Leicestershire Contract Bridge Association
Leicestershire Contract Bridge Association
| Played at Oostende A team from Loughborough masquerading as England U20: |
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Match Report The first match against France was the only truly disappointing result. A close game, which should have been bid, a no play slam resulted in a flat board, then the sloppiest of our defences let a vulnerable game through. What really should have been a comfortable win was to be our biggest loss. Perhaps the long journey was to blame, in the last 9 boards we missed another good slam. Luckily the Netherlands bid the wrong slam! A few good part scores kept us in the running. We all retired early to bed and awoke fresh for the fray. We were the first team to have breakfast - a good omen. It was to be a long day with 9 9-board stanzas. As with all bridge the key is in doing the small, apparently simple things, correctly. Against the Netherlands this hand gained England imps when declarer gave himself that extra small chance: South found himself in 4♥, East having opened Clubs 3rd in hand.
How would you play the hand? A simple line is to ruff a diamond, which will succeed when diamonds are 5-2 or better - around 93%. (I wish my contracts could always have odds like that!) The Dutch declarer looked no further than this and was quickly down, the full deal being:
Of course this contract can always be defeated on a diamond switch at trick 2 or 3. We duly saw off Holland, to put us above average. We then played Belgium. They were the weakest team but could do no wrong. We missed our chances, a slim slam could have been made and a more aggressive bid (found everywhere else) may have flattened a 17 imp out board. However a 14-16 loss did not reflect the wide gap in ability. Watching declarer fail to be punished by taking a totally unnecessary finesse, not drawing trumps or reduce hands to 50 - 50 guesses, did not seem fair somehow. So we started again but now we were ready for France. This time there was a slam swing out but otherwise a very flat set of boards. This was followed by a superb demonstration of the importance of part scores. Without a single double figure swing we won 21-9. More importantly we were now ahead of France and, if one occurred, we would win the split tie. Since our last match was against Belgium we were now very well placed. Holland however had other plans. We played poorly, to lose 19 imps in the wildest set of the competition. Our slam bidding could have gained 12 but lost 24. Still steady as she goes was the plan, the next set contained yet another adverse slam swing but it was level so now we were in a tie for first place. In the final match against Belgium it was another flat set with Belgium having all the luck; despite several misere plays they were only 14 down. But the match between France and Holland was going our way, we were now effectively 25 imps ahead of both with an easy set to play against Belgium. And so it proved. Nerves were jangling but as 75 imps changed hands there was no way we were going to lose and we ran out with our biggest win. Average imps per stanza Ben Green and John Atthey +6.0 Susan Stockdale and Duncan Happer +5.2 Jonathan De Souza and Paul Wilson +3.0 |
| Mel Starkings & Susan Stockdale 29.12.01 |