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Day 2

A LESSON TO BE LEARNT

It was not a golden day but in at least two of the three matches, our Bridge Jacks showed an improvement and were finally rewarded with their first win, against opposition who had been doing extremely well:

Opposition	Imp Score	New Zealand vps
Poland	36-39	9.03
France	0-81	0.00
India	42-37	11.58

 

Match 5 v Poland

Board 12 provided a lesson for the Polish North. If you get a favourable lead, do not surrender the advantage.

Both East players led Q against North’s 4 contract. Brad Johnston won and played two rounds of trumps before conceding three tricks in the minor suits to make his contract. The Polish North must have played a diamond at trick 2. Vincent He won and played clubs and within seconds had a club ruff to beat the contract. That was 13 very useful imps in.

Match 6 v France

If the whole event is a great learning experience for our four players, let’s hope they learnt the big lessons from a score-line like this one. Mistakes seemed to have been made with one such on the following board. You just have to bid good, average, even slightly less than average vulnerable games. Two thirds of the Juniors field bid to 4 on the following, despite the low point count, but not Vincent and Zachary:

 

Maybe the East hand is not your kind of vulnerable weak 2 Opening but after South’s 1 opening and a double from West, the East hand is far better than a 5 count. West would not need much persuasion to go to game as long as East jumps.

If West bids a strong 1NT instead of doubling, then West must super-accept the transfer to hearts. East cannot under-right game but they know it must be close. The 22 hcp game is that good that it makes despite there being a trump loser.

  npc Douuglas Russell in conversation with Brad and Nik

 

Match 7 v India

If either of our pairs needed a break after the above mauling, they could not have it as New Zealand had, strangely, sent a team of four to this event. However, our team responded very well against the team who was then in third place, carving a small and very significant win, gaining significant imps on 7 of the 14 boards.

After extolling the merits of being in some 22 hcp vulnerable games, New Zealand gained 7 imps for staying low on the following:

 

Against 4, Nik led A. He switched to a trump with Brad winning the second spade to play a second trump. The declarer now had to lose three spades and a trick in each minor. There were only 8 tricks as well for Zachary but he was only in 2…7 imps to New Zealand.

After starting the day in last place, New Zealand had moved up one place to 21^st and hopefully had learned a lot from the roller-coaster experience of the three matches. Singapore, Columbia, Israel and Botswana, the last of whom lay below us…some hope for improvement on Day 3.

Richard Solomon

 

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