Dubious Logic

Part-score Peril

This week I return to the 'vicious' deals from the Suffolk Teams of Eight won by Ipswich ahead of Felixstowe - their highest ever finish - in second and Colchester in third. Teams play doesn't much involve itself with part-scores the way that pairs does. As long as you are positive, the size of the score, in the range of +90 to +150, doesn't matter too much. Nevertheless, vulnerable undertricks are expensive and overbidding without the reward of a game bonus is poor play. Losing two hundred in one room and another hundred in the other is 7 IMPs and exceeds the team value of a non-vulnerable game.

So players like to stop low when there is little chance of game. Playing as a scratch pair we came unstuck here:

One club followed two passes and I responded a heart. This may look a little odd but it is a convention used by those playing a strongish no-trump who open one club on weak balanced hands. The rationale is to avoid missing major suit fits when opener has something akin to a weak no-trump and would rebid 1NT over a one diamond response. Any major fit is likely to provide a safer resting place when the hands are weak, as well as potentially scoring better (mainly a matchpoint concern).

I am not a fan but in unpractised partnerships, typically each member tries to fall in step with the other. Here clubs were 3-3 – good news! Also diamonds were 5-0 with South – more good news? Sadly not:

In diamonds it is comparatively easy despite the foul break. Win a spade lead (ducking the first is neater) and then after one round of trumps exposes the position, play to take a club finesse, ruff a club and ruff a spade. That is five tricks outside diamonds and with what is now two extra cards in trumps, South cannot avoid having to ruff something and lead into East's tenace.

In clubs however, it was much stickier. West won the spade and advanced a diamond. North took his chance and ruffed, now declarer was without much recourse. Eventually he went wrong in the end-game, failing to believe North was 5-5 in the majors and succumbed to an extra undertrick to finish down two and -200. In order to salvage something I noted that the opponents can make two spades and may well have got there after 1♣ – 1♦; 2♦, North surely trying a double (although South might just be tempted to pass). What happened to our team-mates? Well they stopped very low indeed – the deal was passed out…

Published Saturday 3.Nov.2007