Bridge of AngST

Andre and I won Friday Night Pairs with 66.18%.

Maybe this is what it means to be in “the zone”. I actually made quite a few bad mistakes, so if everything was perfect the score should perhaps been better.

This was our only bottom of the night:

Dealer S Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♣5	♠ T3 ♥ JT62 ♦ AT842 ♣ J9
♠ KQ82 ♥ Q3 ♦ J653 ♣ 876		♠ J976 ♥ AK95 ♦ K9 ♣ A32
	♠ A54 ♥ 874 ♦ Q7 ♣ KQT54

The bidding went:

West	North	East	South
			p
p	p	1♥	2♣
X	p	2NT	p
3NT	p	p	p
Dealer W Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♥Q	♠ ♥ QJ9842 ♦ Q54 ♣ JT62
♠ KT9764 ♥ 73 ♦ K763 ♣ 7		♠ QJ8532 ♥ ♦ J82 ♣ AKQ4
	♠ A ♥ AKT65 ♦ AT9 ♣ 9853

I opened 2S and eventually ended up in 5SX. On the trump trick, Poon Hua (North) signalled for a diamond. Declarer cashed the Ace of Diamonds and I claimed 11 tricks.

An underlead of the diamond would have put me to the guess and probably down me by 1. In any case, imagine my amazement when Andre produced 6 spades in dummy for me!

Dealer N Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♥Q	♠ 3 ♥ K ♦ K2 ♣ AKQJ8543
♠ Q864 ♥ AT97 ♦ AJ54 ♣ 2		♠ KJT ♥ A42 ♦ A8763 ♣ T7
	♠ A9752 ♥ J8653 ♦ T9 ♣ 5

5C shouldn’t have made but I allowed it to. In any case we still got 4.5 MPs out of 5 possible.

Dealer E
NS Vul
MPs

West North East South
2H   X
3H(1)  3S     4H   4S
5H AP

(1): 3H was explained as 11+ HCP with support

South asked East a what 3H was and received the explanation above. The director was called to the table as soon as dummy was on the table. The players were advised to play on.

5H went down 2. South called the director and argued that she would have doubled if not for the given explanation of the 3H bid. The director ruled that no damage was done and hence, no adjustment.  He also informed NS of their right of appeal.

NS were considering appealing, but they had an argument as well. South argued that if North had bid 4S, she would have doubled 5H.  Even with the bidding, South’s line of argument was that “the double had already showed the hand” and North had the onus to double. Is this correct? I disagree on the following points:

1) This was MPs, so South should have doubled anyway if she thought 5H was going down. (And she should have done so in my opinion)

2) The double did NOT show the hand. South could easily have a rotten 12 count.

Perhaps a different TD would have allowed an adjustment (but difficult for a full adjustment to 5HX-2 I think), but I think NS would have stood a stronger case if North had bid 4S instead of 3S. Now South would be able to gauge more accurately that West did not have what he promised and doubled instead. Even if West had the correct points, South would be able to gauge that North had a unbalanced weak hand and  double 4S as well.

Any ideas on how to prove any damage if present?

In the end, I told our opps for BBO ITL last week that we couldn’t make it on saturday. Received no response by email and the weekend passed by.

Friday night: Went to SCBA thinking there was Good Food Good Bridge. However, the food part was cancelled. Eric wasn’t free, neither was Danen, and the J1s were happily paired up so Lilio asked me to partner this Brazilian guy called Caio Feilhaber. Mr Feilhaber’s roots are Austrian, as I found out, and his nephew plays soccer professionally for Hamburg SV. Wow.

We agreed on a simple 2/1 system and actually finished 6th out of 19 pairs, with 56.93%. Rather good result.

Saturday I was busy with my National Day Parade Marshalling duties. I was asked by Marco to go down to SCBA for Open Teams on Sunday as they did not even have 4 people. I agreed.

Imagine my shock when Sunday morning 0930 Emmaline called me to ask where I was! Marco had told me the wrong time, 1000. Thankfully I managed to grab a taxi. 15 minutes late and 1 VP deducted, but better than a walkover I guess.

First match was the second 8 boards against Mr Lai’s team, which we won overall 22-8. The rest were 14-16, 14-16, 13-17, giving us a 6th place in the qualifiers after garnering only 20 VPs in the first 3 matches against the top 3 teams in the section.

Will write up more in individual posts.