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Trans- Tasman Challenge Week 2.

The many roads to slam.

Although a once a month event, this Friday night event of 16 board matches involving 9 New Zealand playing 9 Australian teams, featured for the second time in March on the last day of the month. The Australian Seniors 1 team moved up from 2^nd to 1^st place at the end of the night with these being the leaders after Round 2:

				cum. score				vps
1	Australia Seniors 1			33.64		v NZ Women 1		17.72
2	NZ Open 1			29.95		v Australia Youth		14.39
3	Australia Open 2			28.76		v NZ Women 2		12.03
4	NZ Mixed 1			27.70		v Australia Seniors 2		14.18
5	Australia Women 1			23.51		v NZ Open 2		12.03

 

NZ Open 1 were Michael Cornell- Ashley Bach and Tom Jacob – Brian Mace. NZ Mixed 1 were Liz and Blair Fisher and Mindy Wu- Mariusz Tumilowicz though the personnel of some of the NZ teams seems to change week by week. Here’s a nice 4-count for you to bid:

 

2 is a normal game force opener. What is your next offering as North?

One of the great things of bridge is that we all approach bidding in totally different ways. Here we have 18 North-South pairs and basically 18 different auctions, 14 of which made it to the cold 6 slam. Those who started with a Precision 1 had auctions where North got to bid spades first, not that it mattered on this occasion. Before we look at the four hands, what would you have bid on the above North hand in the auction given?

The choice seems to be between 3,  “a better than minimum for my 2 response, partner” or saying a little more about your hand by bidding 4, a splinter in support of spades.

Both options were chosen with this being the auction of Michael Cornell – Ashley Bach:

 

5 was Exclusion Key Card Blackwood (excluding A from the Key Card response), Cornell showing none. Seeing as his partner did have something for his 3 bid, Ashley bid the slam anyway. It was ironic that the card Ashley excluded from the key-card response was most important in the making of the slam.

Had the North hand held 3-3 in the red suits rather than 5-1 and the same honour holding, 6 would have been a very poor contract indeed. To that extent, the knowledge of the singleton diamond where North did splinter, a certain entry to dummy, was very useful for South.  

Normally, using Key Card with a void in one’s own hand, is not ideal but this time it seems that South would be much happier bidding slam knowing that North had either K or A…and an entry to dummy. Of course, next time, North will produce K and either key card making 6 much easier: with K, it would be a case of bidding “grand”.

Strangely, at least to me, some chose to open the South hand 1 and all bar one of these players got a 2 bid from North. The other relied on East balancing, though they only made it to the game level. The most surprised player of all would have been Jane Skipper, one of those who volunteered 2 on those North cards. After opening 1, husband John’s next bid was 5, “Exclusion” as before. She gave the same reply as Michael Cornell above and was soon to put down her dummy in 6.

 
"Thanks for bidding", John was heard to say to Jane afterwards. 
We bet Jane did not expect John's second bid!

Back to Ashley Bach who showed the safest way to ensure 6 made. He won the Q lead in dummy to discard his club loser and then ruffed a diamond in dummy. Back to A and then ruffed a second diamond with 9. Next, he played a spade..to the ace and then Q. That catered for a 5-2 diamond break. The play would, of course, be different in grand slam but Ashley’s aim was to make 12 tricks. Mission accomplished.

Richard Solomon

 

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