Dubious Logic

David Price – World Champion

Well the timing of this article means this is old new by now: Suffolk bridge has a World Champion in David Price who lives in Little Maplestead near Halstead and is county captain.

Last Saturday, possibly as you were reading of the successful progression of England through to the semi-finals of the d'Orsi Seniors Bowl in Sao Paulo, they were slugging it out with Poland in the final. They emerged victorious from that – though not without incident – and became World Champions.

David Price with his international partner Colin Simpson had anchor roles in the late stages of the competition. They played five of the six sessions in each of the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals. Those matches were 96 deals, occupying six days in total. That was on top of the initial all-play-all of 21 sixteen board matches which the team won handsomely. It was a tremendous effort and a tremendous achievement.

Despite England's dominance of the qualifying stages and eventual victory, the somewhat surprising thing is that they were late qualifiers. To get to Brazil teams had to place suitably highly in their regional competitions. At the European Seniors, with six to qualify, England finished only equal-sixth – and then lost the split tie. A few months later it became apparent that a higher country, the Netherlands, could not send a team to South America and England's chance arose.

If their campaign had had faltering start, so did the final. The strong Polish team got off the blocks with a 59-1 first set. But with only sixteen boards gone and 80 still to play, no-one was giving up. In the first eight boards of the second session, England pulled back 46 to keep themselves in the match. They continued to erode the margin and started session five just 1 IMP behind. They began to score consistently and on this deal… No, I'll leave it as a quiz – what contracts were declared?

Four hearts North-South? Three no-trumps, four spades perhaps?

With hearts known not to be breaking and the possibility, as realised, of only a 4-3 fit, slam seems very risky. South would have been a hero had his partner's spades been king-knave-low. But they weren't and the defence had two tricks for +100.

Just to show that even the best and most experienced have problems when the opponents open, this was the other room:

Here East didn't even have to bid to upset North-South's progress. This contract was down two for +300, some compensation for the missed game and England had 9 IMPs. This set won 41-8 to capture the lead. David Price, Paul Hackett, Colin Simpson, Peter Baxter (NPC), Gunnar Hallberg, John Holland and Ross Harper never lost that lead and were World Champions a session later.

Published Saturday 19.Sep.2009