• eBulletins

Wild distributions!

Posted by Rakesh Kumar on Thursday, 22 October 2015 at 09:41

On the first day of the Spring Nationals, the computer was having fun. Well, maybe computers don't actually know how to have fun, but it certainly felt like the gremlins in the machine were enjoying themselves at the expense of the bridge players .... there were some crazy distributional hands around.

The first turned up in Match 1. Put a 4-loser hand opposite a 5-loser hand and wouldn't you want to be in slam with an 8-card major suit fit and only one missing keycard?

As it transpired, you wouldn't. Of 54 tables, 11 reached 6S and discovered that the ♠K wasn't on side, at which point there was no escape. This often cost lots of IMPs. On the other hand, at 6 tables West didn't worry about the spade fit and simply played in slam in diamonds opposite partner's void, which worked out just fine when trumps were 3-3, the club finesse succeeded and the ♣Q dropped in 3 rounds -- what was that partner, did you say it was against the odds?

If you thought that was exciting, there was this hand from Match 3.

South typically opened a diamond and leapt to 5C over whatever number of spades was bid by E-W in the first round of the auction. This was usually followed by a double, with 32 N-S pairs settling in a contract of 5D, doubled at 28 tables. West then usually led a spade ... the otherwise unreachable ♠A allowed the worthless ♥K to be discarded and thereafter the contract was unbeatable, because West held ♣KT doubleton. Glug! Only 6 Wests found the lead of the ♥A to take the contract off. Meanwhile, another 5 E-W pairs carried on to 5S and made it -- 3 of them were doubled as well, leading to quite a few double-digit swings.

No doubt there will be more of this on the second day ...