2018 Youth PABFs - Day 3 : Qualifying Part 2
Round Seven had the Aussies on Vugraph, playing against yet another Indonesian Team - so far it had been seven in a row.
Early in the match Cesca faced this problem:
Dealer at favourable vulnerability she held:
♠J64 ♥KQT952 ♦AQ84 ♣---
And heard this auction:
1♥ (2♣) 3♣ (4♣)
4♥ (P) P (5♣)
???
She chose to pass and let partner make the final decision. Holding ♠AQ73 ♥J83 ♦K962 ♣75 with the opponents vulnerable, Renee had an automatic double.
Unfortunately, the full deal was:
At the other table the auction started the same, but holding the East cards Andrew bid 5♣ directly - the textbook action. This had the unfortunate effect of pushing South into a 5♥ "save" that Tomer doubled.
With 5♥ cold and 5♣x only scoring +200, we were off to a poor start.
Later in the same match as dealer at Nil you pick up:
♠KQT97532 ♥85 ♦K96 ♣---
and the auction develops:
4♠ (5♥) X (6♣)
P (P) X AP
What do you lead???
In light of partner's penalty doubles, I have a lot of sympathy for the Indonesian south who chose a top spade.
However it wasn't a success on the full layout:
At the other table, West chose to double 4♠ and when East leapt voluntarily to 6♣, Renee (north) took insurance in 6♠. +1190 and -300 was worth 13 imps to the Aussies.
However, Australia's cardplay was uncharacteristically sloppy later in the match, to the tune of two game swings out. That turned what could have been a sizable victory into a small loss.
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Round Eight was against the Phillipines, a team captained by Ann, an old rival from my youth days.
Early in the match, Andrew Spooner faced this tough declarer problem, after an uncontested 2♥ - 4♥ auction.
♠KQT653
♥J94
♦AK72
♣---
♠82
♥QT7632
♦63
♣AJ8
on the ♣T lead.
Not unreasonably, he decided to win in hand and ruff a club immediately. However, when he tried to return to hand with a diamond ruff, his LHO was able to overruff with the ♥8 and scuttle the contract.
An alternative line (that happened to work on this layout) is to win the lead in hand and play a spade immediately. This threatens to set up spades with plenty of entries, while also retaining the possibility of 2 club ruffs. Andrew (and I) would be interested in hearing the opinions of any cardplay technicians!
At the other table Jamie and Matt doubled 4♥ in a contested auction, but then found a softer defence which led to an easy make and a double digit swing away.
---
Later in the match a misguided redouble led to a new team rule:
"NO BUSINESS REDOUBLES WITHOUT AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES CONSIDERATION!!!"
Although it was too late to save this board, not even Matt Smith is prepared to to wait for 5 minutes, so at least we didn't have to score up any more minus 1000s!
Imps were flying everywhere and when the smoke cleared, the Philippines had snatched a small victory.
---
Round Nine, had us playing one of the less experienced Indonesian teams and needing a big victory to regain some momentum. The team delivered and we went to dinner with 19.61 VPs out of a possible 20. But that wasn't good enough for Renee.
While the rest of us were relaxing by the pool and enjoying a delicious buffet meal, she was still scouring the hand record.
"That wasn't my hand on board 13!" she exclaimed, "I definitely had a 2335."
It just so happened that she was right and the fouled board also happened to be one of our only losing boards.
So I had the unenviable job of chasing up our opponents and getting the director to take away their last 0.39 VPs. Although with 5 teams vying for 4 spots, it looked like we were going to need every VP we could get!
Posted by Mike Doecke on Thursday, 19 April 2018 at 02:48