Last night Anna and I played in the SBU Lockdown Swiss Pairs. This is a nine week cross-Imp tournament where they take your best six scores. It was quite a rush getting the children in bed to start at 7pm, so I'm not sure how many we'll make.
It was a nice format, with five rounds of five boards. We had enough time between rounds to have a cup of tea. Once Anna did some yoga.
Anna and I played quite steadily. In fact our biggest swing was only about 3 IMPs. Overall we finished 14th out of 52 pairs, with a modest score of +13.41 IMPs. Here's one where I had a couple of tough decisions (and got them both wrong).
After three passes it comes round to me sitting West. I've a nice 12 points, but considered passing. It's quite likely the opponents can make something in one of the majors, and a score of 0 will be better than that. Passing would have got +1.64 IMPs. Instead I went for a 1NT opening. I thought this would make it a bit harder for the opponents to enter the auction, but North was rather bold and came in with 2♥. Anna bid a nice 2♠, which we play as non-forcing, then South also stretched to bid 3♥, and now we have to beat it.
Anna lead a low Spade, to my Ace. I was worried about declarer ruffing Clubs so returned a Heart. Declarer was now able to draw trumps, taking five Hearts, two Clubs, a Spade and a Diamond when he guessed correctly for nine tricks. Well played.
In fact the best defence is to play Clubs myself, so Anna can ruff declarer's potential Club tricks, and promote her ♥K. But maybe that needs me to know that Anna has only a doubleton Club. Too tough for me. Conceding 3♥= was worth -2.32. I wish I'd passed the hand out.
Also in the tournament were John Di Mambro and Martin Bateman, from the Wanderers Team. They were a bit ahead of us though and we never met. On the hand above North opened 2♥ (Hearts and a minor) and played there, making eight tricks when he guessed Diamonds wrong.
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