BBO Vugraph - Semi-finals of the Gold Cup

Vugraph #188

With a history dating back to 1931, the Gold Cup is the most prestigious event on the British bridge calendar. The format is a straight knockout played throughout the year, with the final eight teams gathering in London to battle it out over a three-day weekend. Matches at this stage of the competition are played over 64 boards divided into eight 8-board stanzas.

The semi-final draw pitted BLACK (Andrew Black/David Gold, Andrew McIntosh/Tom Paske and Simon Hult/Gunnar Hallberg) against ALLFREY (Alexander Allfrey/Andrew Robson, Peter Couch/Simon Cope and Espen Erichsen/Richard Plackett). In the other match, it was SENIOR (Brian Senior/Sandra Penfold, Alan Mould/John Holland and Vladislav Isporski/Rumen Trendafilov) versus ROSEN (Neil Rosen/John Atthey, Norman Selway/Kay Preddy and Shahzaad Natt/Ian Pagan). With four members of the BBO expert bidding panel in action, the odds are high that we will be able to celebrate victory by at least one member of that exalted group!

As usual, we begin with some problems. Firstly, with only the opponents vulnerable, you are North holding one of my normal rubber bridge hands:

What action, if any, do you take?

Suppose you decide to respond 1. What would you then do after partner raises to 2?

Next, with only your side vulnerable, you are the Dealer sitting in the North seat with:

What action, if any, do you take?

The coverage on BBO VuGraph concentrated exclusively on the match between BLACK and ALLFREY, and we begin with a tricky play/defence deal from early in the opening stanza.

Black/Gold bid efficiently to game in their eight-card major-suit fit, but it did not take long for this apparently-straightforward contract to turn nasty. Peter Crouch led a club to the king and Simon Cope continued with the A, ruffed by declarer. When David Gold then played a trump to dummy’s ace, South’s diamond discard revealed the 5-0 split. Can you see how Gold can make the contract from here?

Declarer has two diamonds and two spades, so he needs to score six trump tricks. The only way to achieve this is to make the counter-intuitive play of taking a second club ruff at trick four. When Gold unblocked the A-K and then played the Q to king and ace, the defenders were in with a chance. The Q was played from dummy and Cope accurately ruffed with the 9, declarer pitching a spade from his hand.

Continuing with a top heart, apparently surrendering your sure trump trick, will now restrict declarer to nine tricks. That was hardly obvious, though, and Cope got out with his second spade to declarer’s jack. Gold would not give the defence a second opportunity: he ruffed a spade with the K, ruffed dummy’s remaining club in his hand, and then ruffed his last spade with the 6. Cope could overruff with the 10, but then had to lead from his J-4 into declarer’s Q-8 at trick 12. An exciting E/W +420.

Alexander Allfrey’s second-round jump to 3 speeded up the auction to the same contract. South again led the unbid minor, this time a diamond, declarer winning and playing a trump to dummy to get the bad news. Allfrey accurately returned to his hand with a second round of diamonds and then needed to broach the spades. When he instead played a second round of hearts to dummy, he was in trouble.

Andrew McIntosh (right) ruffed the third round of diamonds and Allfrey threw his club. Perhaps playing a third round of trumps now is tempting, but McIntosh correctly played a club, forcing declarer to ruff. South covered the Q, so declarer won with the A and played another high diamond, but again McIntosh ruffed. Allfrey overruffed and tried to reach dummy by ruffing the third round of spades, but North overruffed with his last trump and declarer was thus left with a spade loser at the end. E/W -50 and 10 IMPs to BLACK, who led 10-4 after an otherwise uneventful opening set.

After a second eight boards, the match was back to even at 22-22. The third stanza was mostly one-way traffic. A wonderful illustration of imagination from Simon Hult earned the most significant swing.

Presented with the first of this week’s bidding problems, I suspect that many players would have passed without even really considering alternatives. Rather than making things easy for his LHO, Simon Hult (left) chose to respond 1 and heard his partner raise to the two-level.

With Gunnar Hallberg showing a minimum opening bid with a heart fit, it was now clear to Hult that the opponents were likely to have a game. His solution was a bold leap to the four-level on his flat zero-count. With the opponents’ honours perfectly divided, each player holding an even 14 HCP, there was no reason for either to think his partner had anything at all.

Of course, 4 did not play well for declarer, but at 50 a trick, who cares? Four down was a perfect steal for the young Swedish star: E/W +200.

In the replay, South opened a 2+1 and Andrew Black upgraded his hand to a 1NT overcall, duly raised to game. Declarer had nine top tricks: E/W +600 and 9 well-deserved IMPs to BLACK, who won the third stanza 23-7.

The ebb and flow continued, with ALLFREY winning the fourth stanza to trail by just 9 IMPs at the midway point. However, the fifth stanza blew the match wide open. The set began with E/W dealt a misfitting combined 33-count. Robson/Allfrey stopped theoretically correctly in game whilst Hult/Hallberg bid to 6, which needed a 3-3 trump break. As we see so often, fortune favoured the brave, and the slam duly rolled home. Then, as if to emphasize the point, the North players had to decide what action to take on the second of this week’s problems. 

Simon Cope elected to pass, as many probably would in first seat at ‘red’. He then showed diamonds with his 2 bid after Hallberg’s 1 overcall. Perhaps Cope might have competed to 3, but we are talking only small potatoes now. Hallberg managed eight tricks in 2: N/S -110.

'Colours are for Children’ was a phrase famously opined by one of the great believers in aggressive pre-empts, Marty Bergen, and Andrew McIntosh clearly subscribes to that school of thought. No half-hearted, seven-card weak two either from the former Scottish international. Duly encouraged, Tom Paske took a stab at the nine-trick game.

With no five-card heart suit to be cashed and the diamonds behaving for declarer, that was nine tricks: N/S +600 and 12 IMPs to BLACK, who won the set 33-1.

The next two sets were both dull, but with BLACK picking up single-figure gains from both. Trailing 124-63, ALLFREY conceded without playing the final set. In tomorrow’s final, they will meet SENIOR, who defeated ROSEN 114-94 in the other semi-final. We will be back next week with the best of the action from that final.

One comment on “BBO Vugraph - Semi-finals of the Gold Cup”

  1. I cannot believe that the one heart bid on hand 3 was "imagination" just a gambler's call. The action resulted in a swing. But it could have gone horrifying wrong if partner had a stronger hand, and the opponents without a game contract but with doubling values. I assume they were playing a 5 card major system and a strong NT. What if partner has 4441 shape and short clubs? Admittedly, they might open a Multi with this. And what if the opener has reversing values and is two-suited? Was North going to pass partner's rebid exposing the psyche. In my mind North psyched twice and the director should have been called and the board adjusted.

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