Monday 17 September

Playing N/S with Adrianne came in a poor 10th of 15 with a Butler score of -8. Most hands were fairly nondescript, we didn't do much wrong but didn't get many good scores.

Got off to a bad start with the first two boards of the night against Phoebe and Robina.
Our bidding went:
1S -  x - 2C - P
2D - P - 2H - P
3C - P - 4N - P
5H - P - 6C - passed out

Adrianne has a tricky bid over the fourth suit. I prefer to bid 2S rather than create a picture of 5143 shape, however I'm not so keen to bid 2S here and end up in 4S opposite 2 small. Primarily she has to deny a heart stop and make the bid that best describes her hand.  On balance 3C is probably best.
However I am tempted by the thought of a singleton heart opposite and can't resist going for 6C.
Phoebe made the obvious heart lead and double dummy I can make this.  Duck AH, win heart continuation and ruff a heart. AD, QD covered and ruffed (else discard a spade). Over to AS, cash 10D discard spade then run JC.  Defender can make that harder by returning a club at trick two which you have to run to Dummy.  Or even a spade, but you are still home as above.
Needless to say I didn't do any of that, I just tried a diamond finesse at trick two.

This is a big 'swingy' hand that we got wrong.  West could open 2S or multi if you allow it missing a top honour.  North could open 2H playing Lucas.  Neither of these applied at our table, it simply went:

P - 1H - 1S - 2H
4S - passed out.

5H (or 5D) can't be beaten, 4S can. Unfortunately we got neither of these results.  Adrianne led KD, I played the 2 for a club.  She duly switched to the 7 and I didn't suspect this was a singleton, I ducked.   So we didn't even keep it to 10 tricks. A club lead defeats the contract.
Fit jumps don't seem to be around as much these days, we certainly never played them but isn't that South hand just perfect for a fit-jump to 3D?

Along with half the field we managed to bid slam against Alan and Myra.
Adrianne opened 1H, I bid 1S, Adrianne 1N.  I bid 4C for Aces, Adrianne showing the AS and I bid 6S.  Alan led a diamond won in hand.  AS with Alan's 10 popping up, then I ran the 9 to the bare Queen. Two discards on the KQ hearts gave me 12 tricks.
Straightforward enough, however a number of people made 13 tricks.  That was poor, if East's 10 is singleton and you go up with the King of Spades on the second round, West will have Q8 left and will get two trump tricks.  Silly to risk your slam for one measly point.


The Scottish team are off to a good start in the d'Orsi trophy in Bali winning their first two matches:

Results