x and that was -790 instead of
+200: a swing of 32 IMPs.On Saturday afternoon, precisely half of each of the pairs that had won the silver medal in February sat down in an attempt to do even better this year. Events had conspired to deprive the team of the services of Frances Hinden, Dave Kendrick, Paul Barden and (until Sunday morning) Gareth Roberts, the most unlikely excuses coming from Frances (sent to Bolivia on business at short notice) and Dave (playing bridge in Bombay). We brought in Philip Wood to partner Jeff Allerton, Ed Linfield for Chris Jagger and tried out a new pairing of Jonathan Mestel with Fiske Warren, bringing in those reliable Tolly regulars, Steve Siklos and Julian Wightwick, to make a team of 8.
We were the "A" seed in Group B. The butlers show Fiske/Jonathan +52, Steve/Julian +70, Jeff/Philip +21, Edmund/Chris 0, and Gareth/Chris +39, the last two partnerships being over half a weekend each.
The team finished joint second with Berks & Bucks, 4 VP's behind Warwicks. We missed out on the second qualifying place by virtue of the result in the head to head match, which was a post-dinner disaster on Saturday evening. It was all desperately close, and 2-4 more IMPs in any one of 5 matches would have been enough to qualify. As it was, with just below 70% of the victory points available, it was a little unlucky not to qualify, though we did have a very easy draw.
This was an excellent team effort; with the exception of the
B&B match a bad card somewhere was invariably cancelled out
by a good one somewhere else. In the B&B match the deficit
represented 145 IMPs lost on 4 boards out of 12; 48 went on one
board where the opponents bid slams missed by our pairs and 34
on another when Jonathan & Fiske had their only bidding
misunderstanding of the weekend: not bad for a completely new
partnership. In the second half of that match, an intrusive bit
of harrassment from the TD, complaining about slow play, broke
Jonathan's concentration at the crucial moment in the defence
of 4x and that was -790 instead of
+200: a swing of 32 IMPs.
This little effort apart, Fiske and Jonathan had a pretty
good weekend, marked by aggressive bidding, quite a few tight
doubles of the opponents' low level contacts and some skillful
dummy play. As an example of the aggression in the bidding,
Fiske overcalled 1
with 1
(playing WJO's) at red on board 28 holding Jx
AKxxxxx Kx xx. When the bidding came back to him he rebid 3 and Jonathan bid 4 on Axxx 109 xxxx Kxx (whilst at the same time being
surprised that his RHO had supported his partner's s on a doubleton). This made exactly when s were 2-2 and the minor suit aces were
onside (though the K was always likely
to be a trick on the bidding). On the way home Fiske (having
been taken to task for not preempting with 
Q10xxxxx, 3rd in hand at red after 2 passes with
nothing else except Qx) said that he
could not remember a hand on which Jonathan, with 5 or more
cards in a suit, had not bid.
Chris Jagger adds: An interesting hand came up on the Sunday.
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Steve and Julian bid 1-1-3-3NT-4-5-5-5. Some people might elect to
rebid 2 rather than this rather
preemptive leap to 3, but the hand is
a little too good for 2. Now what
after 3NT? There are certain auctions that should be avoided,
and pulling 3NT on this auction is one of them. However on this
occasion there is something to be said for it, as 4 or 5 could well be
the best spots. There must be a case for the other hand to pass
4, and converting to 5 is certainly not ridiculous, as with plenty of values
in aces and kings one would expect it to be safer to play in
the biggest fit. Julian elected to make a slam try with 5, which again could be right if partner has
solid diamonds, though to me this is a bit optimistic. Steve
bid 5 and in my view there they should
have played. It seems to me that this auction is analogous to
ones where a minor is agreed and you rebid a non-forcing four
of a major as a possible last making contract. (And having
5 as non-forcing in my view makes the
slam try that much more attractive, as 5 is likely to be a silly contract.)
The upshot of all this was that they played in 5, not the greatest spot. Plan the play on the
king of clubs lead. One option is to ruff in dummy, draw three
rounds of trumps and then fall back on the diamond finesse.
Better in practice I feel is to win in hand, and run the 10 straight away. If this wins, then two
rounds of trumps and run the diamond suit. If not, then the
only way for them to make trouble is to play another club -
maybe not so clear as this would be wrong if declarer had KQxxx
Kxx 10x AJx, when a heart switch would be necessary. Even if
they get a diamond ruff in then this is okay provided that the
longer trump hand gets the ruff (so that there is now no other
trump loser).
Fiske and Jonathan's opponents had a Precision relay
sequence on this hand: 1* - 1NT* -
4* - 6. I
think 4 denied a four card major, and
showed at least seven diamonds to two top honours and a club
void. How often does this come up, I wonder! It's a reasonable
contract, but the heart lead was not difficult to find, and
there was a trump loser.