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A Sign of Great Happiness?

Apparently, some cultures believe that if you see a group of seven ducks, then they represent great wealth or happiness coming your way! If we substitute 7C for “seven ducks”, then there was a sign of great happiness to follow for The Bridge Blacks on this day.

Our Open Team had not had a good start to their first match of Day 2. The first 9 boards of the match against Singapore had seen 52 imps in the “out” column and only 15 in the “in”. That gap barely changed in the next 6 boards either and it looked a really bad result coming when, on the last board of the match, Cornell-Bach missed a relatively easy small slam playing just in game.

However, no-one told Singapore’s other pair this as they committed one of the big crimes of slam bidding, stretch to grand slam, 7, when their opponents were just in game. The trump king was not where Singapore wanted it and 13 imps went somewhat luckily to New Zealand making the end result poor but not disastrous. New Zealand lost 36-54 but the 5.40 vps were received gratefully. The momentum of the day then changed, for the better.

A 29- 36 imp loss which followed might not seem like a great turn-around but 7.97 vps off the strong Norway team is no disaster…and neither was what followed, a 66-5 imp win over England (20-0) which dropped the English from 3^rd to 6^th and took New Zealand up to just 0.17 vp behind them in 7^th place. The top 3, USA2, Denmark and Netherlands have established a bit of a lead but Norway, in 4^th place, are only 1.74 vps ahead of New Zealand.

It was the first defeat for England in 6 matches. Ironically, in their last board of match 4, their pair also overbid to 7 whereas their US opponents stayed in game, a sign of “great unhappiness” to follow for the English, perhaps?

A PROBLEM FOR YOU

 

 

Good enough for a 2 opening? What do you think?

Over then to GeO:

After a quite good first day, the second day of the World Championship in Italy started poorly for the New Zealand team against Singapore, a team that is likely to end up very low. However, they played a good match against New Zealand and neither of the Kiwi pairs shone and  so we lost by 18 IMPs.”…only 18 thanks to the “seven ducks!”

“In the second round of the day, we faced Norway, a nation that will more likely be doing well in this championship. An added factor for myself is that the Norwegians are my old mates, and in this match three of the players in the opponents’ team are my former partners.

This match was not a high scoring battle with only two double digit swings. Before the two last boards it stood 25-25 IMPs even though one hand was a challenge in the bidding. Try yourself and see how you and your favorite partner would have bid these North-South cards:

 

 

One question is, in a standard system, would you open 2 or 1 as South after East passed in the first seat?

If North is able to show shortage in clubs and spade support, South will have not so much a problem in realizing 7 is the right spot as he will find out about the two aces in his partner’s hand. However, many don’t like to use Splinter bids with singleton ace. In our match Aa-Livgård reached 7 after a 1 opening, When the responder chose to not show his shortage in clubs, they were for a while in danger of stopping in a small slam, but when South at some stage made a grand slam invitation, North accepted, Norway +2210.

Whibley-Brown had not much trouble copying that result after South opened 2 – no swing. “

As it happens, South would bid 7 very quickly if the sequence started 2-2(waiting), 2-4 to be followed by key-card ask..or even 1-4. The Q is a welcome bonus when dummy appears.

“Of the 24 teams in the Bermuda Bowl, 14 reached 7 and 7 pairs played in 6. Three pairs did not even reach slam.   

Norway got one of the few big swings in when they were able to sacrifice over the opponents’ game, even though the sacrificing pairs had A-K in two side-suits and another ace!

 

 

However, the sacrifice in 5 was a great one because the opponents’ 4 was an easy make and AK in both the red suits were only worth two defensive tricks in total.  5 was cheap, just one down, when clubs were divided friendly for the declarer.

With 4 the contract for Norway at the other table and the 5 sacrifice costing only -100, the board was worth 11 imps for Norway. New Zealand picked up 4 imps on the last board but still lost the match by 7 imps (7.97 – 12.03 VP).

Two losses were not what we hoped for this day, and in the third and last match of the day, New Zealand played England.

Back in business!

New Zealand simply ran over England and won the match by 61 imps, the full 20 VPs.

After two days New Zealand is in 7^th place.”

 

Just one hand from this match in which New Zealand picked up 20 imps in two boards by bidding and making 3NT. Ashley Bach was not going to let his opponents make the same contract on this board:

 West     North    East    South

                             Pass      1
2             3      Pass       3
Pass          3      Pass       3NT 
All Pass

It would seem that the English South (a player well-known in New Zealand for his time in Australia), Kieran Dyke, thought he had a diamond hold as he tried that contract rather than the more conventional 4. Ashley led a high diamond and got what looked like an odd number of diamonds from his partner, 8. With the club position ominous, Ashley wanted to beat this contract quickly. The second high diamond brought some very welcome news…+ 300 with Matt Brown playing carefully to make 4 at the other table…14 imps to the Bridge Blacks.

Signs of the Times

 
  We are sure Michael Cornell has his mask on as he enters the playing arena

Day 3 is one of the two days in this event where there are four matches. Our opponents are (in this order): Guadeloupe, Switzerland, Australia and Uruguay. We hope for good results especially against Guadeloupe and Uruguay who are in the bottom 4 and of course against our old rivals from across the Tasman. Come to think of it, a win against Switzerland would be handy as well.

 

The Australian Open team are currently 17^th after three losses on Day 2, to South Africa, Switzerland and Egypt. Meanwhile the Canadian women had a 1 imp win over Argentina and a win over Morocco but were then beaten badly by Australia and slipped from 7^th to 10^th. 

Richard Solomon

 

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