Woke up early today and found a gummy snake stuck to my shoulder. Peeled it off and went down for breakfast, only to find two of my team already there. That's never happened before.
Here's most of the team, looking fresh-faced ready for a full day of matches
First up the Scotland team have a tough tie against England, and the SBU team against their closest rivals Northern Ireland.
I sat in for the first board. I saw Niamh open 1S, and Rachel smoothly pass with a 0 count with one Spade. The cards lay well for declarer, who made 1S+2, the perfect result - maximum overtricks with no fear of missed game.
At the other table I saw Anya open the same hand 1S, but this time the opponents interfered with 2D then 3C. Anya gave the 3S bid a squeeze, picked up the pass card, gave the 3S bid another squeeze and then finally passed. "Think with your head, not your hand" will be my advice for later. On this hand it doesn't matter what you do, as your partner is always going to pass, but on another hand your fidgeting might unethically prompt partner to raise Spades where they wouldn't otherwise. This is a problem playing in person, where you have to keep your mannerisms to yourself, a difference to playing online.
Surprisingly, the best contract here is 4H from West, which we might have got to if East had 'found a missing Jack' and counted 20 points and opened 2NT.
We had a few good ones against England. On this board the English West opened a strong NT. We don't play any conventions over this, so North (Ailsa) found a natural double. This went five off for +1100. In the other match where 1C was opened our North overcalled 2C, Michaels, so Artem and Shiva got to 4S. A good result all round.
We had a few good ones against England. On this board the English West opened a strong NT. We don't play any conventions over this, so North (Ailsa) found a natural double. This went five off for +1100. In the other match where 1C was opened our North overcalled 2C, Michaels, so Artem and Shiva got to 4S. A good result all round.
At the end of the round, the scorer came in to give me two scorecards. "Well done!" she said, then apologised as she'd given me the wrong cards. But the result was the same. To my surprise, we had beaten England 44-32 for a famous 12-8 VP win. The English player who I'd given a lift to yesterday said well done to us. The SBU team also beat Northern Ireland comfortably.
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