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Bill Leach and Kerri McCrae.

Sunshine and Slams at Thames.

There were plenty of both this past weekend for the many players who attended all or part of the 19^th Thames Summer Bridge Festival hosted by the local club. 54 pairs took part in the Barclay Swiss Pairs event with 26 teams in the John Eldridge Teams. 60 boards was enough in one day as there was lack of interest for the second round of the Walk -In Pairs on the Saturday evening.

The Swiss Pairs had a North-South and an East-West field. Carol Richardson and Steve Boughey came out on top North-South with just under a 15vp per match average, followed by Pat Carter- Grant Jarvis and Liz and Blair Fisher. There was a splendid result East-West with Bill Leach and Kerri McCrae winning from Anita Thirtle – Gary Hodge and Tim Pan – Lysandra Zheng. Both Bill and Kerri are Intermediate Grade players. 

In a tight finish to the Teams, Kate Terry – Rachelle Pelkman, Herman  Yuan - Yuzhong Chen won by 2.24 vp from Grant Jarvis – Ken Yule and Liz and Blair Fisher, although Jarvis won the head-to-head final match 14.14- 6.86. Pam and Ian Moore and Lynette and Ian Bond finished 3^rd.

 

This deal provided a wonderful opportunity for a rarely used convention which seemingly was not used by many of the West players. While there would be a risk that such a jump as recommended might take the partnership too high if the top two club losers, it is surely a risk worth taking.

The convention is “Exclusion Key Card Blackwood” and the bid is 5. West could make this unusual jump whether or not South had bid the suit. The problem with using Key Card Blackwood is that if partner shows 2 key cards, West will not know if one of those is the A or A or indeed maybe the K is missing.

Exclusion Key Card asks for Key Cards but tells partner to exclude the ace of the suit bid, here diamonds. The player asking will almost certainly be void in the “excluded” suit. Let’s see all 4 hands:

 

With a solid spade suit which can handle club discards and the ability to ruff diamonds in dummy, grand slam must be an odds-on favourite opposite just KQ and A. West knew from the 2 response that they had at least a 9-card trump fit.  The Q above was not needed. 6 showed 2 key cards and the Q.

North could make life difficult for their opponents by raising to 6 though using the DOPI ROPI principle of responses where double and pass replace the first 2 steps, East could bravely bid 7 themselves (the actual response with 2 key cards and Q would be 6, basically committing the partnership to the 7-level) having no wasted cards in diamonds and surely the missing high cards that West was looking for. The same might apply if North jumped to 7.

7 x is only 5 down, -1100 a great sacrifice costing even less than a small slam for East-West. However, not one of the 26 East-West pairs made it to grand slam and only just over half made it to 6. Let’s put the lack of positive bidding down to the heat and sunshine on this lovely afternoon.

Oh, and let’s not forget to mention the excellent hospitality provided by the host club and the efficient and friendly directing and scoring of Norm Silcock and Jan Spaans.

Richard Solomon

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