The Nomads

I went across to Edinburgh this afternoon for a match in the East District league. I was playing with Jun N-Pinder, who is also my partner for the Men's Pairs at the weekend in Dundeed. We've played something like a couple of hundred boards together now, and mostly have some sort of system worked out, but a couple-hundred boards is quite far off a regular partnership (we've had exactly one 2/1 auction!), so there's still the odd thing we need to discuss.

Edit: fixed the hand... 
There was an odd coincidence, in that the first hand we played out of both sets of twelve involved first me, and then Jun, leading a club to set up a ruff for partner...

I led the club 6, reasoning that if partner had a singleton or even doubleton club, I would be certain to be able to give him any ruff that was coming (he pretty much has to have three trumps on this auction, so I'll get two chances to lead clubs. After a club to the A, declarer played a heart. It's now no good giving Jun his club ruff if he has a doubleton, as South will be over-ruffing, but there's not much point playing anything else, but I played another club, and when Jun won and played a spade, declarer now managed to go two off, by letting him ruff second club.

Jun led a club, which went to my ace, and I played a second club - declarer can't now prevent me from getting my club ruff (although he did think for quite a while about playing A and another heart rather than taking the finesse, to try and reduce the risk, in the end, it wouldn't have helped). I think declarer probably should play this way - he can afford to lose one heart one spade and one club. If the heart finesse is right, it's just an 11th trick, whereas if it loses to Kxx, that concedes a 4th loser. I didn't ask him why he chose not to.

The match itself was pretty scrappy, and very low-scoring. We had a run of about 6 boards at one point where no-one made a contract, and I declared some hands absolutely terribly (in particular one where I essentially had 9 top tricks in 3 spades, but managed to get myself stuck in the wrong hand - the sort of mistake a beginner would be disappointed to make), but we managed to scrape a 2-1 victory in the end.

Off to Dundee at the weekend for the Men's Pairs and the Men's teams, which should hopefully be good fun. I'll also get to spend an evening in Dundee (not yet sure whether that will be with whichever bridge players I end up with, or if Jess (my girlfriend) is going to join me for the non-bridge-playing parts of the weekend. Either way, should be fun.

PS - here's the hand I originally posted as the first one. Interestingly, I played in 2S as North, managing to scrape exactly 8 tricks, whereas Jake played in 2S as West, which was not quite as much of a success - we were playing transfer walsh, and I think in retrospect my decision to play in 2S was probably wrong, but it seemed like a good idea at the time...