A very tough win

In the round of sixteen we beat Niš, a Serbian/Bulgarian team, by 61-49 imps over twenty-four boards. The match was close throughout and we only got a double imp lead two boards from the end.

In the first half Andy, Shireen, Jim and Bill played a tight game for a 22-21 lead. They lost a game swing on the very first board when the choice of opening bid, the pre-emptive five diamonds proving less effective than a gambling three notrump. A difference in notrump ranges combined with a misdefence got the imps back two boards later. The only other two swings in the set were both five diamond contracts, sufficient to win and lose imps.

For the second half Phil and I replaced Jim and Bill. This did not change the team philosophy as we lost a game swing on the first board again, this time because neither Phil or I had the nerve to double the opponents at the three level, whereas Andy was doubled in the same suit at the two-level!

We went fifteen imps down when our opponents found a good sacrifice at the six-level but our big break was when they misplayed a slam and went down on board five. The slam was worse than a finesse and Phil and I stayed out of it, but the cards were friendly and it should have been an easy make.

The scores were level with four boards to play. Then I went down in three notrump, but the player in my seat at the other table tried harder to make it and went three down to give us five imps. On the next hand my 2NT opener meant that I played four spades and they did not find the difficult defence to beat it: at the other table a strong one club opener allowed Shireen to overcall which made the weaker hand play the contract, finding he could not even make three spades with the initial lead through the strong hand - twelve imps and I could relax, knowing we had two solid boards to score. Of course Andy and Shireen could not relax as they did not know this. We conceded a part-score swing on the final board when Shireen sensibly did not compete, given the score, and that was that.

A good win in a very tight match. Now for the quarter-final where we will play Nikšic, who we beat by six imps in the round-robin. Another close match looms!.

Diamond in the rough

Back at the club for the next round of the pairs championship and we had a nightmare session. We did not play poorly but our opponents either played well (only pair to bid the slam), or played poorly (leading the 10 from KQ109 was spectacularly successive against me) or  we were just unlucky (only person to balance after a weak 2 bid holding a 12 count and a doubleton in their suit). It was incredibly frustrating but we all have these nights in club bridge.

But there was a diamond in the rough. Criss-cross squeezes are incredibly rare: first you have to spot them and, with entries very delicate, they are easily broken by the defence. Few club players will ever notice one and even the top tournament players get excited when they happen.

But it was not me at the helm, but LotG. Certainly her first criss-cross squeeze, aside from when the knitting needles are out, and, importantly, she did know what she was doing.

This is how the hand started:

So what do you do now?

LotG played all her remaining trumps except one to lead this position with East still to discard on the previous (trump) trick:

What does East discard?

If he throws a heart, then LotG will cross to the ace of hearts, ruff a heart and use the ace of clubs as an entry to the winning jack of hearts.

If East throws a club, the LotG cashes the ace of clubs and ace of hearts and ruffs back to hand for the winning club.

East is completely squeezed. At the table he pitched a club and LotG made the final trick with the five of clubs. Ten tricks, easy game!

This is the complete deal:

Looking at my copy of Love's Bridge Squeezes Complete, technically this is a Trump Squeeze or, perhaps, a Ruffing Criss-Cross Squeeze. In essence a criss-cross squeeze with the additional element of trumps.

A rare bird indeed.

By a hair's breadth

I said it would go down to the wire and I was not wrong. Playing the final board of the match against Cloonboo, Shireen was in two spades - make the contract and we are through, go one down and we were out. Luckily she and Andy had stopped out a safe level and eight tricks were made with little fuss and we are through to the round of 16.

Both pairs combined well to get our biggest swing:

 

With the favourable club position Andy made eleven tricks. In the other room Danny and Helen were also bidding:

 

This was worth 13 imps when Danny made the contract when South led clubs prematurely, but even going one down would have been worth 9 imps.

At the end we'd lost the match by 9 imps (13-17 VP) but qualified by finishing two vps ahead of Cloonboo. We now play Niš, winners of group C, in the round of 16.

Gold Cup 2011-2012

The ties for Round 2 involving Scottish teams:

Mike Ash v Cathy Ferguson
Paul Gipson v Dee Harley
Ian Hunter v Iain SIME
Bob McKinnon v Cliff Gillis or Fiona Greenwood
Brian SHORT v Bill Durning
Harry Smith v Douglas Piper
David Weir v David Shenkin

Matches to be played by mid-February.

It's going down to the wire

A narrow win, 16-14 VPs, in our penultimate round-robin match meant that we dropped to third in the table as the others around us scored maximums. With four to qualify for the knock-out stages, we are only one vp ahead of fourth and six vps ahead of fifth.

The good news is that our destiny is in our own hands as we play the fifth-placed team in the final round and any win, or even a small loss, will be sufficient. Indeed, with the fourth-placed team playing the holders, and current group leaders, matching their score would also get the job done. But I've told the team that a big win is needed as it will get us a higher seeding. Going to be tight.

There were a few wild hands last night and I could have given us more breathing space by finding the best lead on this hand:

I considered leading both of my aces. Which would you lead? Or something else?

Where's our chair?

There was bitter disappointment at the end of the final Premier League weekend as we failed to achieve promotion by just 2 VPs. Of course there was going to be a disappointed team somewhere and it was clear at the start of the weekend that it would either be us (team BELL) or our friends in the COPE team, and we managed to maintain the tension right up to the last board.

Our team had not started the weekend well, but the same could also be said of our promotion rivals.

We defeated the English juniors narrowly in the first match. There was pretty good bridge at our table in the two sets as we played against David Williams and Basil Letts: the butler showed very few swings. I thought Alex and I had slightly the better of it but it was tight. I don't really think the same could be said at the other table, whoever was playing there! Double imp swings were much in evidence, but not on any of the boards we'd expected. In the end we'd eked out an 18-12 VP win, less than we'd hoped but softened by the fact that COPE has only drawn their match and we had extended our lead by three points.

Alex and I had our first morning lie in for the second match and came in to find a small deficit. We hauled this back in the middle twenty boards but then had a scorecard with little upside for the final set. When team mates had something similar we'd lost 42 imps in the set and a 10-20 VP defeat. Again COPE failed to take advantage as they had a defeat of similar proportions despite starting well.

So we entered the final match with a 7 VP over COPE, plus effectively another victory point in hand as we had beaten them by 2 imps in the head-to-head match and would win if we were tied. However we were playing the nearly invicible EWART team who had already won the division and promotion, whereas COPE were playing the weakest team in the league.

Alex and I sat out the first set and we missed a wild set of hands. When Susan and Bryony emerged it was impossible to tell whether they had a good card, although the general feeling was that their opponents had done little wrong. So it proved as we finished the set 22 imps down. Even worse news was that COPE had racked up 38 imps despite one of their team throwing away 40 imps on his own! They were heading for a maximum victory which meant that we had to win our match well.

Our team recovered in the second set and emerged with a 2 imps lead going into the final set. COPE had put on another 49 imps and were already sitting on a 24-6 VP win, so we were going to need another 20 imps.

The final set was not what we needed. Even the wildest match only resulted in a team gaining twelve imps and there was nowhere for us to find those that we needed. As it happened a couple of mistakes meant that we lost six imps on the set for a 15-15 draw. A creditable effort but not sufficient as COPE put on another three imps to get the maximum 25-5 VP win and promotion. Congratulations to them and good luck to both COPE and EWART in the first division next season.

The result notwithstanding, it was another enjoyable season in the Premier League. For the first time we had a working team of six that rotated throughout the event, something that Alex and I definitely prefer. The team atmosphere remaining harmonious throughout and Susan said it was a pleasure to play in a team that was not always pointing out each others errors - not a typical facet in any of our teams but then we don't always move in Susan's exaulted circles!

The second division of the Premier League was a lot stronger than last year. The English junior team is learning not to litter their card with large negative scores and were competitive in all their matches. One new team was inexperienced but showed that they could beat anyone with a following wind. The other teams all featured seasoned tournament players including two or three professional teams. Disappointing as the final result was, our team played well and just lacked a degree of consistency and partnership experience at crucial moments.

As Andy from the Cope team has just emailed me, it was a case of when the music stopped ...

We'll be back next year as it is definitely the best event in the UK calendar.

Wild things

There are still two matches to play in the round-robin phase of the BBO InterCity League, but our 21-9 VP win this evening has put us in second place with four to qualify for the knock-out stages. However there is one match unplayed in our group so we might drop to third.

Our northern combination of Jim and Bill, together with Sheila and I, maintained our cool on a wild set of hands. Sheila and I started well when my one-level opener proved more successful at keeping the opponents out of game than the multi used in the other room. We gave these imps back, and more, when we stopped out of a thin game on the second board. Double-dummy game can be beaten, but unfortunately Jim and Bill were forced to play seeing only their own hands and dummy and the winning defence would have led to accusations of cheating!

A couple of optimistic bidding sequences from our opponents put us back in the lead, but then we fell well behind when they bid a good slam and then Jim and Bill aggressive bidding fell foul of very bad breaks and the opponents found a double - as often happens this loss was due more to different bidding systems and notrump ranges than anything else.

Then an aggressive overcall from Bill was responsible for us getting back in front in the match and was the start of a run of 32 imps without reply. Sheila and I were lucky on one hand where we had a bidding misunderstanding and missed a good game, but we still gained seven imps when they were in the wrong game at the other table. To be honest the rest of the imps were mainly due to some strange decisions by our opponents.

So onwards and upwards next week!

Whitley Bay

Whitley Bay Bridge Club is a little out of our way, but it was an ideal halfway house for our Silver Plate quarter-final. The club generously opened it doors for us as we played the thirty-two board match and it proved a nice venue.

We were playing a team from Leeds. Not for the first time in the event we managed to gain a concession after twenty-four boards, leading 77-13 imps at that point. We all played quite solidly as you might guess from the small number of imps conceded and the final nail in their coffin was a slam where Anne and Sheila made six diamonds on the four-four fit while six notrumps failed in our room.

We now await the semifinal draw.

My team

The trials are over and the two Scotland teams for the first weekend of the Camrose Trophy in January have been announced. My team is

• Sheila Adamson and Anne Symons
• Irving Gordon and William Whyte
• Steve Male and Mike McGinley
• NPC: me

My sole job is to get the team to the correct tables in Oxford in the right state to play bridge. They have shown through the trials that they can play the game, so I just have to get them there.

There is not a lot of time before January but all the pairs will be practising hard. I think they are all competing in another weekend of trials (Lady Milne or Seniors) and events with this level of pressure are ideal, at least from my perspective.

At least half the team have Camrose experience but this will be my first Camrose as NPC. I'm excited but hopefully the team will just see it as enthusiasm. 

I'll try to get some photos and team bios for the blog soon.

Half-way in the ICL

We have played four of our seven matches in the round-robin stage of the BBO InterCity League and we are in mid-table. With four of the eight teams in our group qualifying for the knock-out stages it would be nice to be higher, but everything is very close and mid-table really covers second to seventh place. As we have played the three teams above us, qualifying is in our own hands.

As often happens when you run an online team, some weeks you are inundated with players and others you struggle. Yesterday was a struggle until I asked Danny and Helen to join the team. Although Danny and I had spoken online and chatted about hands, I met them for the first time last weekend at the Scottish trials. But they are experienced online players and helped us to a 44-36 imps (17-13 VP) win against a team with (at least) two star players.

I was playing with Sheila, a rare outing for us. We were slightly behind when Sheila did two things right, and possibly one wrong, on board 14 to gain us a game swing:

The first good action was to overcall one notrump. At the other table one spade was passed out. After winning the third diamond Sheila took a considerable time to plan the play: clearly East is marked with most of the outstanding values, but there is just room for West to hold the queen of clubs. On the other hand, it is just about conceivable that West holds a high spade honour and East is more distributional but opened very light.

In the end Sheila selected the natural line of playing East for the points. As you'll see from the play above there was a simpler way to play the club suit, but playing on BBO often gives you these little blindspots that would not occur in real-life play. But she recovered very nicely with a squeeze, or endplay if East did not rectify the count. This was worth ten imps.

We gained six imps on the penultimate board when Danny and Helen stayed at a comfortable level and our opponents overbid to a very poor game and a flat last board gave us the narrow victory.

More next Wednesday.