Peggy Bayer 2025 - Saturday #2

Decent breakfast. The hot food had the unusual addition of a big tub of tomatoes. I liked the 'continental' and was close to risking putting a croissant in the toaster despite the signage when I decided it was a bit too busy to risk an incident. Yes, I was there for breakfast at least an hour before my team and two hours before the Scotland U26 team.

Monster loves berries

I went through a few hands at breakfast - it's really the play that matters but it is easier to talk about the bidding. The hand where one of our players miscounted her points and we passed out the hand with 15 points opposite 10 turned out to be a gain when 3NT went one off at the other table, but she's promised to count more carefully and not do it again.

I sat in and watched Chris and Ailsa for the first couple of boards. This was the first up:

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

With no hand records I have to rely on my own memory. Chris, sitting South, made a nice 2S overcall and played there. He got a Heart lead. He drew two rounds of trumps, and when the Queen didn't fall stopped playing trumps. This is good play - there is no point playing a third round of trumps and using up two of your trumps to lose a trick. Perhaps Chris had read my article The Rule of One. 

Even better, declarer then started playing on Clubs. Of course you'd like to play Clubs from dummy, but once you realise you have all of the high cards except the Ace and Queen you can just bludgeon away at Club and eventually come to two tricks. That's enough to make it - four Spades, one Heart, one Diamond, two Clubs. I was counting while watching, I hope declarer was too.

After setting up the Clubs declarer had a chance of a further trick by throwing a Diamond from dummy then ruffing a Diamond. Ruffing a Diamond in dummy when you start off with two in each hand is a bit subtle, and there was no overtrick. I'll take 2♠=, well done declarer!

On the second board we found a good lead from ♦ J T 9 x x x against 3NT, but then the defenders lost their nerve and stopped playing Diamonds. This is a shame, as I think they had set up enough Diamond winners to beat the contract (but didn't know it - defence is hard like that).

The screen isn't low enough to stop Timon peeking