Bridge of AngST

JP and Jychee have been joining Andre and I on Friday Nights at SCBA.

On the 10th I partnered Danen instead as Andre was not in town. We got a score of 49% and 6th out of 11 pairs.

On the 17th Andre and I had some bad luck and bad judgement and we got a bad score of 40% and 15th out of 17 pairs.

Yesterday we had a good game and we got 56% and 2nd out of 8 pairs. Only 2 outright bottoms: A misdefend by me on 6NT and Andre going down 1 in 4H.

The misdefend was a stupid mistake: I held up my Ace for one round too many. This is one of my common mistakes. Andre’s mis-declaring play was not entirely his fault as I placed the contract wrongly. The other 3 tables were in 3NT making 10 or 11 tricks. So even if we had just made 10 tricks, +620 would still give us a bottom compared to +630 or +660.

Interestingly on the previous hand, we made a top because opps pushed us out of 3NT into 4S. My hand was:

AT
AQTxxx
KQx
Q9

The bidding went something like (Andre opened): 1S(2C)2H-2S-3C*-3NT then 4C by my LHO. This was passed round to me. My choices were X and 4S. I was wondering if X would give us enough penalty as we were vul vs non-vul so 4CX would need to be down by 4 if our game as on. The AT suggested 4S to me and I bid it. 4S made with 1 overtrick and the best score among the other tables was 3NT+1.

Andre actually had Kxxx in clubs! LHO had raised to 4C with only 2 small clubs, much to the shock and amazement of her partner.

Matchpoint Bridge by Kelsey is a good read. My approach towards playing pairs has changed somewhat after reading it.

A bad weekend. I spent one whole day yesterday (Sunday) playing teams when I was sick, resulting in a poor result.

Friday was Open Pairs. Final result: 49.2%, 15th out of 26 pairs. Not too bad considering the field.

Andre and I were the sitting pair at table 11, so I sat North for the first 9 rounds, and West for the next 4.

Disaster struck on the first board we played, board 21:

Dealer N Vul N/S Scoring MP Lead ♥5	♠ KJT2 ♥ K942 ♦ 92 ♣ JT9872
♠ 3 ♥ J87 ♦ KQ8654 ♣ J87		♠ 97654 ♥ A63 ♦ T7 ♣ Q42
	♠ AQ8 ♥ QT5 ♦ AJ3 ♣ KT96

The disaster was in the auction:

Firstly, I answered the 2D feature ask wrongly – with a minimum I should just rebid 3C. Secondly, we were playing 1430 RKCB, so my answer was wrong again. Andre thought I had 3, so he bid 6NT, which went down 3.

We redeemed ourselves somewhat on the next hand.

Dealer E Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead 7S	♠ 7 ♥ AT92 ♦ KQT95 ♣ QJ8
♠ AK3 ♥ J87643 ♦ 4 ♣ T94		♠ QJT4 ♥ KQ ♦ J86 ♣ K753
	♠ 98652 ♥ 5 ♦ A732 ♣ A62

Opponents reached 4H after a contested auction, and I promptly wielded the X. This went down 2 for 500, which is good considering we have 5D our way.

The next few boards were not really interesting. Andre made a mistake on board 24, going down in game when he should have made, but board 26 saw him bring in a 1NT which was supposed to go down.

Board 3 was another bad board:

Dealer S Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead 3S	♠ J8 ♥ KT52 ♦ 753 ♣ Q764
♠ QT4 ♥ J9 ♦ JT62 ♣ KJ82		♠ K76 ♥ 8764 ♦ AKQ8 ♣ AT
	♠ A9532 ♥ AQ3 ♦ 94 ♣ 953

Opponents reached 3NT after 1NT-3NT. Declarer played the Ten of Clubs towards table after winning the spade lead. I misjudged the situation and held up the Q when a heart return after taking the Q would have set.

The next board was bad as well, Andre making a MP double of 5D which was making with an overtrick. No one else doubled so this was a zero for us.

Our next opponents had the luck of defending against two slams:

Dealer N Vul N/S Scoring MP Lead ♦J	♠ QJ72 ♥ JT42 ♦ Q6 ♣ AK8
♠ 954 ♥ Q98 ♦ 9542 ♣ JT5		♠ 863 ♥ K76 ♦ JT87 ♣ 972
	♠ AKT ♥ A53 ♦ AK3 ♣ Q643

The auction went 1NT-4NT-6NT at our table. Other tables mostly played the slam from South.

11 top tricks, how to get the 12th? Either clubs or hearts would have to provide the 12th. Clubs would require a 3-3 break, while hearts….I had no obvious solution. I played for the 3-3 break and was home.

Suggestion from partner was that I could have played a low heart towards hand to rectify the count.

(To be continued)