for a big cup of tea.

We have Ireland next (big match) then the real challenge for me is that dinner isn't until 915. 

Peggy Bayer 2025 - Sunday #2

With just two matches to go things are looking tight. We are still in fourth place, but rather than trying to catch up with Ireland we are now looking over our shoulder at Northern Ireland. The last two matches are tough ones - against EBU and against Ireland.

Lunch today was similar to yesterday, various sandwiches and some chips for the fussy eaters. One of my team said all of the sandwiches were weird because they had salad and/or tomatoes in them. Admittedly, there was one today with a strange paste I couldn't identify.

Front of the queue for lunch

I have encouraged the youngsters to be healthy and go out for walks. Yesterday two of them managed to get out of the hotel, but only for the purpose of walking to Greggs (they got lost and never got a yum-yum). The Irish team just go outside to vape and the Welsh have obviously not read the same books as I have about ultra-processed foods. Their captains have brought an enormous amount of snacks, which are constantly pushed on their team. "Monster Munch! Take a bag, we've got all the flavours". "Bubble-gum sweets are quite good in the morning!"

Here is a hand from our 20-0 drubbing from the EBU team. 

It's the only type of hand where we tend to gain on against England, where they bid to an unmakeable slam. 6H from East has two top losers, and not enough tricks even if you get a friendly lead. Our South lead the King of Clubs and gave it no chance.

So we were briefly 11 IMPs up, as our East-West pair stayed safely in game. But then came a barrage of missed games. Most of them we should have been in too, some we should have defended better. But here is one more gain:

Against 3NT, our South lead the Ace of Diamonds. Presumably they took three more Diamond tricks. Then declarer ends up taking a Spade finesse and going down. On the other table we stopped in 2S=, which was worth 5 IMPs but maybe a moral loss as you probably want to be in 3NT.

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. 

Peggy Bayer 2025 - Saturday #4

I didn't make it to the Village Bakery, as someone asked if I would help be the Vugraph operator for an U26 match. It was Scotland-Ireland. My job was to watch from a big chair and input the bids and cards as they were played. Sometimes it was hard to keep up, and I had to correct my auctions a few times. Once I was sure declarer was going off but then he showed his remaining cards, everyone nodded and murmured assent, apparently it was 2H=, so that's what I recorded.

During that match I could also see our team playing Ireland, the most closely matched opponent. Having lead the whole time it seems we lost 11-9, putting us in 4th place at the half way mark. The two England teams are firmly in front, with the older teenagers of England ahead of the younger teenagers and not-even-teenagers of EBU. Then comes us and Ireland, not far apart. Every team now plays every team again to determine the winners.

Scotland U21
Rachel, Isla, Niamh, Iris, Ailsa, (me), Chris

Scotland U26
Prajjwal, Antone, Kevin, (Laura), Rufus, Tamsin, Jamie

EBU 

Tonight it's the Speedball after dinner. Although it'll be after 930 by then and I'd like to be getting to bed, I have decided to play. This is for the purpose of experiencing the difficulty of playing bridge after all this watching, which is making it look easy. I am slightly concerned though that it is Speedball with a Twist.

Peggy Bayer 2025 - Saturday #3

The team pulled a win against Northern Ireland to put them in third place out of six. Our East Chris claimed he was cooking on Boards 1 and 6. I've just checked the hand records:

East made 2D+3, a fine result with at least five losers!

East bid and made 4S. "Six-five, come alive."

I'm not in a position to confirm if he was indeed cooking, but it was certainly two good boards, and we are firmly ahead of Northern Ireland and Wales. 

However, Isla and Rachel have just returned from a bruising encounter against the EBU, the second England team. It looks like a 20-0 loss. Apparently their opponents were friendly, but intimidating because they were good.

On this hand West got to 7S, which our North doubled.

West redoubled and made 13 tricks.

At the other table ur West hand began well with a 2C opening, then after partner showed Spade support stopped in 5S. Although it's probably possible to devise hands where you can't make 6S, the odds massively favour it so it's worth a bid.

Pre-match Granola

Next we have Ireland - after which we will have played all the teams.

While that match is going on I am going to walk to The Village Bakery which looks quite far away over a hill, but hotels get so stuffy will be good to get out for a bit.