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Lysandra Zheng.

Catch-up Bridge.

This is a very delicate art, the art of recovering from a disaster. Somehow, if one goes looking to make up a few imps, so often one ends up twice as far behind. So, is it better to play down the middle, pick up hopefully a few here and there and realise that this match will be lost but hopefully by not too many….or does one go shooting to try and recover lost ground?

 

A longish but quite understandable auction. The first 5 bids were all natural with 3S showing 16-17 hcp. 4 and 4 were both cue-bids. 4 was 1^st or 2^nd round control though since West had already shown 3 four card suits (possibly 5 clubs), the diamond control had to be first round.

This was confirmed when 5 showed 3 (or 0) key cards. 5NT asked for side-suit kings and 6 showed the K.

Based on that information, what is your next bid as East?

This board occurred in last weekend's National Open Teams. Over then to Lysandra Zheng who was East. “At this point, it was not clear whether we should be in small or grand slam. It was though reasonable for partner to hold either Q or Q or indeed QJ to come to 16-17 hcp. I expected our opponents to be bidding 6 at the other table.”

One board earlier, Lysandra and her partner, Nick Bailey, had "sacrificed" over a making 4 game. Even though they were vulnerable, Nick and Lysandra bid to 5 which was doubled and proven not to be too much of a sacrifice as the contract went 5 down, -1100, 9 imps out for sure.

This weighed on her mind and deciding that her partner must have one of those extra honours shown above, she bid to 7. This was what she saw:

 

Lysandra received 10 lead, North following with a low spade. The only extra Nick provided was J which was kind of unnecessary as the trump break was 3-2. (It did, though, prove to be a very useful honour card.) She could count 7 trump tricks by ruffing, A, AK  AK. To come to 13, she thus needed to take the heart finesse. K took the first trick. 

After unblocking A, she played a club to her A and ruffed a diamond. Then came the big moment, a heart to the J….and South could not produce the Q!

A second diamond ruff was followed by a  heart to K and then a third diamond ruff with J “Thanks, Nick. I was really glad you had that card!”). A third round of hearts was ruffed with 7. Then came AQ and J to be followed by K and A for the last two tricks. Lysandra actually had 14 top tricks at the end as she had set up J as a winner.

Lysandra recalled this exchange at the score -up: “ We informed our teammates we went for 1100, but at least we bid the grand", to receive a bemused "what grand?" as a response. The other table had played a quiet 3NT+2.”

There have been many instances of grand slams being one down and the opponents in game. “If only….” There were no “if onlys” on this day. A lucky grand slam for sure but it could have been cold as Lysandra pointed out. It was well played. Unlucky for their opponents but these two days in Dunedin saw both good fortune and a lot of good bridge from Lysandra, Nick and their teammates, Zachary Yan and Malcolm Mayer.

Richard Solomon

There are two more rounds of the Trans Tasman Challenge. One is tonight. Follow this link to check on progress. The 16 board matches kick-off at 8.00pm with a 30 minute kibitzer time-lag.  http://www.aj92.com.au/results/results.asp?yr=2024&dir=ttc

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