Buchanan Men's Teams

So, last Sunday I went to the Berwick Congress. I played with Sally Stephens in the pairs, and Peter Stephen's (Martin and Phil's dad) in the teams, where Sally played with Martin. We had an unimpressive performance in the pairs, Sally doing a few silly things, and me doing a few equally silly things, to just sneak into the top 50 (out of 54). However, we rallied quite a lot in the teams and managed to finish a creditable 5th out of 21, not bad given that Sally really doesn't play that often, and me and Peter have only played together twice before.

I have one interesting hand from the session I played with Sally, which leads to the question: can dummy revoke? However, I can't find the hand records from that session right now, so I might write it up later.

On Tuesday it was the Men's teams in the Buchanan Congress. Playing with Peter Cairns and Jim McGlauchlin, who recently won the National Pairs and will be 1/3 of our team in the National League, we had high hopes going into the competition. However, we didn't even come close to competing for the prize - failing to win even a single match.

This was probably the hand of the night: 

At our table as, I expect, at most tables, the auction began 1♣ 4♦ X (some people might have opened 2♣, I guess or 1♠), and some people might have contented themselves with 3♦). I was sitting North, and passed without really thinking about it. On reflection, I think I should probably make a bid, although it's really not clear what. 6♦ is an obvious choice, or at least 5♦. However, maybe I should try something like 4NT, to really muddy the waters. 

At our table, our opponents stumbled into the grand after I passed (I think the auction concluded - 5♦ - 5♠ - 7♠). I'm not sure how much I like this bidding, as East really doesn't know if the grand can make. However, it looks quite likely to be at worst a 50% shot (the cards you're really interested in are the ♣Q, ♦A and ♥K, any two of which will mean you're at worst on a finesse, assuming the spades come in), and it's not clear how he's going to find out much more about his partner's hand - what do East's available bids even mean on this auction?

Maybe if the opponents end up doing this much guesswork at the 5 level even when I'm silent then I was right to stay out of things. Anyway, congratulations again to the winners, and to the team of Jim Forsyth and Nigel Guthrie, Charles and Vi Outred, who won the teams competition, which was held yesterday.

I'm off to Harrogate at the weekend with Martin and Phil Stephens, Jun Pinder, Ed Jones and various other "young" bridge players (I think Jun's probably the only one of us who still regularly gets referred to as young when doing anything other than playing bridge), so will hopefully have something to report back from there.