Page 8 - ABF Newsletter August 2024

The 8th World Youth
Team Championships
Lauren Travis
continued from page 1
We were also privileged to have experts including Phil Markey, Nick Jacob, Liam Milne, Barbara Travis, Kate McCallum, Renee Cooper, Nabil Edgtton and Sartaj Hans donate their time to provide training sessions for both youth teams throughout this year. The wisdom gained from these ranged from “eat two punnets of blueberries per day” to “bid a lot at favourable vulnerability” and “trump leads are right more often than you’d think”.
Heading into the tournament, we had (unspoken) realistic expectations of finishing somewhere around sixth to eighth out of ten teams. The first match drove home our team’s inexperience with a brutal 0.04-19.96 VP loss to a Danish/Norwegian transna- tional team. Thankfully, the girls bounced back bril- liantly, with this deal settling Diya Shah’s nerves as she realised the opponents weren’t infallible:
Round 2: Australia 53 def Maia 17.
Board 3. Dealer South. East-West vulnerable.
]K5 [6543 }AQ2
{ Q J 10 9
]QJ6 ]A98732 [AQJ2 [ 10 7 }K73 }84 {K82 {753
We had a spectacular run of wins from matches 2 to 8, rising to second in the rankings and locked into the top four with one match left against the first- placed Poland 1 team.
In the final match of the qualifying round robin, Kate Macdonald displayed excellent skill declaring this 6NT contract:
Round 9: Australia 46 def Poland 21.
Board 16. Dealer West. East-West vulnerable.
]754
[ 10 8 5 4 2 } J 10 7 6 {6
{ 10 5 4 3
The ]5 lead, ducked to the ]J and ]K. Kate had 12 top tricks provided clubs broke 3-2... which of course they didn’t. However, she proceeded to cash the {AKQ, [AKQ and }AKQ, stripping South of all her low clubs and red cards, before exiting with a low club in this position:
]74 [— }J {—
] 10 9
[— [— }5 }— {— {2
]Q8 [— }— {J
South won the club and had to lead a spade away from the queen. Interestingly, the contract is cold
] 10 4 [K98
} J 10 9 6 5 {A64
WEST NORTH EAST Zara Diya
SOUTH
pass 1NT dbl 2[ 3{
3[ pass 3] pass pass dbl all pass
North and South provided different explanations for the double of 1NT, resulting in East transferring and West believing the 2[ bid was natural. Zara competed to the three-level then trusted Diya’s cor- rection to 3] which was doubled by a very aggres- sive North. Diya managed the play well to make 11 tricks. +1130 was not a bad score to bring back on her third board of international bridge!
Page: 8
]A3
] K 10 9
[K6 [AQ93 }AQ54 }K9
]QJ86 [J7 }832 {J987
]A32 {AKQ2
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: August 2024