| 3rd European Open Bridge Championships | Page 3 | Bulletin 3 - Monday 18 June 2007 |
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A Zillion Bids by Jan van Cleef You have this hand: ♠ 6 4 ♥ - ♦ A J 10 9 7 6 2 ♣ K Q 7 4
Green against red you have an easy bid after:
(Pass) – Pass – (4♠) - ?
Of course you bid 5♦. It goes on:
(dbl) – 5♥ – (dbl) - ?
All of a sudden a zillion bids are available:
- Pass: from here on it is your responsibility, partner
- rdbl: SOS
- 5♠: pick-a-slam
- 5NT: pick-a-slam, but passable in unlikely cases
- 6♣: second suit
- 6♦: no nonsense
Down below you will find out what Boye Brogeland’s bid was. By the way the Norwegian team (the Brogelands, the Helnesses and the Erichsens) won the mixed teams two years ago in Tenerife. The defending champions had a rough time on this one:
Tonje Brogeland-Aasand did not have such an easy bid here. She decided to double: ‘cards’ and North decided to pass. Spade lead, twelve tricks, EW +830.
When you play ‘Muiderberg’ you will find the top spot from time to time Bep Vriend and Anton Maas displayed good handling of their version of the famous Dutch opening bid:
The 2♥ opener showed 5-11 HCP, a five card major plus a minor suit. 4♦ was natural, forcing and convertible. Bep Vriend duly took her eleven tricks. At the other table the club game was missed. Did you recognize the hand? We go back to Boye Brogelands bidding options from above, he selected 6♦. There it rested, doubled though. EW plus 300. Club Sluggers by Peter Ventura From the second match in the Round Robin we came across this tragi-comic story when theTurkish team Semerci met the Dutch team Vriend. Murat Kilercioglu and Billur Araz were N/S and produced the following auction:
fter a completely natural auction (!), where North first gave preference to diamonds then passed Six Clubs, West didn’t want to double the slam, giving N/S a chance to find a better spot. West was probably quite happy to defend undoubled and when the smoke had cleared the declarer was four down for –400. Kilercioglu/Araz hardly expected this disaster to be a great result for their team, but see what happened at the other table!
Four Clubs was primarily natural but what messed things up here was that you might have to make the call without a spade control and heart support. In North’s world Four Spades now showed a spade control and Five Spades two aces and the queen of hearts (trumps). However, from South’s perspective Four Spades accepted clubs as trumps and showed a control in spades. After Five Spades South ‘knew’ partner had the two missing aces with the queen of clubs, so Six Clubs appeared to be reasonable from South’s point of view. However, North didn’t follow as he corrected ‘the final bid’ to Six Diamonds. Fine, partner has got something extra in diamonds – let’s bid the grand, South might have said. Enough’s enough, said West, and doubled. Declarer only managed to take seven tricks, thus she was down six for minus 1700 which erased N/S’ accident at the other table. That was 16 IMPs to Semerci and a decisive factor as to why they won this match by 17-13 (27-18 IMPs). Unfortunately for Semerci this was not enough to qualify. Despite the setback on this very board Vriend qualified into the Swiss A.Optical Illusion by Barry Rigal I’m sure that a fair percentage of tables quite sensibly bid this deal to 3NT – the difficulty of diagnosing the duplication of club values makes reaching any other game quite hard although I suppose reaching any of the three possible suit games would also be possible. At the table I watched this was the auction: @1st line of hand:Board 15. Dealer South. N/S Vul.
South led the club jack, and Holland carefully overtook the club queen with the ace, revealing the position there, but preserving the entry to dummy. The n he played the ace and jack of hearts. Had this held he would have crossed to the spade queen and cleared the hearts, but the defenders actually took the heart king and cleared the clubs. So Holland cashed out his nine tricks, and had the spade break for overtricks. If you win trick one in dummy to take the heart finesse, you will be well placed if it loses, but if it holds you are not home. The best you can do is shift to spades, but the defenders win the fourth round and clear the clubs. You now need to guess diamonds to make the game. There was no real swing; Four Spades made ten tricks in the other room. Man Bites Tiger by Mark Horton In Round 3 of Group E the French team captained by Bernard Payen faced off against the Norwegian side led by Rune Hauge. This deal contributed to a fine French victory:
Open Room
North knew his opponents had limited values and with the heart suit under control made a Tiger double of the type described by Freddie North and the late Jeremy Flint. The only problem with this type of double is that you have to back it up in the play, and as you will see, declarer took full advantage of a slip by the defence. North led the jack of spades, covered by the queen and king and South switched to the four of hearts. Declarer won with the king and played back a spade. When North mistakenly played low South had to win with the ace and switched to the eight of clubs. North put in the queen and declarer won with the king and played four rounds of diamonds. This was the position with North still to discard:
A spade or heart would be immediately fatal, so North discarded the ten of clubs. Declarer played a heart to hand and exited with the jack of clubs. North could cash the ten of spades, but then had to surrender the last two tricks to the French captain, +750. At the other table East was declarer in 3NT and South led a club, giving declarer no chance. That was 13 IMPs towards a 38-16, 22-8 VP win that put Payen into second place.Action Jackson to the rescue! by Barry Rigal Marion Michielesen showed me this hand, demonstrating that when Jan Jansma tells you ‘I always open in third seat non-vulnerable against vulnerable’ he means it.
The Bulletin Room was divided as to how to open the West cards. Given that passing was not an option, the popular choices were opening One Diamond and One Heart (though maverick choices such as Two Clubs and Two Hearts were mentioned). This was the auction from Jansma’s table:
According to Jansma, the force of the ‘silent’ double was enough virtually to blow him out of his seat. Jansma received the lead of two top spades. He ruffed low and advanced a confident ten of clubs. South took the ace and played the club jack, ducked by North after some thought. Now what was South to do? After some thought she played ace and another heart. Jansma won in dummy, cashed the diamond ace and ruffed a club low, crossed to the remaining top heart and ruffed another club. Finally he led a spade and ruffed with dummy’s king of trumps, then led the last club to elope with his diamond jack. Down three doubled for –500, and your everyday pick-up of 4 IMPs against the game from the other room. Brian Senior also opened the West hand; his choice was a weak 2♦. Sandra Penfold raised to Five Diamonds over North’s Four Spade call, and against Five Diamonds doubled the defenders led a top spade and shifted to the ten of trumps. That looks a better start, but South also shifted to ace and another heart at some point, so he too escaped for three down and a small gain.Hand of a Lifetime by Mark Horton Take a look at this innocuous looking deal from Round 5 of the Mixed Teams qualifying:
So far as the bidding is concerned the problem is to stop in time on the East/West cards. One way is for West to resist any temptation to open the bidding, then respond 1NT to East’s opening bid of One Spade and pass a rebid of Two Spades. The favourable position in the black suits mean you can always make nine tricks in spades, and might make ten if South does not lead a diamond at trick one. Why then is this a deal worthy of the epithet Hand of a Lifetime? Well, if you check your copy of the hand records you will see that Deep Finesse does not include any number of spades in the table of making contracts! Investigations are under way as to how this has happened – my guess is that the program being used to create the deals is set up in such a way that DF does not analyse deals which confound Burn’s law of Total Trumps. (For once my guess proved to be accurate. The dealing program is running a simplified version of DF and does not consider suit contracts with less than seven trumps.) Preempters galore What is your bid as North, third in hand, at favourable vulnerability, after two passes?
Sitting behind North ( Marcin Lesniewski of Poland) I mentally agreed with his choice of opening bid as he put Three Diamonds on the tray). 1100 later after a trump lead I changed my mind. Who on earth would open Three Diamonds on that garbage…. Let’s find out: I asked Billy Eisenberg, World Champion and more, “An automatic Three Diamonds” he stated. A string of (male) experts more or less unanimously supported Billy’s view. In the records we find that North stayed out of trouble in 47 cases out of 70 (most likely saved by many Wests opening One Diamond). But some didn’t pay the full price. Seven times 500 meant a three or four imp win, but eight 800s, seven 1100s, and once a devastating 1400 after a small spade lead were costly! I’ll ask Billy again. |
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