Under pressure

"No pressure, but I need a good score", said Sam as we sat down for my first Russell Cup of the summer. The field was a couple of tables smaller as the faithful attended the SBU's AGM, but our 66% was still a good score and Sam went home with a 'counter'. Job done!

We earned a good score with accurate defence on this board against a couple of trialists.

There are a few interesting aspects to the auction. Does my double of two spades create a force or can we let them play in a three-level contract undoubled? Is Sam's double penalty or take-out? I was fairly confident that Sam played penalty doubles in this auction but some do play take-out. Dummy was not reassuring on this point when it went down!

My club switch at trick two was obvious but required to ensure that the contract went down. Double-dummy declarer can make eight tricks with the non-intuitive spade continuation after winning the ace of diamonds, although this would only save a couple of matchpoints. However playing the natural-looking heart allowed careful defence to force dummy and create a second undertrick.

In the final round we played Brian and Alan, practising for this weekend's Seniors Camrose where they will be trying, with Roy, David, Mike and Liz to regain the trophy. I held a very distributional hand on the penultimate hand:

The instinctive reaction is two diamonds. But you are allowed to think, so where are the spades? How many does Sam hold? What is Sam's point count and distribution? We were playing four-card suits and a weak one notrump, and would open a four-card minor before a four-card major. Double of two clubs by Sam would be take-out.

Reconstruct the hand and let me know what you'd call now!

Overall we did little that was spectacular and followed our usual policy of Sam's aggression in the auction and me trying to catch. I let some points slip away by reverting to imps rather than matchpoints, but the result shows we were largely successful.

I'll be playing the Russell a few times over the summer. Wonder if I'll have enough counters to make an impression!

Preparations

It seems like most of Scotland will be attending the ACBL Summer Nationals in Toronto in July. Direct flights from Glasgow help and the weaker dollar is making it more affordable, but I think it is mainly the attraction of good bridge in an attractive and interesting location.

I expect that they'll be three teams in the Spingold, not including Tim who is playing in an Anglo-Welsh combination this time. Despite the teams having many international players, we'll all be down at the bottom of the seeds and, if we get through to the round of 64, look certain to draw top eight teams on the Tuesday. Should be fun!

Being aliens we cannot just rock up to the table with our SBU or WBF convention cards and expect to play. The ACBL system regulations and alerting procedures are very different and we must provide an ACBL convention card. Many of us play Mid-Chart conventions that means a considerable amount of documentation must be provided.

Alex and I probably play the most gadgets that require pre-alerting. None of it is particularly exotic or unusual in Europe, and we can play it all against beginners in the UK without providing defences, but the USA is a very different environment. So we will go armed with:

• Two ACBL Convention Cards, one for Mid-Chart and one for GCC events (unlikely to be needed)
• We also take the WBF card, in case we play fellow travellers
• Pre-Alert Sheet - we pre-alert sixteen items, the important ones being
• lead low from non-honour doubleton and 10x
• transfer responses to one club opener
• two hearts opener showing a weak hand with both majors
• multi two diamonds opener, showing a weak two in hearts or a strong 4441 distribution
• light overcalls and pre-emptive openers
• ACBL-approved defenses for our two diamonds and two hearts opening bids
• System notes for all our Mid-Chart conventions - only two require approved defenses but we must provide a complete description of them all
• Masterpoint conversion chart
• ACBL Alert Procedures and Alerting Chart
• ACBL Convention Charts

It is a bit of an expedition!

Down and out

Last match in the round robin stage of the BBO InterCity League and we started in the fourth qualifying spot, 7 VPs clear of fifth place. We were playing the team in sixth place who had no big wins nor big losses, so it was expected to be tight. The team is fifth place were playing a team who we'd beaten by 24 VPs, so to be certain to qualify we needed an 18-12 VP win, or 12 imps.

Unfortunately everything went wrong for us. We lost by 7 imps, 14-16 VPs, and we were overtaken by the fifth-placed team scoring a maximum 25 VPs.

I overbid on the second hand to cost us eleven imps:

My two clubs response is either natural, with invitational or better values, or game forcing with a balanced hand or game forcing with a fit. As it is not game forcing in all situations, Alex's pass over three diamonds just showed a minimum opener. Then over four diamonds he could have bid a Last Train four hearts, so I should probably just give up. However I did not expect Alex to hold all those wasted values in diamonds so just continued.

In the other room there was a two clubs overcall in front of my hand and they just settled sensibly for game.

From this point on the swings occurred mainly at the other table, going one way and then the other right up to the end.

I guess we'll all be back in October for the next season. Have you thought of entering it?

A reluctant sponsor

The bridgewinners web site continues to provide interesting reading. As well as its innovative 'peer review' features, it has a very interesting interview with Marty Fleisher, Vanderbilt winner and captain of the USA1 team in the Bermuda Bowl later this year.

All three parts are worth a read.

End of the season

With LotG sunning herself in Malta, Margaret stepped in as our super-sub for the final round of the club teams championship. Unfortunately she was unable to overcome all the errors around her and, despite finishing above average, we failed to take the second place that had been our target.

We would have been significantly closer if we had found the winning leads on these two boards. What do you all think?

And ...

The event had already been won by Reg. Malcolm, Brian and George and they celebrated by winning the evening comfortably. We'll have to do better next season!

There are two more club evenings and then the AGM next week, followed by a summer of rest and we'll be back in September. However there will still be some bridge on Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout the summer, for those without large gardens, just check the web site if you are interested.

Missing the end

I did not play in the final round of the club pairs championship because LotG was suffering from a cold and looking to recover before flying out to Malta for a scrabble tournament later this week.

This left Diana and Ros with the opportunity to overtake us, but they did not get the 97% required and we are the club pairs champions. We have dominated this season's event with the four top scores so it makes up a little for losing last year by a matchpoint or two.

The change to a single winner per evening seems to have had the desired effect with a much closer competition behind us. Diana and Ros did what they needed to do to keep second place, ahead of last year's winners Briand and George. Reg and Malcolm, and Alan and Colin, were next and all played consistently without ever getting the big scores needed. In sixth place, David and Terry got the big scores needed to be a threat but lacked the consistency with practically no scores between 50% and 60%. All these pairs averaged above 57% for their top six results.

This all means that we'll be in the club annual photograph this season!

Spring Fours summary

We had a disappointing weekend but first I'll let you know how everyone else did:

• #12 - Rees (Richard Palmer, Samantha Punch, Tim Rees & Ed Scerri)
  Sam's team lost by 1 imp to Spears to lose their first life, then knocked out Teltscher but lost on Sunday evening to Rosen.
• #20 - Teltscher (Howard Cohen, Willie Coyle, John Matheson, Victor Silverstone & Bernard Teltscher)
  Lost a life in the triangle and then lost to Rees on Sunday morning.
• #21 - Spears (Derek Diamond, John Murdoch, Derek Sanders & Brian Spears)
  Won their first two matches and then lost the next two. Currently playing in the final of the Punch Bowl.
• Smith (Roy Bennett, Irving Gordon, Adrian Orlowski & Harry Smith)
  Lost a life in their triangle but did well to win in Round 3 to beat the #32 seed. Then met their match against the Irish Green Machine.
• Barnes (David Barnes, Nigel Guthrie, Bob McPaul, Laura Porro, Barry Wennell & Beth Wennell)
  Lost a life in their triangle and then lost to Mizel in Round 3.
• St. Clair (Jake Corry, Fiona Greenwood, Dee Harley & Anna St. Clair)
  Comfortably bottom of their triangle but beat Ward in Round 3 (Ward is currently play Spears in the Punch Bowl final). Lost to Zia's all-stars in Round 4 despite winning two of the four sets. Won their triad and qualified for the Punch Bowl on Monday, but lost in the quarters to Miller.

Our tournament started with a triangle, two 32-board matches from which the winners would emerge with both lives intact and the other two teams would lose a single life. Our triangle had the 2009 winners, Allfrey, and the unseeded Brown team. Brown, consisting of three Lady Milne winners and a young Australian who will be playing in the Bermuda Bowl, were definitely undervalued by the seeding committee.

Allfrey despatched both of us with considerable ease. Our match with Brown was close throughout despite the vast number of imps generated, but in the end they beat us by 9 imps. A significant result because they received a much easier draw for Round 3.

Our penalty for coming bottom of the group was to play Seale's Bulgarian stars. They proved too consistent for us and we lost comfortably. Disappointing to exit so early in the event.

However we clearly helped all three teams into form as they were all in the main event on Monday morning. So we did not have an easy draw!

On the Sunday we played a ten-team round-robin in the Punch Bowl. After a slow start we finished in third place, but only two qualified and we were 1 VP short. Aside from the errors we made, a flat set of boards (2-1 imps) against one of the weakest teams proved costly.

Overall it was not a weekend where our team played its best bridge and that was disappointing. But it is still one of the best weekends of the calendar and I'm sure we'll be back next year to try and get some more silverware.

Full results on the EBU site.

Update: Spears won the Punch Bowl 34-33 imps to keep the jug in Scotland for another year.