In the A team, things were relatively quiet as we built a small lead in the first half. Esme's fine spread obviously had a galvanising effect as the team managed to pile on the imps in the second half to end with a 20-0 win (just!). This was enough to put us in 4th position in the Dawes League. Not quite up to last year's efforts, but still a satisfactory foundation to build on for next year.
For the B team — it was business as usual. A solid showing over the first three sets allowed us to take the foot off the pedal in the last set. Another comfortable 20-0, so well done in topping off a fine season and the Porter Trophy retained.
The C team was nip and tuck for a while. Although the county built up a decent lead at half-time, Notts came back strongly in the third set to make things very much more fraught. Fortunately a strong final set allowed them to pull away and finish up with a decent 17-3 win. On another day, this might have been enough for the title, but Worcestershire's clean sweep in the last match was enough for the Markham League. Our final position of 2nd place matches last years efforts. Next year, I’m sure that we’ll be able to go that one step further.
As you can see — every pair played well but obviously all the B team pairs, Keep/Brown and Clark/Porter had very fine cards. Of course stats don’t mean everything, so hopefully the commentary will add something to the rather stark data. Don’t forget — you’re welcome to add any comments on the hand to the blog and this time I’ll even be able to correct any errors... Not that there will be many of them, of course!
| Board 1 N/None |
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Board 1
This was my first outing with Ed Jones and his first start in the A team. Fresh from a strong performance in the Junior White House tournament in Amsterdam and being one half of the "Young Pair of the Year" he had provided a very strong case for selection, so I was hoping for a strong start to justify the selector’s faith… Some hope! Perhaps I was inspired by partners amusing garb (for those who weren’t there, partner kindly wore a T-shirt asserting my piscine ancestry), but let’s just say I’d rather start my write-up from board 2!!
The fact that every single pair in the room managed to defeat 3NT tells me that I blundered badly here. Any good reason for letting it through? Nope! Sorry team. There is a "moral" to the story though, so I will own up to this one...
The opponents got to 3NT after an uninformative auction of:
1
1
1NT 3NT
I checked to see whether the opponents opened 1
or 1
with two four card suits. It is always sensible to ask as opinions are often divided on what is best. I once asked Brian Senior and John Armstrong during a pairs event that same question on two consecutive rounds and was told in no uncertain terms that one method was right and the other ridiculous. Of course they didn’t agree...Anyway, the response to my question was a bit murky as they didn’t seem to have thought about it! They initially thought he would open 1
with two four card suits, but then it transpired that it was undiscussed. Anyway — I made an assessment that it was likely that he’d open 1 with two four card suits anyway as that seems to be more common.Anyway, my spade lead from South seemed normal enough. This was won with the ace on table and Ed encouraged with the 6 (we play standard attitude here). Declarer immediately played a diamond to his ten and my jack and so I won and continued with a small spade to the ten and declarer’s king. Declarer persisted with diamonds and so I won my king.
Now the crunch point... if I had been awake, I would have realised that the heart switch stands out a mile. Partner has played the ten of spades on the second round, so can’t hold either the queen or the nine (as he would have played either card if he had held it) — so declarer must have them both.
Unfortunately, having decided already that declarer wouldn’t have 4 spades and spotted that partner had encouraged, I simply didn’t remember to think about it, so rather pathetically played another spade. Oops!!
Why did it happen? Well it is an easy mistake to make — I had already made a reasonable and fairly accurate assessment of the layout of the hand but didn’t readjust when my initial supposition was wrong. Slap on the wrists for me but at least it does point out an easy way of improving. It’s possible to get routine hands wrong if you don’t take the time to think things through. I’m sure I’ll make similar mistakes again but at least I know what sort of thing I’m getting wrong! Anyway, -430 was 10 imps out and a poor start.
Chris Wilson tells me that despite declarer setting up the fourth diamond, having defended the same way as me for a while, declarer had prematurely cashed the clubs and so on a heart switch, declarer ended up stuck on table. Phew!
Clive Keep judged well here to discourage spades at trick one. Now Mike Brown found a heart switch when in with the
J and there were no further problems for the defence. Should you encourage? Well — it could be right, but it looks to me like you want a heart switch and you can always revert to spades, so I think this was a good decision.| Board 2 East/NS |
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Board 2
Well, well — a corking hand to follow. Our opponents bid efficiently to 6
despite a rather odd auction where West drove to slam despite partner’s lead directing double of a 3 transfer. The play is pretty trivial when hearts are 3-2 as you just have one trump loser. As it happens though, this slam was missed at many tables so perhaps things aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem. Quite often, I think the auction went:2
22NT 3
3
4P
Where 2
is the strong hand and 3 is a transfer. I have to say, the 4 bid just isn’t enough. I think that with some shape and a six card suit, West needs to make some sort of push towards slam and the obvious way is to cuebid 4 if that is your agreement. If it’s not a cuebid, you are even better placed on this occasion as you can bid a natural 4. Now there should be no stopping you getting to slam. Either way, one would hope to find this. In fact, slam was only bid at 3 tables. Smith and Wilson got to a reasonable 6NT (like 6 this needs hearts 3-2) not the top spot, but still good enough. This was good judgement especially after Alan downgraded his hand to 22-23 balanced. After:2NT 3
3
?Nick judged well to bid 4
which is either natural or an advanced cue and so they got to slam relatively easily — well done.Top marks though go to Clark and Porter for reaching the top (making) spot of 7
. This was a good start to an assured performance from the pair on their A team debut. Apparently after a strong 1 opening, there were about 12 relays after which East knew West’s shape (i.e. 1634) and the location of their points (K, QJ). That was enough for 7 which is probably just good enough. You can make on some 4-1 club and heart splits and it is trivial when both are 3-2. According to Michael Clark it’s about 64% — which is good enough odds if you can be sure that the opponents will be in small slam which you should probably expect at A team level. Nicely done and a good swing in.The sorriest tale comes from Tim Dickinson. He and David Southcombe did mange to get to the grand-slam, but unfortunately not the right one! Over to Tim
Board 2 was one of our "worse" boards but it was awfully worse. I think the whole room has by now heard that we bid a grand missing QJ765 of trumps; no doubleton QJ, so one off. The bidding started the same way at both tables: 2
(1) we know of all the aces;
(2) pard might have
East at the other table gave up now, but I found a 4
Yes — a good effort to bid 4
over 4, but a bit ill disciplined I’m afraid to raise 6 to 7. On the other hand — I think that 4 from David isn’t really enough on the hand but I’m guessing David’s aware of Tim’s enthusiasm in the auction!Although I will concede that this isn’t easy to bid, I would suggest that one auction reported to me (fortunately not by an Oxford pair):
1
* P 1** X *=precision **=negative3NT P P P
is most definitely not the best auction!! I would suggest those who missed this slam, have a look at their methods and try to see what went wrong. I’m sure in hindsight you’d all like to be in 6
at least, so it’s definitely worthwhile having a look at what happened.| Board 3 South/EW |
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Board 3
Defending again here, 3NT this time after East showed 4-5 in the majors. Ed chose a sporting
2 lead, which didn’t fare that well on this layout as, although he found my suit, my diamonds aren’t the best! Declarer should now make 10 tricks, but when he played on spades, I could take the second round and play another diamond which worried declarer into thinking Ed had a running diamond suit. The imp was retained now when Ed confidently stuck the J on the table — a great card in this situation. Declarer was now very unsure and ducked completely trying to keep me off lead. Completing the bluff, Ed continued with a small heart and declarer rose with the A, declining the finesse. Sadly for us, Declarer was rather surprised to find he held 9 tricks when he simply cashed his top tricks... Oh well – still a good switch, I think.Good result here for Williams and Wilson. Defending 3NT by West, the
7 was led round to declarer who then tried two finesses of the Q (success) and then the Q (fail). Chris now attacked hearts taken by declarer’s ace. Declarer cashed one spade and then conceded a spade which John could win. On the club, declarer simply played on hearts giving the defence 1 spade, 1 club, 1 diamond and 2 hearts. Seems to be a case of not trying to establish 9 tricks here — I suspect if they’d planned the hand a little better, they’d have found 9 tricks here — but still was a good result for the B team.The Talbots’ opponents here opened 1
— so they didn’t have any chance here of Kathy finding the best lead from South of a diamond. This was a great hand for the C team — with both our pairs managing to beat 3NT for a total of 25 imps with it made at the other table — Great stuff!
| Board 4 West/Both |
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Board 4
Groan — our four boards of torture were at least nearly over. I got to the normal 4
(although interestingly 3NT by North is the top spot). We played it the other way up to some as it was played by South as we play a strong nt and I could thus bid spades naturally over East’s 1 overcall. Playing a weak NT, North will usually play 4 following a transfer. Anyway, West led the J and I won in hand. Initially, it looks right to play a spade (although maybe cashing three rounds of clubs first is best... that just looked too risky to me). West ducked but then won the second round before exiting in clubs. I won this and cashed one more club. There are two lines here. The first is simply a burglary play. In this case, you nonchalantly Cash the A and exit in diamonds and a hapless East finds himself end-played if he happens to have no safe diamond exit. If West manages to take the third round of diamonds, you fall back on the heart finesse. The alternative line is to finesse the heart first and if it loses you can still make if you eliminate hearts (and clubs if you haven’t already) and cash A and another. Provided that one hand holds HH doubleton, or has failed to unblock from Kx, they will have to give you a ruff and discard. Of course, I chose the wrong one and tried the legitimate line... sigh. Oh well. On this occasion, several people managed to make when they fell for the burglary. On the other table of our mini-match, Michael Clark ended all that nonsense by leading the K and later unblocking, now it wasn’t too hard at all. Well done for a good lead and then sensible defence.I have a great deal of sympathy for Angus/Clacey here. Ian found the unfortunate lead of the 2 of hearts which should end matters and declarer correctly ran this round, forcing Joe to win with the king. He switched to a diamond, but of course, Declarer can now just cash two hearts pitching a diamond and make. But... Declarer inexplicably decided to play on spades first. Ian Angus won a spade but couldn’t actually believe that South had a useful discard on the heart as the play so far would be nonsensical. Wrong this time!! I don’t know whether to commiserate or laugh, but either way – that was rather unfortunate. I know how frustrating it is not to capitalise on a bad error by the opponents.
I suspect that Tim Dickinson would prefer to change his lead on this board — a heart from East proving to be disasterous. It looks a little too aggressive to me, but then I seem to have got stung quite a lot recently by underleading kings in this type of situation.
Williams and Wilson managed to right-side this and conceal the
AQ. Now Chris was able to successfully throw in East when they forgot to unblock the diamonds (or simply didn’t see the danger).Smith and Wilson got close to beating this one when Alan missed the unblock. There was some confusing in the carding as to what Nick’s diamond switch of
7 showed. Personally — I prefer an attitude style return of the lowest diamond which does make the unblock easier. Difficult though, when you can’t see the AQ of hearts in the dummy and I’m much more sympathetic to letting the contract through played that way up.Overall, the county had the upper hand on this one as it was made more than it was defeated – so I suppose we were at least defending better.
| Board 5 North/NS |
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Board 5
After a brief flurry with good hands, I picked up a one-count as South. Partner dealt and opened 1
and East overcalled 1NT. West now found a rather curious 3 (goodness knows whether that was forcing/non-forcing or what) and East had an obvious raise to 4. As for the lead — well, the 2 didn’t work too well on this hand. Innovative certainly which is in line with Ed’s aggressive style but very unfortunate on this occasion. Now the contract was rather cold and declarer made far too many tricks. Worse still was on the other table the defence were very sharp... Over to Michael Clark:
I played in 4
A game-swing out and our card was looking very ugly indeed at this point with nothing close to a plus!
Hats off to Keep and Brown here for also finding the right defence to 4
. After a club lead to the ace, figuring that there was no other realistic way to beat it, Clive found the underlead of the diamond ace allowing him to later give Mike a ruff. Good satisfying work to uncover the correct defence — well done!The Lintotts were unlucky here that their opponents also found the correct defence – sometimes there’s nothing you can do!!
| Board 6 East/EW |
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Board 6
A chance to get off the board here. I opened 1
as South and Ed found a non-constructive raise to 2 (going through a forcing NT). It’s certainly borderline and I don’t mind the choice at all. When East turned up with the ace and king of hearts, I was fairly confident of the location of the A, but quite surprised that West ducked both the ace and queen when I played a diamond up. Obviously I looked like a man about to run the 8! Anyway — that was now an easy 8 tricks. Flat in any case in our match. Michael Clark observes that there is a possibility of East making a takeout double as a passed hand. This might work and it is perfectly possible that 3 might sneak through. An aggressive action to be sure — I’m undecided, I must admit, about whether it is right or not. Tim Dickinson tells me that his opponents played in 1N after a simple auction of:
1 1NT
P
Figuring that his partner would have spades, he kicked off with the T. Not the most promising start but there was still enough time for the right discard to indicate a heart switch, and that was 7 tricks for the defence. I am sure that it is right to raise spades here playing most natural systems and would definitely recommend it.
Well done also to Hayes/Landy and Clacey/Angus for picking up a defence plus here. Best you can do on the board.
| Board 7 South/Both |
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Board 7
Well — there was a bit of over-bidding in evidence here. West opened 1
and partner found the normal takeout double. East found a 3 raise (I much prefer this to 4, I have to say on such a flat hand). My 3 was "brave"... Ok, not very good, I will admit and I don’t blame Ed’s raise to game at all although I’m sure he would have preferred an extra trump. I was very, very relieved when spades were 3-3 or I would have gone quite a few off. Still, there was still a gain for us on the board, where Michael Clark managed to make 10 tricks in hearts for +170. It seems that NS weren’t in a hurry to make any spade tricks. North’s spade switch when in with the A isn’t that special, really.There was a nice swing too in the C team here when Dickinson/Southcombe were allowed to play in 3
making exactly, whereas Gascoyne and Quainton’s opponents allowed themselves into being bullied up to the 5 level. What’s that old chestnut about the 5 level belonging to the opponents?More bad luck for Smith and Wilson when their opponents landed on a sixpence in 3
. Can’t touch that sadly with spades 3-3 as I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately for the A team, Wilkes/Webley were unable to locate the spade fit too and so there was the dreaded part-score double of -140.In fact the scores here were a bit all over the place — some pairs both plus, others both minus! These part-scores are quite often key in the grand scheme of things, I guess and overall we seem to be getting them right as a team more often than not.
| Board 8 West/None |
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Board 8
Interesting hand this; I opened 1
(could be as few as two) and Ed having correctly declined to make a gross 2nd seat pre-empt decided not to find a weak-jump shift to 2 expecting me to bid game if he did so. As if I would do such a thing! East then made a curious decision not to protect with 1 — so 1 was where I found myself. Still on a spade lead round ducked to the jack, I could win, cash the A pitching a heart and then ruff a spade. I then tried the rest of the hearts which stood up before playing my 4th spade. West was now stuck and chose to discard a diamond, giving me the Q ruff as my 7th trick for an unusual score of +70.The other table in our mini-match saw some fun and games. For those of you who don’t know, Michael and Luke play a very aggressive Moscito club system with lots of transfers and relays and very light openings. As such, West had a normal 1
opening (showing 4+ hearts, of course!). East bid a natural 1 (1 would have been a game-forcing relay) and South had no option but to double. West decided to pass the double rather than raising spades and North was left with a choice of bids. Most of us might have thought to introduce our 7 card diamond suit, but North had different ideas and came up with an imaginative 2! I have absolutely no clue what it was supposed to mean but needless to say it fetched the appalling 3NT from South (contract that is — 3NT seems reasonable if aggressive opposite a sane 2 bid). Lets just say it didn’t make and it was some imps back to us.This isn’t a good hand for those who open this a "Benji" 2
or 2NT to show 19-20 balanced. No way now to play in the par spot of 2 unless you have a bit of luck... Unless you’re at Keep and Brown’s table! Mike opened this one 2 showing 19-20 balanced or an Acol 2. West doubled and they now had access to Lebensohl here to allow North to show a weak hand with a long suit. Over the forced 3, Clive bid 3 to play and that made on the nose. Always nice when a bit of kit finally turns up and even manages to work!
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