Hubert Phillips Plate

In the quarter final of the Hubert Phillips plate we were drawn against John Williams' Oxford team. This was an early hand where the Reverend tried to dispel his reputation for cautious bidding.

4♣ was maybe a tad optimistic (3♣ wouild have been forcing after fourth suit), but the slam had reasonable chances. How do you play when West leads the queen of spades?

I ducked this and  when West continued spades I was able to play on cross-ruff lines, ruffing hearts in dummy and spades in hand to come to 12 tricks. The reason for ducking the first trick is that if the defence find a trump switch, you have an alternative line of setting up dummy's diamonds with the ace of spades as a late entry. I think the best line is to win the trump switch in dummy, take the ace of hearts and ruff a heart, then cash the top diamonds and ruff a diamond with the eight. If diamonds are 3-3 you can now claim, but if diamonds are 4-2 and West has not over-ruffed, you can ruff another heart, ruff a diamond with the ten, draw trumps (needing a 3-2 break) and cross to the ace of spades to cash the thirteenth diamond. I would have gone two down on the actual lie of the cards, so there were a lot of points resting on West's play at trick 2.

After two sets the match was almost level, but then we got almost all of the decisions right on a tricky set of boards to run out comfortable winners by almost 2000, though this was a missed opportunity.

I ponderered for a long while over Ann's 3NT opener; my options were to pass 3NT, bid 4♣ and let Ann play in 4♦, or bid 5♦ and keep my hand concealed. 5♦ was the winning move, though I was very fortunate to get a singleton spade in dummy and find the ace of clubs with East.

In the other room West opened 2♠, weak with spades and a minor, and the opponents bid 3♦ - 3♥ - 4♥.  West kicked off with the king of spades but East ducked this and the contract made with an overtrick.

It's a tough defence for East to find but I think the clues are all there - West has at most nine points and you know five of them, so the contract cannot be defeated with high cards and the only chance is to find West with a diamond void. Much easier in retrospect than at the table though..  

One in Three

It's a long time since I have posted anything, but here are three interesting declarer play problems that came up in the last few months. Unfortunately I only got one right. First, from a Faulkner match against Jeremy Baker's team, where we gave the opponents a 35 imp start but somehow managed to win.

West led a heart which I won in hand and played a trump to get the bad news. I went up with the ace and tried a cross-ruff, but East was able to ruff the third round of hearts with the ten and draw two more rounds of trumps to defeat the contract.

I should have played the nine (or jack) on the first round of trumps. Say East returns a heart. I overtake the queen to win in dummy, ruff a heart in hand and cash the top clubs. Now king and ace of diamonds and ruff a diamond. That's eight tricks, and East has only trumps left, so it is easy to endplay him to make dummys AJ of trumps. This line works whenever East has a 5332 shape, and some of the time when he is 5422.

A few days later, another match in the Hubert Phillips plate, and I was again declaring a major suit game holding four small trumps, when 3NT would have been an easier proposition.

West led a heart to the king and ace, and East switched to the eight of clubs. I tried the queen but West won this and played another trump. Considering the heart suit in isolation, the odds favour a finesse of the ten, but a trump lead from Jxx is dangerous so I suspected that East held the jack.

I went up with the queen, cashed the ace of clubs and ruffed a club, then played off the diamond winners. East ruffed the fouth round and led a spade, and when the nine drew West's king I was home.

This was another hand where I went wrong, completely missing a simple point that seems obvious in retrospect.

2NT in the protective position showed 18-20 balanced, 3♣ asked about majors, 3♦ showed at least one 4-card major, and 4♦ asked me to bid it.

West kicked off with ace and another club. I led a low trump up, and West won to play a third round of clubs, ruffed and over-ruffed. East now played a diamond.

I need to find the queen of diamonds. If I play for the drop, the chance of a singleton or doubleton queen is about 18%. I realised that East had passed her partner's 1♣ and had already showed up with a queen, but there was still room for her to hold the queen of diamonds, so I thought that the finesse was a better chance.

Wrong! The point that I missed was that if East has the queen of diamonds then West must have the queen and jack of hearts (otherwise East would have enough to repond), so the finesse needs three cards to be well placed, about a 12% chance rather than 50%. Another indication is the opening lead - the Ace of clubs is an unattractive lead, especially when I have bid 2NT, suggesting that West has honours in all the other suits.

There is another line of play that I did consider at the table - discard a diamond on the third round of clubs. This would seem to work whenever East has four diamonds, regardless of who has the queen.  But West can thwart this plan by playing a fourth round of clubs, allowing East to discard two hearts.

Tollemache Final

Last November Dorset managed to qualify for the final (eight teams out of an original 36) of the Tollemache Cup for county teams of eight.  This was our first appearance in the final for over 20 years, so our targets for the weekend were suitably modest - to win a match or two, and to finish above local rivals Somerset.

We got off on the wrong foot when our star striker missed the first seven boards after going to the wrong hotel, only noticing the absence of bridge players ten minutes before the event was due to start. This required a last-minute change to the line-up and we lost the first match to Somerset. Then we got hammered by Kent, mostly due to events at our table where the opponents did everything right and I was playing misère. This was the sort of thing that was going on.

With a huge hand for the 2♣ overcall I tried to show my extra strength with a redouble, and when I bid 3♣ I was more worried about missing a vulnerable game than conceding a big penalty. I was soon to be disappointed. Not only had we violated Burn's Law but the trumps broke 7-0. I managed to escape for two down as West was endplayed in trumps so I was able to score five trumps and the two outside aces.

At the other table where Dorset were North-South, Phil bid 3NT on the first round and played there. A club lead must have been a pleasant surprise, but the contract had no hope and drifted two off. On reflection I think that 3NT is a much better bid than 2♣ - you don't need much opposite to make 3NT and how is partner to know that Q x of clubs is enough to make game?
 
One of the Kent North-South pairs contrived to stop in 2♦, the last making spot, while their other pair had exactly the same auction as at our table, except that West forgot to double 3♣, worried that the opponents might have a better spot in one of the red suits.

This board caused some carnage in the other matches - one North-South pair contrived to lose 1700 in 6♣ doubled, and another was allowed to make 2♣ redoubled.

A loss to Middlesex in our next match left us well adrift at the bottom of the table.  Ann and I had refrained from drinking during dinner but a glass of wine seemed called for. Fortified with some very nice Malbec (it needed to be good as the hotel bar charged £10.50 a glass) we returned to play Berks and Bucks. One of the opponents was a bit grumpy and went into Ann's black book, but they lost 400 on a part score hand and let through a rose-tinted 3NT, which was just enough to win the match. It was only by 11-9, but we were grateful for anything at that stage.

On Sunday we started against London, who were well ahead of the field and had won all of their matches. Our international opponents showed that there is hope for us all by butchering a trivial defence to let Ann make a ridiculous 3NT, and they also went astray on this hand.

I led a top spade and switched to a sneaky ten of clubs. Declarer gave this a very long look before going up with the ace and playing a trump to the ten. Now he needs to play ace of hearts and ruff a heart, then ruff a club bringing down the king.  Another heart ruff is followed by two winning clubs and a club ruffed with the king. Dummy is left with A J of trumps and a club while East has Q 7 6 of trumps so declarer can endplay East to claim the last two tricks. You can follow the play by clicking 'Next' on the hand diagram. The declarer at our table managed all of this except that he ruffed a spade rather than a heart in dummy, on which Ann was able to discard a club. Now declarer was a trick short and Ann had to make two trump tricks at the end.

Mark and Krzysztof also reached 5♦ after the same auction, but West switched to a heart at trick two. Krzysztof took the club finesse, ruffed a club and cashed the king of trumps. He now ruffed a heart and played winning clubs through East. This led to the same endplay when East was left with Q 7 6 of trumps at trick 11.

Mike chose to open 1♦ and ended up declaring 5♦ as North.  The defence led two rounds of spades, so he ruffed with the eight while East threw a heart. He then played a trump to the ten, a club to the king and ace, and ran the winning clubs. East discarded hearts on the last two clubs, but was then forced to ruff a heart and lead away from the queen of trumps.


At the fourth table the auction started as at our table but South chose to bid 5♥ over 4NT, which could have been the right move if North's shape was 1-2-4-6, but was not a success here and ended three down.  All that meant that we gained 52 imps on the board, which helped us to an honourable 10-10 draw. 

After this we were able to finish on a high note with 16-4 wins in our last two matches against Oxford and Manchester, to finish in 5th place (out of eight), the same position as in our previous appearance in the final.