Southern tracks

Now that I've finished tracking Santa using the US Department of Defense, the new target is those hardy souls who have given up the balmy temperatures in Scotland to play in the EBU Year End events in London and Blackpool.

London Swiss Pairs (3-session event)

• 13th - David Ewart (with Gunnar Hallberg)
• 16th - Samantha Punch & Tim Rees
• 21st - Philip Stephens (with Chris Cooper)
• 49th - Jenny Cooper (with Pat Dowdleswell)
• 55th - Laura Porro (with Luca Marietti)
• 71st - Fiona Greenwood (with Stuart Strachan)
• 96th - Rosemary McKinnel & Mike Baron

London Mixed Pairs

• 3rd - Samantha Punch & Tim Rees
• 5th - Laura Porro & Luca Marietti
• 17th - Paula Leslie (with Richard Bowdery)
• 21st - Victor Silverstone (with Brigid Battiscombe)

London Open Pairs

• Jenny Cooper did not finish in the prizes

London Swiss Teams

• 1st - Willie Coyle (with Kitty Teltscher, Steve Eginton, Colin Simpson)
• 9th - Phil Stephens (with James Paul, John Atthey, Chris Cooper)
• 12th - Andrew McIntosh* (with Glyn Liggins, Simon Cope, Peter Crouch)
• 17th - Victor Silverstone (with Bernard Teltscher, A Waterlow, D Kendrick)
• 58th - Fiona Greenwood (with Sue Shaw, Sonia Griffiths, Chantal Girardin)
• 66th - Sam Punch (with Gary Jones, Patrick Jourdain, Tim Rees)

Blackpool Mixed Pairs

• 17th - David Wiseman & Sandra Wiseman
• 20th - Mary Grant & Andrew Grant
• 29th - Bob McKinnon & Cathy Ferguson
• 30th - Yvonne Wiseman & Ralph Wiseman

Blackpool Open Pairs

• 2nd - Peter Hodgson & Stephen Male

Blackpool Swiss Pairs (3-session event)

• 8th - David Wiseman & Yvonne Wiseman
• 39th - Bob McKinnon & Cathy Ferguson
• 56th - Stephen Male & Peter Hodgson 
• 62nd - Sandra Wiseman & Ralph Wiseman
• 74th - Mary Grant & Andrew Grant

Blackpool Swiss Teams

• 3rd - David Wiseman, Sandra Wiseman, Yvonne Wiseman, Ralph Wiseman
• 10th - Bob McKinnon, Cathy Ferguson, Peter Hodgson, Stephen Male
• 26th - Mary Grant, Andrew Grant (with Eva Butler, Michael Butler)

Apologies to anyone I've missed.

Oh He of Little Faith

During the Gold Cup Congress at Peebles, soon-to-be-ex-junior Phil Stephens was regaling me with constant stream of hands that he thought I would not believe. In this guest post Phil describes a few of them.

Its the very first board of the Peebles Swiss Teams, and you are playing with your Venerable Father (VF). You pick up ♠Ax ♥Q ♦KQxxx ♣AKQxx at favourable. You open 1♦, no problems yet. The auction continues with a 1NT response from your partner. This is good news, we play a 5552 opening structure, so partner had a simple raise in diamonds available. Thus, he surely has club length. You bid 3♣, game-forcing, and partner responds 4♣ as expected. Keycard is next up and partner shows two aces. Since he has at most three spades, and at most three diamonds (two is more likely), you will always be able to discard your spade loser. Thus the grand is bid. VF expresses some concern that he may have overbid, you reassure him that this is unlikely to be the case. Partner duly puts down ♠x ♥Axx ♦Axx ♣Jxxxxx. And you quickly claim. I was curious as to the location of the spades, your Boisterous Brother (BB) at the other table can seldom be restrained from entering the auction, so you are confident of a good board.

All was quiet on the Northern Front until board 20. You pick up ♠A ♥Axxxx ♦AKQxx ♣Ax with everyone vulnerable. The auction begins 1♥-1♠-3♦-4♦. This is very exciting. VF is known for his extreme Conservatism (and also underbidding) so it is very unclear what he can have for his forcing 4♦ bid. It is rare in the extreme for VF to bypass 3NT lightly, and if he were to then he could jump straight to 5♦, rather than make a forcing call. Indeed, moving towards five of a minor seems hard to imagine.

VF likes to employ what he calls the `emergency stop’ opposite my game-forcing bids - The Dreaded Pass Card. With neither keycards and nor the queen of trumps what can he have? ♠KQxx ♥Kx ♦xxxx ♣KQx? Surely a 3NT bid. At last a solution bubbles to the surface of my confused bridge brain – perhaps VF believes this sequence to be Non-Forcing. Partner has neither rebiddable spades, nor a doubleton heart (this is a false preference situation), nor a club stop, but too many diamonds to consider An Emergency Pass. So he has chosen to `invite’ game opposite partner's game force. A fine convention. Something like ♠KQxx ♥x ♦xxxxx ♣xxx or ♠KQxxx ♥x ♦xxxxx ♣xx seems likely. (VF does not believe in bidding poor suits). At any rate, while grand could be cold, it seems hard to find out for sure if partner holds the weak hand with a singleton heart that you believe, so you leap to six diamonds.

As dummy is being revealed VF’s Incurable Pessimism compels him to comment: "I'm afraid I can’t possibly have what you are hoping for Partner". Partner indeed has ♠KJxx ♥x ♦xxxxx ♣Qxx, you reply "I find your lack of faith disturbing". Any hand where you can quote Darth Vader is a win.

The final board of this set gave VF a real problem – perhaps you can do better: You pick up ♠KJ9xxx ♥Qxx ♦ATx ♣x, partner opens 1♦, showing 5, or 4441, and the auction continues:

2♠ showed four spades, and while 5♠ is arguable, with partner known to hold long natural diamonds and you holding ATx the probability of this being a double fit hand seems high. RHO leads the jack of hearts out of turn. The director is called an a list of options led out: You may put your hand down as dummy, and either demand or forbid a heart lead or you may choose to declare and put LHO on lead and either forbid or demand a heart lead. What will you choose? Solution later.

A final slam board, you hold ♠Axxxxx ♥KT9 ♦A ♣Axx, at Vul vs not. The auction goes: 1♠ 4♦ 4♠ P back you you. Hmm, with such a control rich hand slam could easily be cold, but partner is under pressure and the five level may not be safe. Best to pass. LHO, however, looks unhappy. Excellent. If she comes back to the party partner may have the opportunity to bid 5♠, or make a FP. LHO does indeed return to the fray with 5♦. 5♦ P P back to you. VF’s Forcing passes tend to be quite chunky, and so you decided to give it 6♠. Lho looks extremely unhappy. VF also looks extremely unhappy, this was not the response he was expecting. It is not completely clear that 6♠ will make, so best to look confident.

You give LHO a little smile. This is too much for her. She can no longer bear it. 7♦ diamonds is bid. Partner doubles quickly, before I can have any chance to bid further. 800 is wrapped up in double quick time. Partners hand was ♠KQx ♥AQxxxx ♦xxx ♣x, so grand was a very good spot, only off on the 4-0 spade break. It feels somewhat unjust that this effort was only enough for three imps. As the hand is being squared away VF suggests that he doesn’t really understand how one can have a six spades bid after passing over 4♠. You admit that you were somewhat stretching, despite his Forcing Pass improving your hand. A brief look of incomprehension flickers across partners face, evidently he had forgotten. Still VF suggests that if I wish to avoid a precipitous decline in his heart rate, I should avoid such bids.

Ah well, as you score up your final slam board you reflect that going 5 from 5 on slam decisions with VF opposite is really quite a pleasing statistic.

Party bridge

It was the club's Christmas Party last night and the turnout was terrific. In the past few years the number has always been in the (very) low thirties, but we saw fifty people there this time. I don't think that there are many clubs thriving as much as Berwick is currently.

Most of the credit for this has to go to all those running beginner classes, and to them and others who then help them transition from a class into playing at the club. Of course being a very friendly club doesn't hurt and the region's remoteness helps maintain a sense of community, but it does take a lot of effort that normally goes unrecognised. I'm sure we would all love to see more youngsters come along, but even a stream of mature new faces is very welcome.

In the past outside caterers have been used but problems the last couple of times meant that it was decided to do it 'in house'. This meant a cold buffet but I did not hear any complaints and the food disappeared at a great rate. The desserts also disappeared quite quickly too, for some reason.

After this everyone helped to clear up and reconfigure the room for some party bridge. Every board had a 'rule' - for example, everyone was only permitted one bid on the board. Naturally I called the director over this rule, asking whether multiple passes and doubles were allowed since they are calls, not bids: I was informed that it should say calls and I'm sure 'get a life' was mentioned too :)  - actually, I think it does work slightly better if you do permit multiple passes and doubles, but only one bid - this permits people to double the final contract.

I played with Jean and we did not score well, but LotG and Penny won the bottles of wine for the best East/West performance. The most interesting rule was the one where the partner of the player who wins a trick leads to the following trick: it makes running long suits difficult, since you lose the lead when you win the trick! I told Jean off during this hand for signalling encouragement when I was going to win the trick - no point encouraging when she will be on lead next! Playing a board in an anti-clockwise direction was also quite tricky, some players failed to adjust their points counting when aces became the lowest card in the suits and defensive play with both dummy and declarer's hands exposed was simpler.

An excellent evening and congratulations to the committee for their organisation, to everyone who provided the food and Diana for running the bridge. More of the same next year please.

Three slams

As part of our preparations for the Camrose we had a BBO match against the Welsh team last night. It might seem a little strange to practise against a team we'll be playing in Oxford next month, but it is quite common - prior to the Bermuda Bowl we saw the Dutch playing everyone and it did not seem to do them any harm. In reality everyone is focusing on their own game rather than trying to learn about the opposition and always good to play new teams.

The match was decided by three hands were slams were bid, not always successfully. In such circumstances it is easy to focus on them, but my comments to my pairs were not about these. In the rest of the match most of the bridge was pretty sound although some interesting points were raised. But back to the big hands and I'd be happy to see convincing auctions to a good spot on them all:

West opens and there is no opposition bidding. Is your convincing auction different when the partnership does not hold a red 10?

The second hand is a strong two-suiter, never easy in a natural system. Again West opens.

The final hand is another two-suiter. West opens, North overcalls one spade and South will bid three spades. North will continue to four spades if available.

Get these all right and I hope you're available to play in January.

On the board

It might be the fourth round of the ten in the club pairs championship but we now have a "keeper", one of the six that we'll need to try and keep the title. Unfortunately Brian and George already have three keepers so we are going to struggle and, until the scoring errors are resolved, it is not quite clear what score we have actually obtained. But I know it's a keeper!

We got a joint top on board 24:

We don't play any methods over the strong two clubs opening except that a negative of two diamonds, so LotG decided to play a waiting game with a two hearts response. This will probably right-side a notrump contract but there is a real danger that I'll think she has five hearts: on the other hand, we just play natural over a two notrump response and we might miss a major fit. Perhaps an area where we could do more work!

However, LotG was well placed when I rebid two notrump as she could introduce her spades. Simple Blackwood showed all her controls and I could see that the grand slam would depend, at worst, on the heart finesse and would be solid if she held a red suit queen.

LotG played the hand well, preparing for a club-hearts squeeze, but this was not necessary when the jack of clubs dropped. Tony and Brian also bid and make this.

Gold Cup Congress

The final Gold Cup Congress at Peebles started at 10am on Friday morning with Iain Sime's Gold Cup quarter-final against Gillis, the holders. By all accounts the bridge was not stunning but Sime consistently lost imps through the day and conceded after 56 of the 64 boards. A good run but they were disappointed not to have a closer match.

Gillis lost in the semifinal on Saturday and Sunday's final was between teams that had already met twice this season in other major competitions. Most of the LEE (Peter Lee, Frances Hinden, Jeffrey Allerton, Graham Osborne, John Howard and Andy Bowles) team had beaten ALLFREY (Alexander Allfrey, Andrew Robson, David Gold, Tony Forrester, Peter Crouch and Derek Patterson) on their run to the semifinal of the Spring Foursomes, but Allfrey had won the more important Premier League title beating Hinden in the final match. The Allfrey team was selected to play for England in the first Camrose weekend in January with Hinden. Allerton and Osborne selected for the second weekend.

It proved a close final with a poor, but making, grand slam giving LEE the lead for the first half. The lead increased slowly throughout the day and they went into the final eight boards with a comfortable 41 imps lead. Half of this disappeared on the first two boards and then a tough slam hand came up. When LEE made it and it went down in the other room, fourteen imps were returned and the match was over. In the end LEE won by 26 imps, giving Lee, Allerton and Hinden their second Gold Cup win (first in 2003) and the first to Osborne, Howard and Bowles. Congratulations to them.

Our weekend was less successful but enjoyable. Sam and I played in the Swiss Pairs but never started. All the cards were in the opposite direction for the first four matches and we just sat there and took bad scores. With no chance of a decent finish we didn't play particularly well in the evening and a couple of bidding misunderstandings were costly. It did seem that it really did not matter how we played, just not our day.

In the Swiss teams we won all our matches comfortably on the Friday evening and this continued into Sunday afternoon when the event resumed. We had made our way to the top table but then lost to the eventual winners, underbidding a couple of hands costing double imps swings. The first match in the evening went the same way, but winning our last two matches gave us fourth place. A disappointing result as we could have done better, but at least we got some prize money.

Jenny faced a tough problem on Sunday and she eventually asked Derek Patterson and Andy Robson for their opinions in the bar that evening. Imps scoring.

What would you do?

End of the line

We lost our quarter-final in the BBO InterCity League by just three imps last night and so bow out of this season's competition.

We had beaten Nikšic by six imps in the round-robin so a tight match was expected, but Jim, Bill, Danny and Helen established a useful half-time lead. Although imps had flown in all directions, excellent defence from Bill to beat a three notrump and consistent good judgement in the part-score zone had us in front.

The second half imps went mainly in the other direction. They made a slam where the only killing lead was from K10 in an unbid and a game slipped through on the next hand. The part-score swings went in the other direction, mainly due to lack of aggression on their part, but we were still six imps up when the final board hit the table. With the opener holding a balanced 14 count, the difference in the hand was the 14-16 or 15-17 1NT opening that would, or would not, be used. Different auctions left us losing nine imps when we went negative in both rooms - no-one did anything wrong, just one of those random swings.

It's been a pleasure to captain the team for the 16th edition of the league. The next one starts in mid-March and I'm sure we'll be back.

Gold Cup Congress

The sun may shine but I don't think anyone ever confuses this with the Gold Coast Congress. Peebles in December has a very different appeal to Brisbane in March.

This will be the last Gold Cup Congress in Peebles as Bridge Great Britain has decided to move the final weekend to the Midlands next year. I believe this is because the leading teams do not see the benefit in travelling to Scotland in December, especially to a location that has poor transport communications and is frequently icy if not snow-bound. The Scottish congress will continue but I'm sure the SBU will be waiting for next year's attendance figures nervously.

It is a shame because I think most teams are happy with the venue itself and the ambiance of the weekend. But to be fair they'd play in any large hotel; and they are only fêted by others at the congress when they are not actually playing themselves, or eating, or drinking in the bar, or eating, or attending the President's reception, or eating.

However, it is still the most enjoyable congress of the year to attend and I'll be there playing with Jenny, Sam and Tim in whatever line-up the girls tell us to play. But first I'll be watching the Gold Cup quarter-final between Iain Sime's team and Gillis, the holders.

I don't believe this match will be on BBO, but the semifinals and final on December 10 and 11 will be, including voice commentary as an addition to the tap-in comments. For readers not familiar with voice commentary, and the requirements to get it, read the BBO information.

Hopefully the weather will be good and we'll play well. If not, then we'll have to resort to eating and drinking.

Preparing for the Camrose

We had our first, and last, team meeting last night before the Camrose next month. There is little time between the final trial and the event itself and just getting the team together was a struggle. As well as each pair having another trial for a Home International Series, I removed another weekend form the calendar by playing in the Premier League. Finally, two of the team live in foreign climes.

But it was good to get together. We talked through a lot of the issues involving in playing in the Camrose. I think the biggest concern is time management. For some reason the organisers make no allowance for playing with screens and they are expected to play sixteen boards in two hours and five minutes. This is a lot faster than the trials or any other event played with screens and, personally, I think it should be changed to WBF standards. But the truth is whatever time was allocated, there will always be players who use every minute.

Interestingly when I asked who had appeared on vugraph before four hands were raised. But when I added, "on BBO", two hands went down. We didn't investigate further but I wonder if two of the more experienced players have been involved in the early days of vugraph, when someone would sit at the table with a microphone and whisper the played cards to a room that had a projector and operator scribbling on an overhead foil. As I said to the team, BBO vugraph is pretty non-intrusive these days and it is far easier just to focus on your opponents.

We also covered the practicalities of playing, scoring up and preparing for the next opponents. I've been an unofficial coach for the Scotland team over the past few years and normally do the system analysis of the methods that the team will face, so we'll be using the same process this time. The team do not really need to know much about their opponents before getting to the table, but it does help if they are aware of any unusual conventions so that they can remind themselves of their defences.

To finish off the evening we discussed a number of hands featuring high-level decisions. It was good to see that each partnership was on the same wavelength, but I was surprised at how different their approaches were. On one hand each pair had a different meaning for a 4NT call on the first round of the auction - I guess this shows it was a good problem!

So we'll next meet in Oxford next month although there are some BBO practice sessions before then. Now time for me to get back to the systems analysis.