SOL3: Faben vs Smith

Last night I was up for the game, and determined not to underbid this time. It didn't work out too well though, and on the first board I made five overtricks. It doesn't really matter what the contract was, +5 is never a good result.

I had a maximum overcall, John had a maximum pass, and everything lay nicely. On the other table Harry Smith overcalled 1NT and played in 3NT. It's not a great contract but made here. So on another day our cautious bidding would have won a game swing.

This was the most exciting board in the first half:

John opened 4♥ passed to West who felt obliged to double. East chose the least-worst option of passing. I had the nice South hand, and would have doubled any contract they bid. But since we have two ways of opening 4♥, and this is the weaker way, I didn't feel confident redoubling 4♥, and when I saw John's hand expected it to go down. But trumps were 2-2 so we made 4♥x= for +590.

That was an 11 IMP swing ... to them! On the other table after the same start East bid 4♠, which was duly doubled. They escaped to the equally bad 5♣, also doubled, and off four. At the end of the first half we were down 13-32 IMPs.

In the second half we did better. The only big swing out was when the opposition bid a poor 3NT with ♣854 opposite ♣T92. This turned out to be an adequate stopper when the suit split 4-3.

Near the end I remembered my plan to bid boldly, and picked it up for this one:

I have a fairly average 5-5 hand, but we play specific-suit Michaels, and that emboldened me to make the 2NT overcall. John has a great hand for me, with four Hearts and some good Clubs, and with the Club finesse working he made nine tricks.

In theory North-South can make ten tricks in Spades, and in fact did so at the other table (although they were only playing in 3♠). After a Diamond lead the threat of a ruff forced declarer to play trumps from the top. Their 3♠+1 combined with out 3♥= was a 7 IMP gain.

We won the second half 37-18, to bring the final scores to 50-50. A draw? Not quite. A corrected claim gave one IMP back to them. Paul had claimed 3♦+1, when actually only 9 tricks were there. Personally I think if both defenders accept the claim it should stand, but the rest of the team were more generous and so we ended up with a narrow 1 IMP loss.

A post-script - one hand I messed up I didn't notice at the time. I didn't even notice when I went throught the boards afterwards. It was only when John emailed me with some comments, I saw he'd written for Board 8 "Why didn't you return a Spade?". It's a good question:

John lead a Spade to the Ten and King. Declarer immediately took a losing Heart finesse to my Queen. Now it's time to return a Spade to partner's probable 5-card suit and beat the contract. However, I doubted the Spades and liked my Clubs, so made a useless Club switch. The simple defence would have worked here.