Results can be seen on the Oxfordshire website.
The A team simply got off to bad start and couldn’t really pull things back from a dire position at half-time. They tightened things up but couldn’t really claw many imps back.
In the B team match, the first set was a bit slow with things fairly even (although a lot of imps were changing hands). The second and third sets saw one-way traffic however allowing them to put their feet up and coast a little at the end.
For the C team match, surprisingly things started quite slowly before the imp tally suddenly racked up to give quite an emphatic win in the end.
Several pairs had decent cards although the stats don’t always tell the whole story. In the C team Gidman/Rowland and Dickinson/Southcombe certainly enjoyed their day and the B team was fairly consistent throughout with a decent card from Cooper/Youngs on their debut for the county and an excellent card from the scratch partnership of Jones and Porter. Who needs agreements, eh?
In the A team, there was a bit of a struggle and even Smith and Wilson who statistically had a reasonable cards will admit that their scores are probably inflated compared to the level of performance. Still – its early days and I’m sure the A team can regroup in time for the Worcs match.
For now…. On to the hands.
| Board 1N/None |
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Q T 9 7 6 
Q J 4 3
2
9 5 4It feels strange starting my commentary with this board. We actually played it in the second half after tea. Still, I’ll try not to pre-empt my later comments. In this match, I was partnering Bryony Youngs – my fifth different partner already for the county…. Shades of another former Oxford captain, perhaps? Anyway – we were playing a fairly standard 2 over 1 card with 5 card majors and a strong NT. This match was a lot more comfortable for me though as I didn’t have a T-shirt staring at me informing me I’m a fish. Still, I still demonstrated at time that I was capable of playing like one.
East opened a weak no-trump at our table. This looks far too good for me and I would upgrade it. It is a prime 14 count with two aces and a good 5 card suit. By all means use high card points to guide you what to open, but texture and shape are just as important. Things to look for when upgrading are 5 card suits, aces and working honours (i.e. honours in a suit which contains good pips and other honours). Things that one should look less favourably on are things like 4333 shapes, a lack of aces, poor intermediate cards and isolated honours. But I don’t know many people who downgrade much!
Anyway, we play Landy over 1N so I decided to bid 2H as I couldn’t show the red suits directly. West now found an obscure 2N, presumably meant as Lebensohl. I guess he was intending to show an invitational hand with 5 spades, but seems like an odd choice to me. A forcing 3S seems perfect or even 3C to show clubs would probably work ok. The singleton heart and 55 shape is more than enough to force to game in my opinion. Bryony found an aggressive but normal raise to 4H which was passed round to West. Now he realised the problem he’d set himself as he had no idea whether his partner had support or not. Eventually he tried 4S which partner double with some relish.
I was very nervous about this as I had only one defensive trick and some shape but figured that I don’t really want to start things off with a gratuitous pull of a penalty double (partnership harmony and all that!), West rather strangely decided to stand it rather than running to 5C which seems like a stand-out action to me. Anyway, we managed to extract 500 out of this on a forcing defence after I failed to realise that partner had 5 spades early enough (hard on that auction, I think!) and jettisoned a heart. Still 500 against nothing was quite a bonus.
On the other table of our mini-match, we had a scratch partnership of two of the county’s most aggressive players Ed Jones and Luke Porter. Spirited bidding got them all the way to 6C when East upgraded to a strong no trump opening. I bet when they came back with 100 they didn’t expect to gain 9 imps. Anyway this was a good start to the set in our mini-match.
With hands like this with a bit of shape, there are countless possibilities in the auction. Dickinson and Southcombe will consider themselves unlucky here after a reasonably sensible auction of:
(2S) 3D P 3N end
Over North’s Lucas 2 (5+ spades and 4+ other), it wasn’t obvious at all what to do. 3D is certainly aggressive with such a flat hand (usually pass with a weak no-trump is advisable) but one can hardly blame West for the raise. On a heart lead this was quickly one down.
Smith and Wilson had a good auction here I think.
P 1N 2C* 3C *=Hearts and another
4H P P 4S
X 5C P P
X end
The double of 5C is certainly quite keen and 5C is very unlucky to go down. The prudent 3C bid initially put them in a good position to find the best game.
On the other table of this mini-match. Williams and Wilson also got to defend 5C and took it the same one off but didn’t double after a less informative auction.
Gidman and Rowland were allowed to play in 3H after their opponents rather curiously declined to compete over Alastair’s preemptive 3H raise. They even made it too! The same thing happened on the other table of their mini-match too… except it was doubled for a swing out. The defence to 3HX is quite interesting. East led a trump (which is a good start). Declarer immediately played on spades and that left the crunch part of the hand. The defence need to cash two clubs ending with East and then play trumps. Not necessarily easy to time – I wonder if a big club by East is right rather than a small club as was chosen at the table?
Most pairs were having some success in defending on this board – fortunately only one Oxford pair got caught to the tune of 300… unlucky for the Lintotts there.
| Board 2 E/NS |
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An interesting hand this. The first question concerns the East hand. This looks like a weak no-trump to me (despite only holding 11 HCP – again a good 5 card suit would tempt me to upgrade… but then I do like to bid if you don’t know already) but our opponents decided to pass. This allowed me to open 1H which is horrible I know, but if I didn’t open 11s, I don’t think I’d ever open! West overcalled 2C and Bryony bid a forcing 2S. East found a quiet raise to 3C and I gratefully passed. Partner’s confident 4S bid (no messing around there!) ended the auction and she went a quiet 2 off after guessing hearts correctly. Well there wasn’t much of a guess, I suppose when East failed to play low in tempo. With that type of holding in defence, you really need to think early in the play about what card you will play if declarer leads a heart up so you can follow in tempo.
On the other table of our mini-match, Ed and Luke managed to find the cold 5C after some spirited bidding and even netted a double for their trouble. North chose to run to 5S and our boys paid them a little too much respect by declining to double. 800 would have come in extremely handy but I can’t blame them for expecting North to be unbalanced rather than a semi-balanced 7222 shape. It wouldn’t be the first time that we forgot to double as a team of four expecting them to have something resembling their bids!
See what happens though when East opens a weak no trump. West simply raises to 3N and North has a real problem. Do you double? Is it even right to double? I think it is close but you probably do need to double. If partner doesn’t lead a spade, 3N will likely make and it is a reasonable gamble. If they redouble, you’ll probably just have to bid 4S and hope for the best. Anyway – absent a double, 3N was making rather easily on a non-spade lead. John Slater and Chris Wilson both tell me that they had this decision but chose to pass…. Ouch. A little unlucky and South led the inevitable heart.
For Dickinson and Southcombe, East opened the 11 count 1N and West found a rather conservative raise to 2N (I much prefer an immediate 3N to this, myself) and North wandered in with 3S. When South raised to game, David decided to find an “each-way” shot of 5C which hit the jackpot when it was doubled and rolled in after a correct guess in diamonds.
This was a swing out in one A team mini-match when Smith and Wilson saw:
1D 1H 2C 2S
P P 3C end
Opposite the precision diamond there was some speculation about whether to bid game opposite the non-forcing 3C. Is the hand minimum? Yes. Would you force to game opposite a precision 1D opener? Probably not. Could have done with some cards being wrong there!
I like Jo Murray’s action on this board as she found a pressure bid of 4C over the opponents 1H opening. This is a good choice opposite a passed-partner and got them to the decent 5C contract. In hindsight, I’m sure she’ll feel that there is enough information to get the diamonds right here, but sometimes one goes with a table feel which, unfortunately for the C team, was wrong on this occasion.
The Lintotts had a good board here managing to Extract 800 out of some opponents who did too much bidding in spades. A bright spot in a rather dispiriting day, I’m sure!
| Board 3 S/EW |
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A very interesting problem this. What do you open with the South cards? My choice of 3D was probably unwise. I don’t care about holding an outside 4 card major per-se but the hand does have 6 very good diamonds. There is probably too much chance of 3N making here that an initial pass or a light one level opening is superior. Anyway 3D ended the auction and I made 10 tricks on a club lead. 3N is the place to be though as partner has 4 quick tricks and diamonds are 3-2. I guess when you pre-empt a lot, then you will sometimes miss games like this but I suspect I’ll continue to put the pressure on! Perhaps not with such a good suit, next time though. Fortunately for us, the Gloucs pair against Luke and Ed were one of the few pairs who missed the cold 3N.
| Board 4 W/All |
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Here, East opened a Lucas 2 in third. This has 4 minor suit losers, one trump and the HA. We weren’t hard pressed to take these. On the other table of our mini-match, a light 1S opening in third fetched a 2D response which ended the auction. When this made on the nose it was a nice part-score swing in.
Slater and Stephens got to defend 3N here – that’s motoring! Two off in any case for some imps in.
Astonishingly in the C team, 200 was scored at each table. Well done to Currie and Murray for being the only pair to manage it in the in column!!
| Board 5 N/NS |
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Now wouldn’t you like to be in slam on this hand if you can see all four hands? The first question is what to open with the North cards. If you’re playing a 20-22 2N opener then it seems clear to open that. If you play 19-20 or even 20-21 then I would suggest that this is very suitable for an upgrade. It is such a pure hand with great controls and an excellent 5 card suit that you should look to upgrade when you can. Downgrade with soft values but look rosily at this sort of hand.
Anyway, Bryony opened a 20-22 2N and I bid 5 card puppet Stayman – a useful tool to have on this hand. Partner bid 3S confirming 5 and my hand started to look quite good indeed.
The rest of the auction as I saw it was:
2N 3C
3S 4D* *=cue
4N* 5C** *=RKCB **=1/4 keycards
5D* 5S** *=trump queen ask **=no
P
Unfortunately from Bryony’s side, the auction was:
2N 3C
3S 4D* *=natural
4N* 5C** *=natural **=cue
5D* 5S** *=sign-off **=something’s gone wrong, but this should play ok!
P
Oops! Turns out that when we’d agreed our continuations here, my interpretation of what we agreed was different from partner. I now have suitably slapped wrists and have amended the system file. Sorry team.
Still think this is very difficult to bid though. If I’d got the system right, I could have bid 4H over 3S to show a slamtry in spades. Partner might well have just bid 4S and I’d have to look extremely rosily at my hand to bid 5D (cue) over that.
Still – no real damage and was even an unexpected two imps in when our counterparts in our match thought that 3N was the best pace to play.
The closest I’ve seen was from Williams and Wilson who had an auction of :
2N 3C
3S 4D
4H 4S
Where 2N shows a 5 card suit. Do you go on over 4S? I think I probably would but I’m an optimistic soul.
| Board 6 E/EW |
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Bah – I was annoyed by this one. East opened 1C and I found the normal 1N overcall. West doubled – aggressive but probably right and Bryony bid 2D which showed either diamonds or the majors. East passed and so did I. West then bid 2H and after a pass from partner, East had a long think before passing. I now took a very pessimistic view of my hand and decided to pass, as they were clearly thinking of bidding some more and I couldn’t be sure of beating 4H. Of course, he had nothing to think about at all and I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion and we needed to compete in diamonds. This was a fair size swing out when team-mates simply defended 1N which made fairly easily after an uninspired lead with no real help in the bidding.
Smith and Wilson had an optimistic auction here to 4H
2C 2H
4H P
2C was precision style 6+ clubs or 5+ clubs and 4+ major and intermediate values and 2H was NF and constructive. I guess it is pretty hard to pass that with the East cards – it is unlucky to catch West with a dog of a hand. Maybe pass of 2C is better?
Alastair Gidman tells me that their opponents were being curiously uncompetitive in this set. At their table, a 1N overcall ended the auction and made on the nose for +90.
| Board 7 S/All |
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Time for a bit of luck here for us. I opened 1C and heard 1S from partner. There was some debate here about what the best rebid with the South cards is. Personally, I didn’t think it was close and found an Acol-style 3C rebid. Partner confidently banged down 3N and East went for the old adage of “If in doubt, lead a heart”. With clubs behaving that was an easy 10 tricks. A bit lucky but a good decision I think to reveal as little as possible about the hands. It’s impossible to be delicate here without revealing the diamond weakness, so I think partners approach is definitely the right one. Team-mates led a diamond against the same contract and that was that. Fourth from your longest and strongest I believe.
This was a disaster for the A team as both our pairs went off in game and both our defenders managed to let through 3N or 5C…… oh dear.
I’ve heard a tale of woe from Nick Smith here:
“This is the board that gave me my sleepless night and, I confess, possibly the worst mistake I have made for the county in the last few years - sorry, everyone!
1C 1S
3C 5C
In a sense I was beaten in the flight. Is that an Acol 3C rebid? Others thought it was too, so who am I to say? Alan led HJ which ran to the ace and when our trumps came tumbling down in two rounds, I confess I sensed that we were now playing for overtricks and took my eye off the ball. A spade went to the 9, J and Q and I stopped to consider whether Alan could possibly have DA and concluded that, while there was just about space for him to have HK, there was no way we could have two Ds cashing. I can see that our H winner (if he has it) will disappear after a ruffing finesse in spades so, in the interests of saving an overtrick, I eschewed the D return - aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!”
Well worth a scream! The moral of the story is obvious – don’t give anyone too much credit! Oh well…. For Williams and Wilson there was no similar reprieve. Two rounds of diamonds immediately puts paid to 5C - quick smart.
I was amused by Gidman and Rowland’s opponent’s comments here. After a typical auction they reached 3N but West decided to lead a heart because “Hearts looked more promising”. Not today, I’m afraid!
| Board 8 W/None |
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A nice board here that requires a bit of care. Our auction was a curious
1S 2D
2S P
The defence kicked off with three rounds of clubs and Bryony exited in hearts. Declarer won this in hand and played a spade to the ace and the S5 from table. When partner discarded, he rose with the king and plonked the DK on the table. I was rather hoping partner would duck so played the DJ but partner won to play a second heart. Declarer now rather lost his way as he won this in hand and tried a spade to the queen. I could win the queen with the king and exit in diamonds and declarer was stuck on table and couldn’t cross to hand without giving me a trump promotion for one down.
On the other table, Luke upgraded the East cards to a strong no-trump. Again I think this is definitely the right choice – a good 5 card suit and working honours. Ed raised to 3N and South with no information found an unfortunate spade lead. A repeat of the finesse and a diamond to the king (ducked) meant that Luke could simply cash his 9 tricks and give up. Another good swing in and a reward for good aggressive bidding. Unfortunately the same thing also happened to Slater and Stephens but the other way round. Need to be sharp to rise with the diamond, I guess. I don’t think many will get that right.
Dickinson and Southcombe had a rather more successful go at 2S. Tim opened 1S and David responded 2D. North now rather bizarrely doubled – not a great choice whatever it means! South bid 2H assuming it was a takeout double and fortunately for them, David bid 2S which ended the auction. Tim Dickinson managed to make 10 tricks when he guessed the spades right and timed it a little better. Very difficult to guess who holds what though after that auction!
In one of the A team matches – Nick Smith did well to avoid the trump promo whereas the Gloucs declarer succumbed against Williams and Wilson . Some much needed imps for the A team there.
Piper and Robinson who were enjoying a decent day as a scratch partnership, were another pair to roll in 3N. With the Gloucs pair staying out of game at Goldsmith and Percival-Price’s table, that was a nice swing in for the B team.
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