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Michael Cornell had....

....“The Last Laugh”.   From 20 years ago.

Before reading today’s story from 2004, what bid would you make as South in this auction, with double being for take-out?

 

Easy? Maybe…or maybe not!

In the 2004 Olympiad, in Istanbul, the Open section saw 72 countries participate, nearly double the number in Buenos Aires this year. To reach the knock-out stage, New Zealand had to finish in the top 4 of their group of 18 countries, a tough ask with Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Argentina and Russia in their group. NPC, Stephen Blackstock, was nevertheless optimistic of the chances of Martin Reid – Peter Newell, Michael Cornell- Dwayne Crombie and Tom Jacob – Malcolm Mayer.

A draw against Canada and a disappointingly small win against one of the lesser nations, Bangladesh, was not a great start. Then came a vugraph match against Netherlands. Today and tomorrow, we feature two boards from that match.

In today’s the vu-graph commentators, mainly North American, were not very approving of some of the Kiwi actions but they had to approve of the end result.

 

 

Over to npc Stephen . “In the Closed Room, Martin Reid (West) opened 3 which was greeted with disapproval from the commentators. For some reason, South chose to pass for penalties. With their values, a 4 cue-bid looks mainstream.

In practice, 3 is unbeatable though North hastened the play by leading Q, ensuring two spade tricks for the declarer. Two spades, six diamonds and a club trick added up to +670.

In the other room, Michael Cornell was North with the auction proceeding as follows:

This time, the commentators disapproved of Michael’s 3 bid (“insufficient values!”) but they had to concede that the final contract was reasonable.

East started with the best lead for the defence of A and a second diamond with declarer in danger of being forced off.

Michael ruffed and then led J losing to West’s Q. Back came a third round of diamonds with Michael making the crucial play of discarding a spade from hand. The fourth round of diamonds was ruffed in dummy (South) , discarding a second spade from his hand.

Michael could then draw 4 rounds of trumps and take a second, this time successful, club finesse and come to 10 tricks (6 trump tricks, 3 club tricks and A).

Michael could not have made his contract had he ruffed the third diamond in hand, effectively reducing his trump holding to less than East.

“Very well played” said the panel as New Zealand chalked up 15imps.”

Would that be enough to beat the strong Netherlands team? Find out tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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