Peggy Bayer Match 4 - Ireland

My single room is on the second floor of the hotel, next to the executive rooms that have their own name. The hotel uses modern keycards, and I've had a bit of trouble using mine. Last night I couldn't get into my room, until a member of the Welsh team helped me out. "That's my room" he told me. "You're next door".

It's a long way from my room to the bridge area, especially as there are now some out-of-bounds corridors. The bridge group have been bumped for a more important event - the kids Disney disco. Looks fun, I can hear mostly Frozen songs and some from Moana.

Here's a board against Ireland that I like the look of. The first result that came in was our South declarer finished in 4Hx-2. A good result non-vulnerable. On the other table East made 4Sx. At the moment we have a narrow lead, and I have a hazelnut croissant.  

We lost 17-36 IMPs for a 5-15 VP loss. Not bad.

Peggy Bayer Match 3 - Wales

After a big loss and a big win we currently sit third out of six. Big test this morning against Wales, with whom we are similarly matched.

Current scores at https://bridgeresults.org/o/2024_peggy_bayer/2024_peggy_bayers.asp

Whatever happens today, I was the real winner this morning as I arrived at breakfast at 8 am and stayed until nearly 10 am, taking in two full Irish breakfasts, a light continental and pocketing an apple and croissant for later.

I'm now staying in the bridge room to watch the start of the first match live, and help with the Bridgemate scoring. Unfortunately, the sixth member of our team is also hanging around, hoping to get a game I think.

On my first board our most inexperienced declarer found herself in 3NT. 

The auction was textbook - East opened 1NT (12-14), West raised to 3NT.

Declarer got the King of Hearts lead, which she took with the Ace instead of ducking (we'll discuss that later), then brought home the Diamonds to make her contract. Game in the bag!

On the other table Wales were only in 2NT. If the online scores are to be believed, South led the 6 of Hearts, a weird choice.

I think the best lead for South is a low Spade. Declarer wins the Queen of Spades from dummy, then I think the best play is a low Diamond from both hands. But that's all hypothetical, the important thing is Scotland got a game swing and are leading the match.

This was an interesting play hand, in 2H from West.

The defence begin with two Clubs and a Spade from South.

Our declarer, Niamh, did well. She won South's low Spade with the Ten, drew only three rounds of trumps, then ruffed a Club. She came to one Club, 5 Hearts and 2 Spades. There's one more trick in there if you only leave yourself enough trumps in dummy to ruff two Clubs (or set up a Diamond trick), but I'm not arguing with 2H=.

On the other table Kevin pulled off some magic as North to make 4S. This looks like a decent contract, until you notice there are two trump losers, and the Diamonds are badly placed. A Diamond lead from East is helpful, but he got a Club lead. I expect the way to make it is still to play diamonds, and West ruffs with natural trump tricks.

The two top teams, England and Ireland, are comfortably winning their matches, but the English declarer went down in the same optimistic 4S contract.

We won 20-0 overall to keep us solidly in third overall.

I've been encouraging my team to take their time when they see dummy - at least two minutes. The highlight of the match for me was when a Welsh defender was waiting for declarer to finish thinking and said "I forgot who made the opening lead, it was so long ago." That's a good sign.

Peggy Bayer Match Two - NIBU

After the high of not-completely-losing to England the real test comes now against a similarly inexperienced Northern Ireland team. As the host they have two teams in the tournament, and we're up against the outfit known as NIBU. 

It's getting late on Friday night but with a team of five only one of us gets to go to bed (not me). Isla has been woken from her disco nap and is pairing Rachel sitting East-West. My advice to them is not to be shy; if they have good hands bid on. Sometimes passing is riskier than bidding. Al and Kevin hope to continue their success North-South. They had two small bidding understandings in the first set but otherwise did well.

Kibitzing with Alisdair

It seems I was wrong to fear the team would underbid.. This looks like a quiet hand, but apparently not.

East-West found themselves in 3S-5, which surprisingly was a winning score, as their team-mates saved them. 4H from North looks doomed (losing a Spade, two Hearts, one Diamond), but Kevin found some magic and made it to give us an early lead.

Update - we are well ahead. Here's a 6NT Kevin made. I'll wait to hear about it from him later.

The double dummy solver says 11 tricks is the limit, but what do they know. He got the Ace of herts lead, which helps.

Peggy Bayer Match One - Scotland vs England

The hotel met their first test as about a hundred of us gathered for what they'd claimed was a buffet.  Options were rice of wedges, with vegetarian or chicken curry. "Are there any nuts in here?" I asked. Just this guy, said the jocular server. Later, I made a great joke of my own (see end of this post).

I was dubious that they had a single serving point for everyone but they got through the line pretty quickly (faster than school dinners my team observed), and there was time for a team meeting.

It was stressed that the players are representing the SBU, and have been generously funded by them. Turn up on time, no drinking until Sunday night if at all, and don't bring your phones into matches. Also, everyone makes a lot of mistakes and we're playing a lot of boards so take it easy on each other.

Here's a Scotland squad photo on my self-timer:

And here's one of the junior girls as requested by Stirling University.

I decided not to stay and watch the match, but instead sit outside and follow remotely, nervously updating this website https://bridgeresults.org/o/2024_peggy_bayer/2024_peggy_bayerr.asp

Each match is scored out of 20 Victory Points (VPs), and the nice bit about playing England is you expect to lose 20-0, so anything else is a bonus. To get to a 20-0 VP win you need to win by 60 or more IMPs, and since the match starts 0-0 the pressure is on England.

This was the first board of the weekend:

Our East opened an accurate 1NT (12-14) and played there. South lead the four of Hearts. Declarer now has two Heart tricks, the Ace of Diamonds, and if the Spade finesse works, four Spades. Since the Spade finesse does work, that ought to be 7 tricks in the bag. Something went wrong though and we finished 1NT-1.

On the other table the English East presumably opened 1D (playing a strong NT), and they got to the better contract of 2S, making with an overtrick. So immediately that's 5 IMPs to England.

There followed a succession of games, luckily all falling to our more experienced pair, and Kevin as declarer even make an overtrick not matched on the other table to give us an IMP back. 

Now, ask yourself the question, what is the only way a good team can lose to a weaker team? By pushing too hard and overdoing it! And that's what happened just now, England bidding to 6C-1 while Scotland settled prudently in 5C. After five boards, that puts us in the lead in the match! It surely won't last, which is why I'm writing this now, at what I expect to the highpoint.

To be fair to England, the slam is excellent, just unlucky.

There is hope of more to come as England have just recorded the unusual result of 4NT-1. Niamh made 4S for us so we're now 24-9 up. Dare I dream?

We did not maintain that lead, and lost the for a 

Still, it's money in the bank and 3 VPs in. Finally, my joke:

To be said in a Scots voice:
"Is that a pavlova, or am I wrang?"

Peggy Bayer 2024 - Introduction

I'm in Belfast with the Scotland U21 team, competing for the Peggy Bayer trophy against the other home nations. Scotland is also represented in the U26 event, called the Junior Camrose.

In my Peggy Bayer team we have captain Kevin and old-hand Alexander, who will be playing most of the matches. We also have three 15 year olds making their debut - it's a learning experience for Niamh, Rachel and Isla.

We'll aim not to lose 20-0 to England, and to be competitive with everyone else.

As the non-playing captain it's been a good day so far for me, as we have all made it successfully to the hotel. The bridge doesn't start until tonight at 7 pm, which is when the players do their bit. There were a few issues affecting the other Scotland team with missing passports and not realising there are two airports in Belfast, but I think they're all here now too.

Two of the youngsters in my charge are just back from a school trip to Iceland, where they said they didn't have too much free time. With their free time this afternoon they declined to play bridge as they didn't want to fog their minds before tonight's matches, and instead settled in on a sofa by reception. I asked if they had the WiFi password (silent nods) then went out to explore the local area.

Turns out the local area is a busy road and muddy tracks where I wasn't welcome. Much like Alan Partridge (also from Norwich) I angered a local farmer, and he came out to talk to me. "Where exactly are you running to? There's liability issues with you being here you see." I apologised and went back to the hotel.

La Mon Country House Hotel seems nice, but I get the impression that all the managers are off this weekend and the junior staff don't quite know what's going on. Hopefully they'll have dinner ready for us at 530. I'll be on high alert for dishes containing nuts as one of our team is allergic (she is well-prepared with three EpiPens).

Practice at the airport

Single room

 

  

Glasgow vs Zimbabwe

When a school from Zimbabwe contacted the SBU looking for a friendly bridge match they were put in touch with me, as the teacher of a school club in Glasgow. I arranged the match on RealBridge, which turned out to be between two schools in Harare, Dominican Convent and St John’s, and The High School of Glasgow representing Scotland.

After the inevitable connection difficulties and general confusion (“you can leave the ID number blank!”) it looked like we had maybe seven or eight tables. Given that it’s always better to have substitutes than empty spaces, I reduced it to six tables and combined some teams. After four rounds of two boards each, these were the top three:

Glasgow #2	Niamh R & Rachel Y, Kevin R & Michael K	61 VPs
Dominican #1	Tinashe Z & Daniel R, Nomalangu N & Vongai T	52 VPs
St John’s #2	Susannah P & Gabriella B, Taona Z & Ngavatendwe N	48 VPs

It’s no coincidence that all of the top teams had at least one pair that bid and made games (and Glasgow had two). Bidding and making games is the key to success in Teams matches.

Overall it was quite a chaotic hour of bridge, but I enjoyed seeing all the youngsters play and hope to do it again soon. Most of them had never used RealBridge before, but that didn’t seem to matter much and they picked it up very quickly. There were a few skipped boards for slow play, one unusual 4♦x-8, but also some good play and plenty of potential for the future.

Below I’ve chosen three hands to write about, where there are some good teaching points to pass on to the mostly beginners who were playing. As it’s the most important part of the game, in each case I’m going to focus on declarer play.

In this deal two East-West pairs got to 3NT. Will it succeed?

I encourage my pupils to count top tricks in NT contracts. A quick count reveals that this is one of those happy deals where we’ve been dealt enough top tricks to make the contract (1 Spade + 0 Hearts + 6 Diamonds +2 Clubs = 9). In practice we might get an extra Heart too, but certainly there are nine tricks there for the taking, and indeed both declarers in 3NT made the game easily.

Here 4♥ from North-South was a popular contract, but it didn’t succeed as often as it should have.

For the 3NT contract above we counted sure winners, for this high-level suit contract we instead count expected losers in each suit.

In Diamonds there are two certain losers (but only two, as we can ruff the third and subsequent rounds).

In all of Spades, Hearts, and Clubs we count ½ a loser – meaning that sometimes we will lose 0 tricks and sometimes 1 trick, depending on if a finesse in that suit succeeds. So depending on our luck with finesses we will lose 2, 3 or 4 tricks

The correct way to play the hand is therefore to draw trumps with a finesse, take the Spade finesse, then decide how to play Clubs.

In practice most declarer’s instead failed because they didn’t draw trumps, and West got a ruff with the Ten of Hearts - the message being to draw trumps straight away unless you have good reason not to.

This last deal shows a useful technique, where we don't draw trumps straight away.

Suppose we are sitting South as declarer in 2♠. We have four trumps in each hand, plus a short suit in both our hand and dummy. The fact that we have these shortages means our plan should be to cross-ruff the hand. That means not drawing trumps at all, but instead going from side-to-side ruffing everything we can.

On this deal cross-ruffing makes a lot of tricks. We can make four Diamond tricks (Ace and three ruffs in dummy), four Heart tricks (Ace-King and two ruffs in your hand), plus the Ace of Spades and Ace of Clubs. That makes ten tricks total.

Well done St John’s declarer Emmanuel M who followed a similar plan to make 1♠+2.              

Buchanan vs Bonnyton

Last night Anna and I played in a Realbridge match against Bonnyton, in Glasgow Division 1. Afterwards, Anna said she thought we might be Division 2 players. We lost the match 15-1 overall, although it was fairly close on our table.

The opponents made several 24 point 3NT games, did better on the distributional hands (we missed the sacrifices), and benefitted when we underbid a couple of hands at the end. Overall it was quite a long evening, with a delayed start and a further delay while one of their team went to look for an iPad charger - turns out he was in Tenerife, hence he was the only one playing in a vest.

But amongst the 24 boards we had at least three or four triumphs. This was the best of them.

Playing our weak NT system I opened the West hand a natural 1C. Anna replied 3C, which for us is 10-12 with Club support. She has a strange hand, and maybe should bid something different, but I'm not sure what. As we tend to do when we have a good minor fit, I bid 3NT.

North lead a small Heart (the 5). I was a bit worried about my lack of a Diamond stop, but dummy has them well covered. In fact Spades are the issue. South won the opening lead with the Ace of Hearts and I dropped my Jack of Hearts. A great ruse. South continued with Hearts. I hastily took the King and 11 more tricks in the minors for 3NT+3.

Afterwards North claimed the Spade switch was obvious, but I like to think my deceptive Jack of Hearts (looking like someone with JT or making KJ) fooled South into continuing Hearts. This was the full hand:

You can see that on the other table our opponents played 5C-1, perhaps a sounder contract but much easier for the defence to take their three tricks. In the other match 5C made when the defence tried three rounds of Spades, and 3NT made on another Heart lead and continuation.