| 3rd European Open Bridge Championships | Page 3 | Bulletin 10 - Monday 25 June 2007 |
| |
||
|
The Morning Paper by Mark Horton One of the joys of being a journalist (and they are few in number) is that you can be sure that at some point during the tournament a piece of paper will be thrust in front of you containing some undecipherable scrawl bearing more resemblance to ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics than Times New Roman. Every once in while you get to see something worthy of publication. Consider this bidding problem:
My first reaction was to bid Four Clubs. That was the bid chosen at the table and West’s rebid of Four Spades saw everyone passing. This was the full deal:
Maybe its better to bid Four Diamonds as it may be vital to let partner know you have a diamond control. On the other hand West might have bid Four Diamonds himself and it would not be ridiculous for East to bid Five Diamonds over Four Spades. While you are mulling that over, you might be interested in this auction on the same deal, which I picked up quite accidentally:
Here East/West reached the slam with East making no contribution whatsoever! (Not quite true, as you may have guessed that the pass over Five Diamonds was forcing. Still a fine bid by West – as the BBO operator said to East/West – you play like men.) Slowplay by Charles, Denmark (Here is another contribution from the Internet) I liked my good friend and colleague Ib Lundy’s article yesterday: Bridge at the (desk) top. This is quite another story. When I phoned my contact Anita Jensen from the Danish Women’s team, she was drinking a cup of coffee together with the Swedish pair Johan Upmark and Tobias Tornqvist, and Johan told about this deal: Let first see what happened on the VuGraph (BBO), where I kibitzed the hand myself.
2♣ forcing 2♦ waiting 4♦ splinter The bidding at the other table:
2 ♠ spades and a minor The bidding at the Swedish table: Upmark was not afraid that the bidding would stop, so he decided to ‘slowplay’ the hand. After the Five Diamond bid, he realized that South was very short in diamonds, and then he stopped the slowbidding! 12 easy tricks at every table of course. Picking the Right Moment In the olden days, when I was a lad, the habit of ‘investing’ in a psychic bid was more common than nowadays. But the habit has not gone entirely out of fashion.
Many tables opened One No-trump with the West cards and received the defence of three rounds of spades, and now they were sunk. Note that if East opens One Diamond and jumps to Three Diamonds, East will play Three No-trumps, and South will lead a low heart. Now the play at trick one may look like a guess but declarer should rise with the king – since even if the ten forced the ace, a spade shift might still beat you. Anyway: back to the critical match, where Christina Mortensen opened One No-trump as West and reached Three No-trumps. Her North led a diamond and was not amused at developments. Since the last strong no-trump had worked so well, Christina thought it was time to strike while the iron was hot. At favourable vulnerability, playing against a pair without a penalty double in their armour, she tried a no-trump as West again, this time perhaps with a little less support from the text-book.
One can hardly blame South for lying low for a round or two – by the time she discovered what was going on, it was too late. As to North, she was the other side of the screen, and could not know for sure that the opponents had not missed a slam! At the end of the deal N/S called the director and complained that their opponents had psyched too much already in the match. When Mortensen was asked about prior partnership experience with psyching she was able to say with complete confidence that this was the first time…the partnership was formed at one day’s notice before the Teams started. Adele Gogoman’s partner Jovanka Smederevac is recovering from eye-problems so Christina had been drafted in at short notice to make up the numbers, and the pair had never played before. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
| Page 3 |
