St Andrew away

We were "away" at St Andrew this Wednesday. St Andrew is another bridge club in the West End of Glasgow - it's about 500m from the Buchanan, and their first team is pretty strong. We had some illness in the team, so I was playing with Neil Wiley rather than Norman. We play fairly simple Acol, with a couple of quirks - Neil likes to play Gazilli discards. A high minor suit card is suit preference for spades, a low one suit preference for hearts, and the same with major suit discards showing minors. 

We were playing against Charles and Vi Outred. They are a fairly good pair, but they play a quirky bidding system, and can be relied to get themselves into trouble at least once or twice a session. In the first half, we beat 1NTXX by two tricks, and 2NTX by four tricks, and ended up with a fairly solid score.

Here's one I played in 3NT. North's 2♦ showed a decent (8-11) weak two in one of the two majors. South led the K♠.:

♠ x x x ♥ A K x x x ♦ x x ♣ J x ♠ x x ♥ x x x ♦ A K x x ♣ K T 9 x * * * * ♠ A J x ♥ Q J T ♦  Q J x ♣ A 8 x x ♠ K Q T x x ♥ x ♦ x x x x ♣ Q x x

Neil Charles John Vi W N E S 2♦* 2NT -  3NT  -  - -

I ducked the spade king, Vi switched to a heart. Charles won this, and cashed the ♥K, before playing back another spade. I now have 8 tricks - one spade, one heart, four diamonds and two clubs. I don't see much point in ducking this spade - I'll still have 8 tricks, but I'll also still need to get an extra club trick, so I won, and ran all my tricks in diamonds before coming back to the club queen. As I had hoped, this cause some trouble for South:

♠ x ♥ x x ♦  ♣ J x ♠ - ♥ x ♦  ♣ K T 9 x * * * * ♠ J ♥ Q ♦  - ♣ A 8 x ♠ Q x ♥ - ♦ - ♣ Q x x

Neil Charles John Vi W N E S 2♦* 2NT -  3NT  -  - -

On the last heart, Vi has two ways of giving up the contract - she either pitches a club, which gives up immediately, or pitches a spade, at which point I can endplay her with a spade, which picks up the club suit (I still have to guess, but as the honours are split, I'm going to guess right. As it happens, she chose to pitch a club, and I cashed out for an overtrick (although I did get a bit of a fright when Charles accidentally discarded a spade on the first club!). 

Note that although I think I played this pretty well (at least, I carefully made sure I was in hand when I'd finished cashing my red suit winners..), the defence was far from optimal. I think they beat it if they pick pretty much any other sequence of plays, in particular, I think I stand almost no chance if Charles just plays another spade when he wins the first heart. Vi's club pitch also initially looks like a mistake, but in fact it gives me a chance to go wrong if I have the jack (I might guess the suit wrong, playing her for all the remaining spades). However, this isn't actually possible if Charles is strict about is 8-11 weak two.

♠♥♦♣

Here's another big board that we got exactly right, and Charles and Vi had another attempt at a bidding mix-up, although it didn't actually matter too much:

♠ 9 ♥ 9 4 2 ♦ A T 6 5  ♣ A J 7 3 2 ♠ A K 7 ♥ K J 8 7 3 ♦ J 8 3 ♣ T 9 * * * * ♠ Q 8 5 4 3 ♥ A Q T 6 5 ♦  - ♣ Q 5 4 ♠ J T 6 2  ♥ - ♦ A Q J 7 4 2  ♣ K 8 6

Neil Charles John Vi W N E S - 1♦(*) 1♥ 3♠(*)   4♦ 5♦   -       -   5♥ AP

I decided not to open the East cards, which was probably a mistake, but it turned out ok on the actual hand. 1♦ showed either clubs or diamonds. As soon as Neil bid ♥s, I knew we were playing in a game. Vi didn't quite know what Charles intended by the 3♠ bid, and had to leave the room while he explained it as a splinter with support for either minor. I might be better off just bidding 4♥ now, or even 5♥, as I'm pretty sure they're going to bid 5 of their minor, and I'm not going to let them play there, but I'm not sure that partner won't just bid slam now on some hands where that isn't right. Anyway, we ended up in the best reasonable spot (technically they can make slam in either minor, but it involves taking a backward finesse in clubs, playing Neil for exactly T9, so it's not likely in practice), for a massive score on the board. Unbelievably, there was one table where neither side was in game!

Anyway, despite this, and a few more huge results (they bid a silly slam which drifted an easy two off), it wasn't enough for us to win the match, and we lost 11-5, I think in the end. Still, I think we'd have settled for that before we started, and it was certainly an interesting set of hands.

East District Swiss Pairs with Martin Stephens starts in about 1 hour (I'm posting this on the train), I've no doubt there'll be at least a hand or two to report from that...