Wednesday 29 December

Playing with Joan Fulton on Wednesday we managed to come first.
We got off to a good start against Charles & Vi after a dubious bid by me.


Joan is South and opens 1D, Vi overcalls 1S and I bid 2D(?). Charles shows a raise to 3S by 2H (nothing to do with hearts) and Joan bids 3C. Vi bids 4S to end auction.

Now without the 3C bid I would have led a diamond, but there is probably only 1 trick for us and if Joan has the Ace it hopefully won't go away, so I led 2C.
Vi can hardly finesse in spades, so we get 2 clubs, a diamond and a trump.

Note if I lead a diamond, Joan wins the Jack, exits with a heart and Vi will end play her with the 3rd spade which is exactly how Adrianne played in when she made 4S at her table.

A top came for us on this hand.





Joan opens an excellent 1NT and East bids an Astro 2D.

Now I am sure I should bid 3D, but just bid a direct 3NT. Declarer can defeat this by leading Ace then Jack of hearts, but in the real world led a small spade and Joan had no problem making 10 tricks.

Monday 21 December

Playing Aggregate Pairs with Adrianne we came 4th, 740 points behind the winners. Most hands were flatish but there were a lot of slams around. We should have won easily because we missed the two slams our way (there is actually a 3rd, but it is missing 2 key cards, but makes by finessing the King of trumps). Both slams we missed are really quite easy to bid, on one we had a mix up, our agreement is after a 2NT opening 4C is for Aces, 4NT is quantative, one of us forgot and 4NT was passed.

The other slam should always be bid:



Adrianne opens 1C, I bid 1H, Adrianne bids 2C. I would have thought of rebidding 1NT with the South hand, but 2C is fine. I now bid 2D and Adrianne bid 2NT.
This is a mistake, the hand is very maximum, really you must bid 3NT as my 2D is 10+.

I still really wanted to go on over 2NT but chickened out and settled for 3N. Partner should be 11 or 12 with 6 clubs, so if 6 clubs are running, she won't have AS and AD and the lead is into wrong hand, though QS, AD and AQ to 6 clubs makes a decent slam which was why I was reluctant not to go on.

If partner bids 3NT I have no problem bidding 6.

Only 2 tables out of 8 bid the slam. Playing weak NT a 1C - 2C rebid is always 6 or 5C and 4D, my 2D bid confirms that partner has 6 clubs, so counting 12 likely tricks isn't difficult.

Having said we could have won, we were very lucky on this board:

Adrianne opened 1NT and West passed. To me, my hand looks as likely to make 9 or 7 tricks as make 8 (the hand actually makes 8 tricks, shows what I know). At aggregate I'm not going to pass, so I bid 3NT

However after a spade lead, a diamond to King and Ace, defenders continued King of spades and East made an unblock of the Queen, they continued sopades, so Adrianne made two overtricks, so the hand was actuually 8 or 11 tricks!

Nobody else was in 3NT, but most Wests wouldn't hesitate to make an Astro type overcall making life difficult for North.

On board 16 like most people we passed thoughout and defended 4H. At two tables N/S are in 5Dx and at one 5H, presumably after a 5D.

At our table it went 1NT - 2H - 2S - 4H passed out. Should South come in 5D now? Should South have bid 3D after the transfer?

At match points I think South should definitely bid 5D after the 4H. 4H must make 620, surely you can't lose more than 800 on a bad day and have every chance of -500 for an improved score.

Bidding it at aggregate doesn't seem a good idea, for what might be a small gain, but well done to those who did and saved 350 (-300 against -650)

Xmas Party

After 2 and a half years I am going to try to return to sharing some of my occasional brilliances and frequent disasters at the bridge table.


We all had a great night at our Xmas party on Thursday and I had one top score to show off, though as usual it came about by accident:


Dealer East, both Non-vul



South: .............AT7x

....................AQxx

....................xxx

....................Ax

East .....QJ5 .................xx

..........Kxxx ................Jxx

..........KJxx ................Qxx

..........Kx ..................JTxx

.....................K9xx

.....................xx

.....................Ax

.....................Q9xxx


Dave France, obviously not playing weak NT, opens 1H, Adrianne has an awkward choice between a 1NT overbid or a double. Personally I would gone for 1NT (which would have got us to 4S via Stayman), but double it was. Bob Brown stirs it up by bidding 2H. I bid 2S which goes round to Adrianne who, presumably after thinking about bidding 1NT, has it in her head she has 16 points, so bids 3S and I bid 4S.


Dave leads a small heart and dummy goes down. Well how do you get 10 tricks out of this lot while only losing 3? Trumps have to be 3-2, I need the heart finesse and then bring clubs home so they have to be 3-3 with K onside. However what are the opponents hands? Hearts are 4-3 so Dave has at least 12 points for his opening, Bob is under valued. Dave can't have KQJ of diamonds or would have led them, I need him to have KH, really he is well odds on to have KC. A fall back will be to get as many ruffs as possible. So I'll try to bring clubs home while ruffing what I can.


Trick 1 finesse QH

trick 2 cash AH

trick 3 ruff a heart

trick 4 Ace of clubs

trick 5 small club, West doesn't go up with K so I duck and Dave wins King

trick 6, what does Dave play?

A trump loses his trump trick, doesn't like diamond from KJ, so tries 4th (winning) heart. Bob can't see any gain by ruffing small so discards a diamond and I ruff.

We now have :

South: .............AT7x
.................... -
....................xxx
.................... -
East .....QJ5 .................xx
.......... - ................. -
..........KJxx ................Qxx
.......... - ..................JT
.....................K9
..................... -
.....................Ax
.....................Q9x

I'm in hand, I have 5 tricks for the loss of 1 and really must make 10 from 3 more spades, a diamond and a club by playing K, A and another spade now, however what if Dave started 4-4 in the majors?

So I played a small club. If Dave had 4 spades, a small ruff is no good as I over-ruff and play 3 spades making 10. A ruff with the Jack means I over-ruff, diamond to the A and now QC, if Dave takes QS I only have a diamond to lose, if he discards, my Queen wins and again I'll have 10 tricks.

As the cards lay it didn't matter, Dave actually discarded, I returned to AD and led QC and made 10 that way.

A complete top as nobody else bids 4S, excellent 3S bid partner!