I was invited to play for the East team in the annual season opener between the Borders and the East. I played with Liz (cuttysark on BBO) and, as she wished to practise it, we decided to play 2/1 with Polish leads.
Unlike the previous night there were no disasters and we played reasonably well. We were at table 2 with Iain and Patrick at table 1, and ten other tables in play. Like the league the scoring was aggregate across all twelve tables and so the aim is to bid games, something I am very good at. I was also fairly skilled in getting Liz to play any difficult hands and we had a good final score that contributed to the East's win by about 2,000 points (this is actually a very close result at this scoring). Comparing with Iain showed that the East scored (an aggregate) +3300 on the top two tables so were actually outscored at the rest of the tables, a tremendous effort from the Borders team.
The hand that caused most chaos was ♠ AKJ97432 ♥ A ♦ - ♣ AK96. I held this hand and heard Liz open a weak 2♦. Taking the pragmatic approach I bid a simple 6♠ and made 12 tricks on a trump lead when Liz held ♠ Q5 ♥ J10 ♦ KQJ963 ♣ J43.
Many others bid and failed to make 7♠.
A better night!
By the way, how should you play the club suit for 1 loser?
