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A Sad Ending.

It seems longer than one week since when The Bridge Blacks led the world after their first match and then hovered around the last 8. The joy of maximum wins over England and Netherlands has since passed. We had hoped that our Open team would at least be challenging for a top 8 position but the last two days saw those hopes evaporate.

Respectability was kind of achieved in two of the results on the last day though a bad loss to Italy saw New Zealand end at the lowest position of the week, 15^th out of 24. These were the Day 7 results:

                                    Imps                         vps

Denmark                  27-26                         10.31

Italy                          2- 65                         0.00

Sweden                    30-47                          5.61

New Zealand achieved good or respectable results against 6 of the top 8 while the points taken off Denmark left the Scandinavians short in 9^th place. Bad losses to Australia and India demonstrated inconsistency at key times. After some wonderful performances in recent years by these players, we had hoped for better.

Switzerland had,  in mid-week, 11 big wins in succession to win the round-robin with the other qualifiers being in order Netherlands, USA2, Hungary, England, Italy, Norway and USA1. Australia finished 12^th ending with a small win over India and small losses to Israel and England.

In the Women’s competition, Canada finished with a win and two losses to be 11^th while Australia finished 16^th. That was one place higher than the Australian Senior Team finished. The Australian Mixed Team finished 10^th. So, no qualifiers from this part of the world.

One final problem for you:

 

 

4 is a splinter. What action do you take?

One unusual thing about the Denmark match was that New Zealand did well, or comparatively well, on the last board. An extra overtrick in 3NT provided the 1 imp win! Before that, there had been an excellent combined 28 HCP grand-slam one way and a fair 33 hcp small slam the other way, both flat boards.

New Zealand stayed out of a rather poor 6 slam and gained 13 imps for their conservatism but failed in 4 on a different board when the Danish defender found a better trump lead to defeat the contract ultimately…11 imps back… and there were no other big swings in the match.

These were the grand slam cards:

 

 

A Jacoby 2NT response followed by North showing the diamond shortage, K and A should get South heading to grand.

Against Italy, New Zealand were not always in the right contracts and as well Lady Luck deserted them:

 

6 is makeable as long as South cashes at least one round of trumps before AK. However, 6 by South was not, especially on A lead. That was where the Kiwis were while Italy declared and made 4NT.

In our final match against Sweden, victory could not be gained even with 2 slam swings in. This one was tense.

 

Bach-Cornell did bid to 6 while their Swedish opponents took the money, 3 down or + 800 from 5Cx.

North led their singleton club against 6 and Ashley was in great need of finding the Q. Using vacant space principle with South having lots of clubs, the finesse may well be right. Indeed, a number of the top countries failed when they took a second-round spade finesse. Ashley played dummy’s ace to gain 13 imps rather than lose 14.

Even though the news towards the end of the week was not good for the Bridge Blacks, I hope you have enjoyed these daily reports.

Richard Solomon

 

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