Vugraph Deals #144

The final event of the 2021 monthly Alt New-Co was dubbed ‘Event-X’. Qualification for Group A was based on the performance of the teams throughout the year, and only SALVO and LEBOWITZ were missing from the ten highest-ranked teams. With four heat wins to their name, MOSS was the number one seed, but BLACK was the form team, having dominated the last two heats. The star-studded field would play a full round robin, and then an eighth round with opponents decided on Swiss basis. After four of the eight matches, these were the standings in Group A: 

In Group B, the top teams are closely bunched, with SCORWAY (Scotland/Norway) leading HOK (Netherlands), JEDI KNIGHTS (England/Wales) and HARRIS (England/Bulgaria). 

There are just a couple of bidding problems this month. Firstly, with just the opponents vulnerable, you are East holding: 

What do you bid?  

If you jump to 4♠, what do you then bid when your partner advances with 5♣? 

Finally, with just the opponents vulnerable, you are sitting North holding: 

Partner’s 1♣ opening is multi-way, either natural clubs, a weak no-trump type, or any 17+. What action, if any, do you take now? 

While you consider those, we start with the action from Round 5, in which the leaders, DONNER, took on fourth-placed EDMONDS. It was the underdogs who jumped out to an early lead, and after just four boards EDMONDS led 33-0. DONNER made small inroads into the deficit but the penultimate deal sealed their fate: 

Piotr Zatorski started with a double of Sandra Rimstedt’s third-seat 1♥ opening, and Michel Klukowski responded with a minimum bid in the unclaimed major. How good is the East hand now? Despite six-card trump support and 18 HCP, this hand is not quite as good as it might at first appear. If partner is bust, you will have three minor-suit losers on top, and thus game will need the heart suit to play for no loser. Needing partner to contribute something to the cause, perhaps a jump to 3♠ is enough, but Zatorski was not alone in bidding game on his own after this start. 

With Klukowski holding just about a maximum for his 0-7 range (indeed, some players jumped to 2♠ in response to their partner’s double), all was well in Camp Poland. With the heart finesse working, declarer had an easy eleven tricks: E/W +650. 

After the same start, North did not take a second bid here, so Brad Moss’s jump to game was perhaps marginally more of an overbid. Certainly, Joe Grue was sufficiently encouraged to think slam chances were good enough to advance with a 5♣ cue-bid. Quite what hand Moss expected to find opposite in order to justify his jump to slam, I cannot guess, but he was destined to be disappointed. There was no play at all for twelve tricks: E/W -100 and 13 IMPs to EDMONDS, whose 52-20 win catapulted them to the top of the table.  

With just 1.1 VPs separating the top four teams, it was anybody’s to win. The key match in Round 6 pitted two of those four teams, EDMONDS and FREDIN, in a head-to-head skirmish that was almost a Swedish Civil War. The match was a nip-and-tuck affair throughout, and Board 5 was a battle between artificial and natural auctions: 

At this table, it was the Strong Club methods of the Rimstedt brothers. Ola opened 1♥ and subsequently showed a minimum opening with ten cards in hearts and clubs. Mikael set hearts as trumps but a couple of four-level cue-bids then left Ola to take control. He knew little about his partner’s shape and could not therefore envisage how the play might go. With the ♦K known to be missing, the auction ended in 6♥: E/W +1010. 

Alon Apteker opened an intermediate 2♥, promising 10-13 HCP and a six-card suit. Peter Fredin inquired with 2NT, and Apteker showed a non-minimum with a spade shortage. Fredin could picture the play, so he asked for aces and, finding they were all present, jumped to the grand slam.  

South led a deceptive ♠8, but declarer had enough entries to dummy to be able to cope with any 4-3 spade break in order to establish a discard for his diamond loser. The K-Q falling in three rounds just hastened the claim: E/W +1510 and 11 IMPs to FREDIN, who edged a tight match 25-24.  

Elsewhere, DONNER won, but only 39-33 against AMATEURS, so MOSS claimed the top spot on the leaderboard with a 39-10 victory over DeBOTTON. In Round 7, the final match of the round robin, the leading four teams were all playing opponents in the lower half of the table. The key match of the round was MOSS against fifth-placed BLACK who, you will recall, were the in-form team coming into this event. 

After two passes, Roger Lee virtually gave up hopes of a high diamond contract when he opened an off-centre 2NT. Sylvia Moss advanced with Stayman and followed with a quantitative no-trump raise, but Lee declined the invitation. Had Lee raised to slam, would Andrew McIntosh have been up to finding the diamond lead needed to hold declarer to eleven tricks?  

He led a spade against 4NT, Lee winning in hand and advancing the ♣J. Tom Paske took the ♣A and continued spades, so declarer won in dummy and ran his diamonds, squeezing South in hearts and clubs. E/W +490. 

At the other table, John Hurd had an incredibly difficult chance to earn a brilliancy prize:

Simon Hult opened a natural 1♦ and reversed into hearts at his second turn. Once Hult rebid his diamonds, Gunnar Hallberg essentially drove the auction to slam. From his side of the table, Bathhurst simply has to avoid leading a heart from his doubleton king, but his club lead did set his partner an incredibly difficult problem. 

On the lead of the ♣4 (third/fifth), declarer played low from dummy. Hurd won with the ♣A and Hult followed with the jack. What would you return at trick two? 

Hurd played back a heart and Hult won with the ace. He then drew trumps, cashed the ♠K, and played a club to dummy’s nine. The ♠A and the ♣K-Q now provided discards for declarer’s three losing hearts. E/W +920 and 10 IMPs to BLACK. 

Did you spot the winning defence? Hurd can beat the contract only by returning a club at trick two. Although this is into the tenace, it removes declarer’s entry to the three black winners he needs if he is to dispose of his heart losers. He can unblock the ♠K and play two rounds of trumps ending in dummy, but he can cash only the ♠A and one club winner as North, the defender with only three clubs, holds the missing trump. 

Slam was also made at one table in the match between FREDIN and AMATEURS. David Yang opened the West hand 1♣ and subsequently played 6NT. Leading either red suit would give the defenders two tricks, but North led a spade to dummy’s bare king. Yang led the ♣J at trick two and, when that held, he continued with a club to his nine. That forced North’s ace, allowing declarer to claim 12 tricks for an 11-IMP gain. 

BLACK’s 48-10 victory over MOSS turned the leaderboard upside down, as the English team jumped from fifth place to the top of the table. EDMONDS beat VINITA 41-28, so they moved up into second place and would thus play BLACK in Round 8. FREDIN beat AMATEURS 49-47 to move up into third spot, and they would therefore play DONNER, who dropped to fourth with a 22-31 loss to DeBOTTON. 

There was only one major swing deal in the match and that hinged on finding the winning solution to the last of this week’s bidding problems. 

The auction began quietly enough. Simon Hult injected some momentum with his pre-emptive jump to 3♥, and David Grainger accelerated the process by leaping to game in spades. When Gunnar Hallberg then bid a fifth heart, the former multiple World junior champion, Joel Wooldridge, had no winning option. His double was just the cheaper of the losing choices. There was nothing in the play, declarer losing just one club and one heart: N/S +750. 

The Polish Club system employed by N/S at this table suffered from the same downside as any Strong Club type of method on deals of this nature. Heavy pre-emptive bidding meant that the auction was out of control by the time South got to bid his real suit. Thus it was that the decision that could easily have decided which of these teams wins Event-X title fell to Piotr Zatorski. Had he doubled Andrew Black’s 5♠ bid, the defence collects two diamond tricks and a trick in each other the other suits for +800 and a small gain on the deal. When he instead chose to bid 6♥, West doubled and Klukowski redoubled, but none of that mattered much. N/S -200 was 14 IMPs to BLACK in a match they eventually won 24-2. 

Congratulations to BLACK team: Andrew  Black, David Gold, Tom Paske, Andrew McIntosh, Simon Hult and Gunnar Hallberg. They finished the 2021 monthly ALT New-Co campaign with three consecutive victories. DONNER won their final match, 29-3 against FREDIN, to move up into second place, equalling their best finish in the event (from back in Heat 2). 

The final table looked like this: 

Group B was won by THE MAGICIANS (Turkey), with APPLE (France) and HOK (Netherlands) close behind them. 

Next week we will be in Salsomaggiore, Italy for the much-awaited COVID-delayed World Championships. We will check out the best of the action from both the Bermuda Bowl and the Venice Cup before returning to the online world with the start of the 2022 Alt Competition in a few weeks time.