While Israel held on to first place in the Junior Championship, the other teams continued to ride the seesaw. Norway, many people’s favourites, are now second. A gap is starting to open up, as third placed Denmark is 12 VP behind. France comes next, and Turkey moved back into contention with three good wins. Croatia climbed seven places by scoring 65 VP on the day.

Spain, doubtless spurred on by yesterday’s reference to the wooden spoon, had a good day, and has moved well away from the bottom of the table. That dubious distinction now belongs to Ireland.

An Old-fashioned Score

When your editors started playing bridge a score of -700 was quite common (well, usually we had to play the hand quite well to get out for 700 the way we bid), as it was the score for four down doubled non-vulnerable. It is a much less easy score to achieve these days but Estonia managed it in their match against Belgium in Round 9 of the Juniors.

This was the deal:

Board 15. Dealer South. N/S Vul.
	ª A K J 5 © K J ¨ Q 5 § K Q 8 4 2
ª Q 10 6 2 © 7 ¨ K J 10 7 6 2 § 10 5		ª 8 7 © A Q 8 6 4 3 2 ¨ A § 9 6 3
	ª 9 4 3 © 10 9 5 ¨ 9 8 4 3 § A J 7

In the other room, the Estonian east player overcalled 4© and South passed his partner’s reopening double for +500 to Belgium. At our featured table, Daniel de roos contented himself with a 3© overcall and Lauri Naber also made the reopening double. It is less clear than at the other table but probably still correct to pass the double, but to be fair it is a tough problem for South. What is for sure is that Leo Luks did not make the winning decision when he chose to bid his four-card suit. Steve de Roos passed, of course, not knowing if his opponents had somewhere better to run to.

De Roos led his singleton heart to the jack and queen. Brother Daniel cashed the ace of hearts then took the ace of diamonds before playing a third heart to declarer’s nine. West threw his clubs on the second and third hearts. Luks needed something very good to happen in his horrible contract but when he tried a trump to the queen at trick four something very bad happened instead. West won the ¨K and cashed the jack and ten to draw declarer’s remaining trumps. Worse than that. Declarer threw two spades from dummy on the third and fourth diamonds. De Roos could play a spade to dummy, ruff the next club and play a second spade, establishing two spade tricks for himself while he still had a diamond left to regain the lead. That meant that Luks was seven down for -700. An old-fashioned sort of a score, but I’m sure that all the girls here will be glad to find that there is an old-fashioned kind of a guy in the tournament. Look him up girls, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to swap disaster stories with you.