An Interesting Hand from the first match
The 3rd board of the tournament and out of the blocks with a bang.
This was board number 3 The dealer was South N/S NV and E/W vul
Australia vs China
When Australia were North (Jamie Thompson) and South (Matt Smith) they bid to the rather optimistic contract of 6♠.
Now there are very few distributions of the EW cards that give this contract any chance at all (they include East having doubleton K♣ and West having a singleton K♥ and spades breaking well).
The bidding sequence meant that Matt Smith (South) was playing the hand. Perhaps he wanted to prove that the prestigious IBPA award for the best played hand by a junior was fully deserved. On a ♠ lead from West, he ran it around to the K and then played the Q♥ covered and then the 8♥ to the J♥ and eventually lost a ♦ and went 1 down.
In the room, West (Francesca McGrath) and East (Renee Cooper) found a good defense to 4♠ by North that forced declarer to guess who had the K♣ in the end game. Declarer went wrong and went 1 down.
Ho hum another flat board.
After this, both Australian pairs were rock solid and it was China who produced the errors.
Posted by Mike and Chris on Thursday, 9 August 2018 at 23:15