Peggy Bayer Match 7 - NIBU

If you stay in a hotel for long enough you gradually stop having a massive breakfast and revert to your usual bowl of cereal. Second day and I'm day down to one fry-up plus muesli. 

Today we have Northern Ireland up first, followed by Wales. The three debutants will be playing in both those matches, and in fact Isla has been promoted to be North and look after the 'bridge computer'.

The hotel feels quiet this morning, though all of the team have made it up for breakfast. I'm not sure if it's an Irish thing, but even late last night there were small children running around the lobby and bar. I get nervous on the parents' behalf if I see a five-year-old up after 7 pm. They should be watching Gladiators and getting ready for bed.    

We've taken an early lead against NIBU, with Kevin steering in a 3NT. On the next board, we attempted 4S:

It looks like you lose one Heart, three Diamonds, and one Club, and that's exactly what happened. The defence has to play Clubs at some point though, else declarer can throw a Club on the lucky 13th Diamond. When West has KQJ76 of Clubs that should be easy, and indeed it was two down.

On the other table Isla and Rachel bid tried 3H. With four obvious losers it made exactly. The usual rule when your side is declarer on both tables is that you profit if you make at least one contract, and indeed that was the case here for a 1 IMP gain. 

Turns out that South mistakenly made a weak jump overcall with the South hand - which lead North to bid 4S. The better bid by South is just a 1S overcall I think.

The team brought in a succession of 3NT. They won 20-0. Next up is Wales. 

 

Peggy Bayer - Bonus Speedball

Tonight there was the opportunity to enter the Speedball, a fun tournament played super-fast. The England players had been instructed to form teams with someone from another nation. This was an excellent idea, and might go some way to improving the public relations of the most hated team (from being so successful). 

However, I will be playing with Kevin from our Scotland side. He has been forced to play a simple Acol system in all the matches so far, so I have agreed we will instead play something a bit more complicated, to further handicap us in the limited-time format. My contribution is to insist on playing four weak twos. It will be a triumph if a weak two Clubs bid comes up (and we both remember it). 

I thought it would be a good thing as a coach to play some hands, so I am more sympathetic with the players when they make mistakes, and this did indeed turn out to be the case. The very first card I played was a lead out of turn. I then checked that they were playing Four Hearts. No, it was Four Spades. Making, wasn't it? No, one off. I was all over the place.

On the second board I sharpened up:

EW Vul S deal ♠ - ♥ x x x x x x ♦ x ♣ Q x x x x x ♠ A K x ♥ A Q J x x ♦ K J x x x ♣ -

Kevin Danny W N E S 1♥ x 4♥ - 6♥

I opened 1♥, and after the double when Kevin shot to 4♥, raised to 6♥. After the Club lead I played the Ace of trumps (King didn't fall), used the Ace of Spades to throw a Diamond from dummy and cross-ruffed the rest. It's a strange hand as we've only got 20 points, and in fact most of them aren't useful. The only useful points are those in Hearts and the Ace of Spades.

After that I had visions that we might actually do quite well, and in fact we bid three more slams. 6♣=, 6NT+1, and 7♣x-2 after a Blackwood misunderstanding. But we had so many bad ones too. I messed up the system once, and criminally forgot about our four weak twos when Kevin opened a weak 2♣ and I assumed he was strong

We declared the majority of hands, usually doubled, and usually off. Three times we had an eleven card fit, but bid too high with almost identical distributions and our opponents chose correctly to defend. Two of those misadventures were against my bridge nemesis, the England captain Michael Byrne. The last time we played, at least ten years ago, he also took me three off doubled in 4♠. I wonder if he remembers. Although he's my only nemesis, he may have several nemeses, like a man who is the Best Man at many weddings, but an evil version of that.

In the end despite playing very quickly and bidding a lot we only managed 43.6%. Not very good, but good enough to award myself a consolation pint of Guinness, £6.80.

Later I found out that the English pairs, who had generously agreed to partner players from other countries, had placed large cash wagers on which paiir would finish higher in the final rankings, rather like lords saddling Scotsmen as horses and riding them around the paddock for amusement.

The winning pair were two of the senior coaches, Anne Hassan and Diane Greenwood, who seemed to be taking it far too seriously (an impressive 61%).

I may struggle to get up for breakfast tomorrow.

Peggy Bayer Match 6 - England

With one match left in the day the team looked quite tired. Final push against England, trying not to lose 20-0.

In the interest of letting me go back to my room and change my wet shoes here is the second hand of the match:

England tend to play a lot of hands. In one room the English South played 2S, probably after opening a weak two. He made 10 tricks when everything went nicely. In the other room the English East played 3D-2, presumably when West doubled the 2S opening. That contact went two down, for an early IMP for Scotland.

A few too many boards got away from us, and we lost 18.3-1.7. We have therefore avoided a whitewash once again, and scored fractionally more victory points than the first time we played England.

We remain in 3rd place, though slightly closer to 4th than 2nd now.

Peggy Bayer Match 5 - Northern Ireland

Today it was soup for lunch. Just soup! I was waiting for the rest to come, but that was it. The soup was quite nice, but still somewhat disappointing. It was billed as a light lunch, but no one expected just soup.

I decided to walk half an hour through the countryside to the local shop, so the team had enough to eat. What did they want? "Dairy milk, crisps, and general snacks" they told me. I asked for more details. "Rachel doesn't like Salt and Vinegar crisps, but I do."

When I returned I caught up with the bridge. We did well against Northern Ireland. The highlight was this slam hand:

After South (Rachel) opened 2NT North (Kevin) transferred then drove to 6S. There were no problems in the play.

A couple of boards were played sideways (meaning Scotland declared four times) and had to be cancelled. Once that was sorted we came away with a 17-3 win, cementing 3rd place at half way. 

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.