Size doesn't matter

It is position that counts in the club's teams championship, not the size of your victory, but we were not displeased with our twenty victory point win in last night's fifth round. We won all but one of eight 3-board matches and even that one was a draw.

Imps seem to fly in from all directions but it did seem like hard work at the time. Well, not for me, as LotG only allowed me to play one hand in the session, but she had to work hard with some tricky hands. Naturally difficult hands are helpful as we are more likely to get them right and this was the source of our score.

A couple of interesting decisions:

Of course I probably should have used Stayman to try and escape earlier as it might be more difficult for them to penalise, but you are where you are so what do you do now? LotG and I play a simple system so bids are natural and redouble is to play. However, if she remembered, then she had the opportunity to redouble to say that she had a five-card suit and interest in running. But what would you do with your normal rescue mechanism?

Earlier in the evening the boot was on the other foot:

What seems right here? Again, LotG and I do not play Lebensohl so two notrumps is natural, but happy for people to answer in the context of their own agreements.

Winning the evening means that we still stand a chance of lifting the trophy, but will probably have to win the final two rounds.

Camrose at home

This weekend is the second half of the Camrose Trophy and is being held at the Holiday Inn in East Kilbride. Although spectator numbers have been dropping with the advent of BBO there is always a good crowd at Scottish venues and I hope the home support will give us a fifth man at the table.

Standings after the first weekend:

	Total
England	99
Scotland	82
Wales	78
SBU	71
Ireland	63
Northern Ireland	56

I did not feel that my (SBU) team suffered particularly from début nerves in the first weekend, but the experience was new for two of the pairs and there is no doubt that it only gets easier the more you play (actually, to be totally honest, it was only new to one of my pairs; the other had played before, but not in living memory and the format was very different in their time).

Two of my pairs were successful in the European trials last weekend and should be full of confidence, while the third were carrying the team flag, perhaps in the bar, at the Highlands Congress at Strathpeffer and will be relaxed and ready for action.

We play Scotland in the first match on Friday evening.

Information for the weekend is available at camrosebridge.com.

SBU Trial results

In a close and tense finish, the ASH team beat PIPER by 133-129 imps over 64 boards and so Mike Ash, Miro Dragic, Irving Gordon and Bill Whyte will represent Scotland in the Open Series of the European Team Championships in June. They will be joined by Douglas Piper and Alex Wilkinson, the Selection Committee making a quick decision after the final.

Irving, Mike, Bill and Miro

In a less tense finish, the MCGOWAN team comfortably won both their matches today to win the trial. Liz McGowan, Sam Punch, Anne Symons and Sheila Adamson will by joined by Yvonne Wiseman and Fiona McQuaker in representing Scotland in the Women's Series in Dublin.

Sam, Sheila, Anne, Liz, Yvonne and Fiona

Full results

SBU European Team Championship Trials

This weekend I will be running the Scottish trials for Open and Women's teams at the 2012 European Team Championships. The event is being held at the Carlton Bridge Centre in Edinburgh and spectators are welcome. Times can be found on the SBU East website but both events start at 11.55 on Saturday.

The running scores can be found on this page and I will endeavour to provide updates after each sixteen board stanza: there will also be Twitter updates, perhaps with photos, with the tag #sbueurotrial - comments and support welcome.

A new threat?

I was kibitzing one of my club friends on BBO last night and saw the following hand:

Three clubs is clear but, to my surprise, my friend bid three notrump!

"Wow", I thought. This is a completely new side of my friend. Pretending to hold a spade stopper is something I might do, but it is slightly scary to find that there are others at the club who are becoming less than honest citizens. Perhaps a new threat is emerging?

As it happened partner did hold four spades but they were headed by the nine and the contract was one down when West cashed the first five spade tricks. The table chat was illuminating:

Friend to partner: Liz McGowan (high priestess of Scottish bridge) said that you should not open that hand.

Me to friend: I'm not sure Liz would necessarily say that 3NT was the best call either.

Friend to me: What would you bid?

Me to friend: Well, three clubs looks normal.

Friend to me: But that would be fourth-suit forcing ...

Suddenly the scales fell from my eyes. My friend had missed that it was West who had actually bid two spades. I was relieved. The threat had abated. I can continue to trust them at the club ... for now.

Juniors on top!

Scotland have won the Junior Camrose Trophy, the Home International Series for under 25s. Huge congratulations to Phil Morrison (playing captain) & Frazer Morgan, Krzyzstof Nguyen & Alex Wilkinson.

Final Table
Scotland	156 VP
England	141 VP
Ireland	122 VP
Northern Ireland	121 VP

With Wales not competing this year the format was a triple round-robin. Scotland and England were tied at the top of the table after the first two round robins and it was the 25-5 VP win in their final encounter that proved the difference for the Scottish team. Overall, in their three encounters, Scotland beat England 44-36 VP and fully deserved their win.

Over the last two weekends I arranged practice matches for this team. With one new partnership and one pair playing very little together, it was clear that they just needed to play more and it is no surprise to me that they finished stronger than they started.

England won the Peggy Bayer Trophy, the Home International Series for under 20s. The Scottish team of Stewart Pinkerton & Jun Nakamaru Pinder, Yvonne & Ralph Wiseman pushed them all the way but the favourites won by 15 VPs in the end.

Final Table
England	182 VP
Scotland	167 VP
Northern Ireland	102 VP
Ireland	77 VP

Photos, courtesy of Paul Porteus.

Playing against the stars

BBO has introduced two new features that, used together, allows you to play set games using hands from the vugraph archives. Some of my friends are doing this to allow them to compare their performance with the stars of the game rather than the other BBO players. For serious practice it does add another dimension when you see what Versace or Meckstroth did when holding your cards.

The key features, only available on the web client, are:

• You can import LIN files on the Hands and results menu
• New options for teaching tables permits the host to only see his own hand

The process is:

• Find the vugraph match that you'd like to play. There are two main sources:
1. The BBO Vugraph Archives
2. The Vugraph Project (select LIN files only)
• Download the match to your computer
• Log into BBO on the web client and go to Hands and results
• Click on Import LIN file - create a new folder and then follow the dialogue to import the hands
• Go to the Home page and Start a table and then Start a Teaching table
• Use the Deal Source button and select Use saved hands - select the folder that you imported the hands to
• On the Options menu, select Teaching options and uncheck the Show all hands for the Host
• When four players are sitting, hit the redeal button. Actually it seems you must now hit redeal again to get the first hand. Now just play normally hitting redeal after every hand is complete.

For those who have asked me to prepare hands in the past, this will be my new advice.

Shooting yourself in the foot

The club pairs championship is decided by the average of your six best scores over ten rounds. So where you finish each evening does not matter, it is all about your percentage. So the 59% that LotG and I scored yesterday was more important than the fact we only finished in third, albeit only 2% behind the winners.

The session was a long hard slog. We misdefended the first board after declarer misplayed it (not always easy to work these things out) and did not rise above average until well into the second half of the evening. But we had a strong finish to achieve a level of respectability.

We'd have scored about 3% better with average scores on these two boards.

This would have been a spectacular success if a diamond was not led and, in that sense, is probably with the odds. It would be hard for East to lead a diamond without an honour or even with just one of them but, holding both the ace and king of diamonds, Barbara did not have any trouble leading them out.

Playing 2/1, three clubs is essentially natural in this sequence but may be a three-card suit. Four notrumps was quantitative and we clearly had the values for slam. The auction goes a lot better if South bids two notrumps on the second round, allowing North to pattern out with three clubs. Now South knows about a possible diamond problem and make look towards six clubs. North could also have just raised clubs but this is suggestive of a 4504 distribution.

Congratulations to Kate and Jim who were the only pair to find a making slam (six hearts).

Later in the evening:

With the king of hearts onside the defence took the first three tricks to earn themselves a top. The auction revolves around the strength needed for the jump to three spades and the South hand is definitely minimum. I think it's pretty unlucky that the five level is unsafe but the rest of field were more circumspect and stopped at a safe level.

Overall Brian and George still have a huge lead and we are going to need at least two scores in the high sixties to compete with them.

Gold Cup III

We have been drawn away to Georgia and Steve Ray, Sarah Teshome and Richard Winter in the third round.

Ties involving Scottish teams:

Robert McKinnon vs Ian Hunter or Iain SIME
Mrs Georgia Ray vs Paul Gipson
Brian SHORT vs David Weir or David Shenkin
Harry Smith vs Mike Ash

Scotland in Tel Aviv

Scotland were invited to send a team to the Israel Bridge Festival in Tel Aviv this month and, despite my lack of Hebrew, I've been trying to follow their progress.

Irving Gordon (pc), Derek Diamond, Gerald Haase and Victor Silverstone are probably the most experienced, if not the youngest, team Scotland has ever sent abroad but the festival did clash with a number of trials, exams and the Junior Camrose next week. This was a pity as this experience is precisely what (I believe) so many of our top pairs need if they want to improve.

The team started with the Board-A-Match teams, a format that is never seen in Scotland but is essentially played matchpoints on steroids. They finished a creditable 14th, behind a number of Israeli and other national teams (Denmark, Czech Republic, Romania, France, Germany and South Africa all with players that I've heard of) but ahead of the stronger French team.

In the main teams event they were well placed to qualify for the knock-out stages when they lost 1-25 in the final match, leaving them 7 VPs short. It must have been a disappointed finish.

This 'qualified' them for the seven-session pairs where Haase-Silverstone finished in 2nd place, an excellent result in a strong field. Diamond-Gordon finished 29th, paying the penalty for a really poor penultimate session.

I expect we'll read more when the SBU News editor had tracked them down on their return.

Not even close

Back to the club for the next round of the Scott Cup, the teams championship. Diana and Ros, fresh from 4th place in the National Women's Teams, and LotG and I all played well but we could only score 92/160 VPs. This was good enough for second place but a huge 43 VPs behind the winners, Malcolm, George, Reg and Jean.

The hands were fairly exciting but mainly flat in our matches. Diana and Ros missed a 20% slam that was bid and made against us but aside from that there was nowhere for us to gain any points. So I presume the winners just received a disproportionate number of gifts. There was scope for this, but all the pairs who must have donated gifts against them seemed to play soundly against us. Just shows you need to play the right boards against the right pairs, but even so you still need to take advantage and they clearly did that.

One hand to consider from the evening:

Your call?