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  BBO COMMENTRY THURSDAY   Bridge Masters at 9.30pm (NZ time) v China Hong Kong A

A good day for our Open and Seniors teams but not so good for our Women and Mixed teams. At least after poor results earlier in the day, both Bridge Ferns and Mixed Blacks finished with a good win which kept our Women in the mix and took the Mixed Blacks off bottom place.

              Women                                                                     Seniors

Singapore	26-37	6.77	4th		Chinese Taipei	20-21	9.67	8th
China	24-83	0.00	7th		Thailand	52-26	16.38	6th
Chinese Taipei	24-50	3.62	9th		Indonesia A	25-22	10.97	6th
Korea	46-17	16.88	6th		Japan	33-18	14.19	5th

  

      Open                                                                       Mixed

India	44-25	15.06	6th		Singapore	15-45	2.96	11th
Thailand	66-11	19.91	4th		Chinese Taipei	18-63	1.02	11th
Chinese Taipei	44-44	10.00	4th		Philippines	40-14	6.38	10th

 

Our Seniors had the better of a “slammy” match against Thailand. This one produced 14 imps for the Bridge Masters:

 

Tom Jacob and Brian Mace bid to the best of the slams 6, which needs nothing more than trumps to behave. When they did not, there was always the heart finesse which favoured declarer. The Thais, like many in the Seniors field, tried 6NT. If you receive a spade lead, you need both the heart and club finesses assuming you misguess the diamond position. On, say, a club lead, the heart finesse will be sufficient. It looks like several East players would have been bidding spades causing the declarers to take a first-round diamond finesse and then making all 13 tricks.

Not so the Thai declarer who was not up to finessing after East (Dave Dolbel) did lead a spade.

Dave Dolbel earned 12 more imps with a fine piece of declarer play to make this 4 contract:

 

As East (many of their contracts are played by the "wrong" declarer!), he received a heart lead to the ace, K and then J from North. Dave played his ace, ruffed a club and ran 6 rounds of hearts. Dave then played a spade to the ace and exited his remaining diamond, the queen. This was the 3-card ending before he exited the Q:

 

South was not amused! Nicely played when both diamond and spade finesses were failing.

 

This board from the first match of the day was not good for most of our teams. Our Open Team actually gained 3 imps when their opponents failed by 2 tricks in 6 while 5 proved unmakeable in the other room. The trouble with the diamond game is after A then Q, ruffed and overruffed, North cannot ruff three cards in the South hand and draw trumps….so, down 1 it has to be.

However, 5 did manage to make when our Seniors were defending. Meanwhile, our West players in both the Bridge Ferns and Mixed Blacks teams suffered 800 penalties from their spade contracts. 2 rounds of hearts, a heart ruff requesting a club return, club ruff, another heart ruff and a second club ruff gave the defence 6 tricks against 4x.Thus, an ugly board for 3 of our teams.

      The Mixed Blacks

Wayne Burrows, Clare Miao, Stephen Henry, Kate Davies, Stephen Blackstock (npc),
John Patterson and Annette Henry

Finally, don’t mess with Michael Cornell and Ashley Bach, when you are vulnerable and do not have a good suit. An Indian North learnt his lesson the very hard way:

 

It looks like Ashley either opened 1 or a strong no trump causing North to bid 2. A re-opening double from Ashley ended the auction. Michael would probably have led a red suit. The defence could easily take a club, two diamonds, two hearts and a heart ruff, still leaving Michael Cornell with three trump tricks…4 down +1100 to New Zealand..great at any vulnerability but especially so when East-West’s 3NT game was not vulnerable!

Onwards and hopefully upwards!

Richard Solomon

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