Sunday, February 09, 2014

Bridge Match 2 - Board 41

Board 41 - Dealer North - EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Jack
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate

My hand: 9 6 2 4 Q J 8 5 4 J T 4 2

Partner opens 1 spade and East overcalls 1NT showing a strong NT without a huge heart suit. My hand is trash but I can at least eat up some bidding room by supporting partner's suit. I bid 2 spades. West jumps to 4NT which is apparently asking for aces for NT which seems really odd to me. That should be a quantitative slam invite. Anyway, East bids 5 clubs to show 1 or 4 and West signs off in 6 hearts of all things.

Partner leads the A of spades.
NORTH
A
EAST
Q 8 5
K 2
K 9 6 3 2
A K 5
SOUTH
9 6 2
4
Q J 8 5 4
J T 4 2
WestNorthEastSouth
11NT2
4NT1Pass52Pass
6PassPassPass
1Ace asking for NT
21 or 4 aces

A-5-2-T. Partner keeps playing spades, presumably hoping I have the K for my supporting bid. Sorry partner. I played the 2 to try to discourage! 3-8-9-K. West now draws trump. 3-8-K-4. 2-6 of spades-5-J. What? Partner won with the J of hearts! Woo!

They play some spades and now I'm going to have to find some pitches. East and I both have 5 diamonds and East has 2 entries in clubs. So I may well need all my diamonds to protect against those getting set up. On the other hand I also have clubs stopped in case West has Qxxx. Is that even possible? He probably had 6 hearts and 2 spades? So yes, he could well have plenty of clubs since he probably doesn't have many diamonds. I don't know what to do. I'll start with a diamond pitch and hope that isn't terrible.

West ruffs the spade and draws trump. Dummy pitches a diamond from board. Ok, pitching diamonds is probably fine then so I'll pitch another too. More trump with partner pitching a low club and dummy pitching another diamond. If partner is pitching count then I can safely pitch a club. Ok, let's hope that's what is happening. Declarer then plays club to board and ruffs a club to hand. Guess he only had 1 club! In fact he only had 4 minor suit cards and he had AK of both suits so it didn't matter what he did. He could have claimed if the game allowed the AI to do that. Oh well. Down one!

NORTH
A J 7 4 3
Q J 8

Q 9 8 6 3
WEST
K T
A T 9 7 6 5 3
A T 7
7
EAST
Q 8 5
K 2
K 9 6 3 2
A K 5
SOUTH
9 6 2
4
Q J 8 5 4
J T 4 2

Three tables made their way to 6 hearts and all of them went down 1. So we get 12MPs for a shared top board. The other five tables played in a heart game and took 11 or 12 tricks. This result pushes us back into first! Yay partner!


Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!

Ranking after board 41/60: 1/16 with 56.97%

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