British Schools' Championship

Today it was time for my much-improved youngsters to test themselves against other schools across the country in the British Schools' Championship, to be played on Real Bridge. The format was four short rounds of a Swiss tournament, after which the top four would advance. That four included The High School of Glasgow, who were to play reigning champions Haberdashers in their semi-final.

Things started ominously when the opposition quickly recorded 7NT= on the first board. We made the same number of tricks, but in 3NT. But not to be outdone, we bid a grand slam of our own on the very next board:

You can see that there's a problem. In the auction 4NT was Blackwood and 7♦ was forgetting that the responses start with 0 Aces, not 1 Ace.

But, you can also see that if the defence don't lead Hearts there's 13 top tricks. On the other table Haberdashers safely made 6♦, so there would be a big swing one way or the other depending on North's lead. Sadly, he led a Heart, and it was one down and another 14 IMPs away. Despite a good comeback we lost the match 18-37. It sounds like a big margin, but if North had led a Club, Diamond or Spade against 7♦ we would have gained 11 instead of losing 14, and won the match 29-23. One card from victory!

In the 3rd/4th play-off against St Paul's School London it was a close high-quality match. This was my favourite board:

We've been working on bidding 3NT with long minors and it paid off here. 3NT is safe on any lead - when Michael got a Heart he quickly wrapped up 10 tricks.

On the other table our West (Harry) opened 1♥, over which North bid 4♦. East (Alexander) made the pressure bid of 4♥, which unfortunately propelled South to 5♦. This could be beaten, but of course we made the obvious Heart lead and declarer escaped in 5♦=.

Going into the final board, we were 1 IMP behind. I was watching on a delayed feed, and saw a result of 1NTx-5 pop up, but I didn't know for which side. In my experience those sorts of results are normally bad news, but this time we were on the right side of it:

Michael made the double, Kevin passed it and the defence took the first 11 tricks. Only if that result was duplicated would we lose the match. Luckily, on the other table South overcalled 2♥ - he made 11 tricks but lost 14 IMPs.

That meant we finished in 3rd place overall, a great achievement, and we've been invited back to Loughborough to compete in person next year. The winners were Eton College.