French Toast By Patrick Jourdain ( Wales) To be squeezed by a pair of beautiful Croatian girls will be most male juniors’ dream, but the French Chauvel on this deal from the third round didn’t appear to enjoy the experience: Board 12. Dealer West. N/S Vul.   ♠ 10 4 ♥ 10 8 6 ♦ A 10 9 ♣ J 9 8 3 2 ♠ A K J 5 ♥ K J 4 ♦ Q J 8 ♣ 7 5 4 ♠ 9 6 2 ♥ 9 7 5 ♦ 7 5 4 3 ♣ K Q 6   ♠ Q 8 7 3 ♥ A Q 3 2 ♦ K 6 2 ♣ A 10 West North East South Chauvel Kulovic-Probst Malorme Martinovic 1NT Pass Pass Dble All Pass       Nicolas Chauvel opened a strong notrump on the West cards and was doubled by Slavica Martinovic, sitting South. Sandra Kulovic-Probst, (the deal was reported by her husband, Richard), led a low club. Double-dummy declarer does best to play low from dummy, thereby blocking the run of the suit, but it was normal enough to put up the king. This was beaten by the ace and South’s ten of clubs was overtaken by North’s jack. Planning to exit later with a club, declarer won the second trick to take the spade finesse. He cashed two more spades but North threw a heart on the third round. Now declarer exited with his club. North cashed two more clubs, extracting a spade and a heart from declarer, and then switched to a low diamond (a heart also works, but not a high diamond). South won the king of diamonds and then the queen of spades squeezed declarer in the red suits. The defence had come to four clubs, a spade, three top red winners, and another trick from the squeeze. Declarer had made only three spades and a club, for 500 to Croatia. There was useful swing to Croatia but France won the match 17-13. Disaster Corner By Jean-Francois Jourdain ( Belgium) The Belgian rookie, Benoit Guiot made a real entry in the competition to be the player who wasted the most points on one single deal, if you look at this disaster against Italy on the very last board. Yet, after having going down at the very first deal in 3 NT when ignoring two tricks in dummy, he ended the Round 4 Juniors match just as he had begun it. Deal 20. Dealer West. All Vul.   ♠ K 10 6 3 ♥ 4 ♦ K Q 5 4 3 ♣ A 10 8 ♠ J 5 ♥ A K Q J 8 5 ♦ 8 ♣ J 7 5 2 ♠ Q 7 2 ♥ 7 6 3 ♦ A 7 2 ♣ Q 9 4 3   ♠ A 9 8 4 ♥ 10 9 2 ♦ J 10 9 6 ♣ K 6 West North East South 1♥ Dble 2♣(i) 2♠ 4♥ All Pass     As we already have seen in Daily Bulletin 3, a pass is not really possible in a team game when your opponents bid 4♥ voluntarily, since not so many cards are required by partner to have a good save, or even win the contract yourself. After all, something as little as ♠A9xx ♥xxx ♦Jxx ♣Kxx can be enough – so why not try ? When he passed without any hesitation, a first major swing opportunity was missed since at the other table the Italians scored only +200. Defending against 4♥ seems simply routine, since East/West can never get rid of their four black losers. Or maybe, well? Yes, welcome to the Disaster Corner! Benguigui, as we nicknamed him in Belgium, led the ♠6. Alexandre Hubert took the ace and thought a while about his switch. He came to the conclusion that the best chance was his partner to have the ♣A and consequently played the ♣K at trick two. When that held, he might have thought everything was all right, but not yet! If he had been cautious, he should now have played the ♠4, after which his partner could not do anything wrong any more. But he played a second club, and North concluded that a second spade was not to be cashed. For some reason I still do not understand, he seemed not interested to give his partner a club ruff, and switched to the ♦K. Disaster was looming. The Italian player, Andrea Boldrini now proceeded to play all his trumps and his remaining clubs, in the hope something would happen. When South, apparently upset at not having got his ruff, fell asleep and forgot to pitch as soon as possible the ♦J on the table, which would have clearly solved all problems, Benguigui had a difficult guess on the penultimate trick. As he remained convinced that his partner held five spades from the beginning, he let the ♠K go and Italy scored another 620, enough to win the match by 25-1 VPs.

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