Into the final day of play. Here's a good teaching hand from Match 24 against Greece:
Good bidding to get to 3NT, by West. You get a friendly Heart lead from North.
Count your tricks: 0 Spades, 3 Hearts, 2 Diamonds, 3 Clubs. Only 8.
Where is the 9th trick coming from? Spades is a guaranteed extra trick, as you have the Queen-Jack-Ten between the hands. Diamonds could yield the extra trick required if the suit splits 3-3 or even 4-2. Clubs gives an extra trick if the suit is 3-3 or you win a finesse of the 10.
So which suit should you play? It's clear to play Spades. You are guaranteed the 9th trick, and even get a 10th if the Spade suit splits 4-3, as it does here. You have entries to both hands and at least a double stopper in every other suit so in theory nothing can go wrong.
We lost to Greece 20-0 in Victory Points, so it looks like quite a few things did go wrong!
The penultimate match was a competitive loss against Denmark. It was 18-33 IMPs, mostly caused by this board. I'm going to say Artem was rather unlucky:
When South opens 1H Artem, sitting West, is a bit stuck for a bid. Personally I would double, though if partner responds with 4S you might not be happy. He found a sneaky pass, which seemed to work well when he could later double them in 4H.
4H by South is actually a decent contract, seemingly with just three losers, and when they got to declare most Souths made 10 tricks.
In this sort of auction, the best lead from the West hand is a trump. This is safe (not like underleading Aces in a suit which could cost, your Ace of Trumps isn't going anywhere), and cuts down on the ruffing power which declarer is clearly going to need in his low point count game. Leading anything else is playing your partner for a high card, which they very likely don't have.
Leading a low trump is best, as then when you get back in you can play Ace and another, playing three rounds of trumps altogether. And with the other three Aces you are expecting to get back in.
Artem led the Ace of Spades (top of doubleton), which I confess I might have done too. Declarer wrapped up 10 tricks, for 4Hx, and on the other table we were 5Hx-1.
In our final match, against Latvia, we were losing heavily but rallied at the end, finishing the 336 board tournament with this fine effort:
The West hand is very similar to one Anya had near the start of the tournament. On that occasion she opened 3D. We discussed it afterwards, and I said that a hand like that you instead open 1D and keep on bidding Diamonds. All our team are fast learners, and that's how Anya bid it this time:
Last time West had a hand like that Michael Heubeck and I both said we might open it 3NT, and that's exactly what the Latvian West did here (a Gambling 3NT, with a long running minor). East chose to pass, as he two of the three other suits covered. That turned out to be not enough as Rachel and Niamh took the first six tricks for 3NT-2, a great team board.
In the end we still lost to Latvia but did enough to secure 12th place in the European U21 Teams:
Well done to Poland winning, and the rest of the top nine who also qualify for the World Championship (in Poland).
In the U31 Teams they won their last match to move up a place too:
No comments:
Post a Comment