The 49ers

I played a match yesterday with Jake Corry in the East District League against the 49ers. Their team is very strong, and at table 3 we faced Paul Barton and Brian Spears, who have been regulars in the Scotland open team for the last few years. Both Brian and John Matheson were getting the train back to Glasgow, so instead of hanging around for my usual post-match drink and post-mortem with the rest of the Merchiston team, I hopped in Ian Sime's car and went straight to Waverley - discussing a few of the hands on the train back with John and Brian. 

Here's one that I played in 4♥. Brian is pretty sure he misdefended it, and I have no idea whether I misplayed it, but it's definitely a tricky hand, and we had at least managed to find the best game.

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The system we had agreed to play was the card that Jake sent me 6 months ago for the Men's teams, so neither of us was entirely sure of everything on it, and Jake wasn't quite sure about my 4♥. I was relieved when he passed, and Jake was relieved when Brian asked what 3♥ would have been over 1♠, and I confirmed it was a 3 card invitational raise in ♠s. Brian led the ♠5 from the West hand, and I had to decide what to do. 

You can be pretty sure the ♠5 is a singleton, and working on that assumption I considered several lines of play. You could play a ♣ to the A, ruff a ♣, pitch the last club loser on the ♠K, and hope that you can somehow hold the defence to 3 tricks in trumps. You could play a ♠ immediately, pitching a club. Again, you're hoping that you can hold the defence to three trump tricks, but this time you know you're going to let East have two ruffs. Or, you could try and draw trumps - hoping to hold the defence to 3 trump tricks that way, and get back to dummy later to pitch the clubs on the spades without anyone ruffing. This has the advantage that it's more likely to keep East off lead, and that it is obviously easier to keep the opponents to 3 trump winners when you use the K to draw some of them. It has the slight disadvantage that you're pretty much committing to take the ♣ finesse when E has the ♥A on this line, and when this loses think you can go off on some layouts where you could have managed the trump situation on the other lines.

I chose the last line, and Brian ducked the ♥K. It's now cold, as with only three trumps between them, it's not possible for the defence to make more than 3 trump tricks (in the end Brian ended up playing a ♣ and I made 11). Brian's other option was to take the ♥A and play a ♦, locking me in dummy. As the cards sat, I would now have made the contract if I cashed the second ♦ honour before playing a top ♠, as the ♦Q drops doubleton. However, it's not clear if I can, or should, get that right. 

The game ended with a comfortable win for the 49ers, which is not much of a surprise. I enjoy playing against Brian and Paul, and had some interested discussions on the train home (my hand record is covered in hands from various other events that John Matheson gave us when we ran out of steam on yesterday's boards). Tonight is the Gold Cup, which will be the first time I've ever played a 32 board match, I think. Norman and I are playing with Mike McGinley and Michelle Gladstone, against a team from Ayr. Then two whole nights with no bridge, followed by the first National League weekend, which will almost certainly be the first time I've ever played that many boards in two days.