After 4 rounds score is a bit surprising in top 3. We have clear lead to other strong contestants.
| Team | VP |
|---|---|
| We | 81 |
| Miramisu | 72 |
| Vilttiketju | 70 |
15 VPs is enough to quarantine our victory when we play against second placed Miramisu. But they are a strong team collected from Finnish open and women national team players since 90s. In the last years they haven't been traveling to international events any more. Our opponents will be Mika and Antti
Board 33: Cards follow the odds
There is one advantage in playing against strong opponents. One can always trust to understand opponents bids and plays. Too bad that didn't help much in my declarer play here.
1NT with only one entry to dummy but 3 suits to play from dummy doesn't sound like a fun contract. This time it was simple because only one suit provided alone home going chances.
That left only question how to play the club suit. I knew that my club queen would be covered if king was onside removing chances for a BBO style defense. Opponents leads were 3rd/5th that told clearly how hearts were. With less free slots behind my club suit I decided to play for ten doubleton offside.
After clubs provided me second entry to dummy I was in crossroads how to play for a over trick. But I decided to abandon dummy entry because there was minor chance of going down if I played spades or diamonds my self. Also playing clubs would leave me some end-play chances in some layouts with my heart 9. The actual layout and defense didn't provide the over trick.
When looking the results I was a bit surprised that none beside me made 1NT after a heart lead. A declarer managed to success after diamond lead when playing from north.
Team mates: 1NT S +50
Result: +90 (4; +3.2)
Total: -57 / +47
Board 36: A part-score battle with plenty of mistakes.
We are going to return back to the usual situation. That is defending a part-score. But this hand had a twist already before opening lead.
| Bid | Meaning |
|---|---|
| X | At least mildly invitational balancedish. |
| 1NT | Semi-forcing as unpassed hand |
| 2♥ | 3+♠ support 9+ |
| 2♠ | 5-8 |
It is actually no problem with our agreements but I decided to make it a problem. I have a mildly invitational hand but not very good for spade contract. That made me look for 1NT instead of supporting partner. I violated the "support partner with a support" -rule in a competitive auction. I deserved to end up defending when partner has good playing strength.
I made a big counting mistake in defense. I managed to forgot that Antti had ruffed twice which led me to think he had one more trump left. My slip actually gave declarer possibility to manage shorten trumps enough to end-play me. But luckily Antti was sleeping too and failed to end-play me in the end position.
That is my second defensive error that didn't cost anything. This time my error had chance to matter to results that makes me score it accordingly in totals.
Team mates: 4♠ S -100
Result: +100 (+5; +2.6)
Total: -63 / +47
Board 37: Lead that doesn't matter but matters
The last sips of cup holds the most sugar. In this event sugar is a lead problem.
To solve the best lead I would need to do a statistical analyze for many hands matching the biding. But I'm not prepare to do it for this deal just yet. I may do it in future to provide a bit more depth to the lead problems.
But lets go through my in table analysis. I have 9 points while opponents are trying to stop into 2 hearts. That puts their maximum hcp around 22. That leaves Juho with at least 9 hcp but no more than 11. That made me thing it was odds dummy wouldn't have minimum bid because there was no invite.
My shape doesn't promise to provide any ruffs and Juho rates to have two or one heart without much shape. Also my slow values are warning about possibility that they would be ruffed unless I play lead a trump. That thinking process made me pick a trump.
Dummy didn't delight me at all after lead when it came down with 4333 shape with spade king and diamond ace. My lead didn't have any effect on double dummy results. But in practical play it eliminated Mika's need for second dummy entry. Mika would want to play trumps from dummy because he was missing king and jack but after my lead he could use the diamond entry to take the working diamond finesse.
Team mates: 2♥ W +110
Result: -140 (-1; -0.6)
Possible results: -110 (0)
Total: -64 / +47
Match results
The last comparison has special tension when there is victory at stake. This time I was expecting a very even match based on our table play and skill level of opponents. But our team mates managed to surprise me producing score card that compared 22 point victory.
Tournament results
I have to thanks my team that produced an excellent score.
| Team | VP | avg |
|---|---|---|
| We | 103 | 20.6 |
| Vilttiketju | 86 | 17.1 |
| Miramisu | 80 | 16.0 |
We managed to produce +1.15 to the butler. But after doing postmortem I feel that I was probably the weakest player in the team. There was possibility to score about 64 IMPs more for our team. Some of those IMPs would have just pushed our score beyond the 25 maximum in VP scale. Of course it isn't practical to except no mistakes in bridge table but the cost of errors in this short match should be less than half what it was.
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