Away in Falkirk

I played a match for Jake Corry's Merchiston team on Wednesday, away in Falkirk. I got the train to Falkirk High, and walked across Falkirk desperately seeking food. I finally gave in and bought a fairly terrible egg mayonnaise sandwich from a shop just round the corner from the bridge club, before rounding the corner and discovering a giant Tesco. I disposed of the terrible egg sandwich and bought something a bit more palatable from Tesco.


37.5% of our team arrived very late after they managed to fail to find each other at Edinburgh Airport. However, I was at one of the two tables that was able to get started on time. I was playing with David, who I played with in one previous match. Standard Acol-type things. We didn't get off to a great start. On the first two board we both went off in cold vulnerable games, by forgetting to draw trumps... on the fourth board I made 170 in 3♥ by cashing my 10 top tricks... 

Here's one hand where the bidding was subpar, I could have made it easily partway through, and then I did well to recover and bring home the vulnerable game at the end. Apart from the last bit, it is pretty much indicative of the standard of the play at our table.



I decided to open 1NT because I didn't really fancy a 2♣ rebid after 1♠ response from partner to 1♣. David intended this sequence to mean a hand that wanted to play in 4♠ if I had four ♠s and 3♦ otherwise. I didn't know this, and thought it was forcing. Anyway, West led the ♠3, and East won this trick with the J. The ♣8 switch went to the 9, T and A, and then I made the slightly weird play of a club to the J. 

For some reason I'd decided that if I had to lose a club anyway, I might as well do it straight away. I'm not really sure why doubleton queen didn't occur to me... Anyway, after LHO switched to a ♥ to the Q and A, that left me with 8 tricks. I ran the clubs, to come down to an ending that was something like this (no, I have no idea why East thought it was a good idea to pitch a diamond, either... )

Note that it doesn't actually matter what East has, West is now in some trouble when I play off the ♣2. If he pitches a ♥, then I can just duck a ♥ for my 9th trick, a spade gives up the long ♠, and a ♦ doesn't help either - I can now play the ♦A to strip West's last exit card, and endplay him with the fourth ♠. This is what happened. I was quite happy with the result at the time, as keeping track of that sort of end position is one of the areas in which I'm actively hoping to improve my play at the moment. However, I could have made life easier by just picking up the club suit when it was handed to me on a plate...

West needs to pitch all of his ♦s earlier and keep another ♥ to beat this I think, which is certainly not easy.

Anyway, despite that we didn't have a particularly impressive card, and the match was lost by a few hundred points, which means 2-1 in the way this league works. I think that leaves us comfortably mid-table in the first division, and I think this was our last game. 

I'll be playing with Norman a couple of times next week, National Pairs final on Saturday, and as a warm-up, the final round of the Buchanan Winter Pairs on Wednesday. In the latter, I think we need a score in excess of 69% to overtake Danny and Anna, who are currently sitting in 2nd place. To catch the leaders I think we'd need something closer to 90...