Here at the 2023 U.S. Summer Nationals in Chicago, Illinois, we have reached the semi-final stage of the Spingold Knockout Teams. Only two of the original Top 8 seeds are still standing, and they are playing each other today, so we are guaranteed that a team from outside the original Top 8 will reach the final. With world-class players in all four teams, both semi-final matches are sure to produce some excellent bridge for those watching live on BBO VuGraph.

Matches are of 60 boards divided into four 15-board stanzas. As usual, we start with a couple of problems. Firstly, with only your opponents vulnerable, you are East holding:

What action, if any, do you take?

Finally, with only your side vulnerable, you are sitting in the East seat with:

What action, if any, do you take?

While you consider those, we start in the opening stanza of the match between the two remaining top seeds, #1 ZIMMERMANN and #4 FLEISHER. This early deal provided a stern bidding test for the N/S pairs…

Bas Drijver opened 1♥ and Sjoert Brink forced to game with a 2♣ response. Brink then relayed to discover that his partner held a minimum opening and a 3-5-4-1 shape. With no eight-card fits, Brink opted for the conservative view and signed off in 3NT. Slam is a little better than 50%, essentially needing the diamond suit to produce four tricks, with some small addition chances of a diamond/heart or diamond/club squeeze.

With East showing up with a low singleton diamond, marking the finesse against West’s jack, it looks as if there are 12 easy tricks via four spades, four diamonds, and two in each of the other suits. However, after the ♥A lead, declarer scored four diamonds and then apparently claimed 11 tricks: N/S +660.

The French conducted a natural auction, Cedric Lorenzini (left) forcing to game then rebidding 2NT. When Thomas Bessis could do no more than raise to game, Lorenzini made one more try with an invitational 4NT. Bessis accepted the try but kept open the possibility of alternative strains with a ‘pick a slam’ 5NT. With an excellent diamond holding, Lorenzini showed his good fragment and Bessis chose to play in the Moysian fit.

The diamond slam is slightly inferior to 6NT, primarily because declarer has to play the diamond suit early, before getting a count by testing the other suits. Obviously, there are also no squeeze chances around the diamond suit when that suit is trumps. As soon became apparent, the other downside to playing in diamonds is that the suit may split 5-1. On this layout, declarer had to lose the ♥A and a trump in 6♦: a somewhat unfortunate N/S -100 and an early 13 IMPs to ZIMMERMANN.

The rest of the opening set was fairly flat, so ZIMMERMANN led by 15 IMPs, 43-28, at the end of the first stanza. In the other match, BREMARK led HANS 26-12, but the team from Down Under started the second set well. They had turned the match around and led 39-30 by midway through the set, when this deal arrived…

Sartaj Hans (right) made his international debut at the 2004 World Team Olympiad in Istanbul, and he has now been a regular member of the Australian Open team for the best part of two decades. He collected a silver medal in the Transnational Teams at the 2011 World Championships.

Hans opened a Precision-style, natural and limited 2♣. Andy Hung bid his spades after Antonio Palma’s 2♥ overcall, and Frederic Wrang raised competitively to 3♥. Hans decided that his extra club length warranted further competition, and his double perhaps suggested some flexibility.

Hung might have chosen to defend, probably collecting +300, but that is perhaps not so clear with most of his values in the two suits in which his side has length. When he advanced with 4♥, a choice of games cue-bid, Hans judged to choose spades despite holding only two low trumps. Not that 4♠ is a wonderful contract: it has little legitimate play, but that is still more chance than any of the alternatives. (Perhaps defending is not such a bad option after all.)

As we have mentioned many times before, defence is the hardest part of the game, and contracts that shouldn’t make often seem to find a way through. Theoretically, anything but a trump lead should beat this contract, and Wrang duly got the defence started with the ♥Q. Hung won with the ♥A, ruffed a heart in dummy, led a spade to his king, and continued with the ♠Q when the ace did not appear.

Palma won with the ♠A and, looking at the full diagram, it is clear that the defence can now take three red-suit tricks, two diamonds and one heart. When Palma cashed his two diamond winners, Wrang gave count with the ♦9 and ♦2. Presumably thinking that Wrang held a doubleton diamond, and thus declarer had started with a 5-2-5-1 shape, Palma tried to give his partner a diamond ruff. Dummy’s ♦Q won, so declarer crossed back to the ♣K and laid down the ♠J. When trumps obliged by splitting 3-3, declarer had the rest. A superb N/S +420 if you are Australian.

Readers should note the importance of playing precise cards when signalling, and this is something that regular partnerships should discuss. Playing standard count signals, it is best to agree that (assuming you can afford to) you play the second highest followed by third highest from a four-card holding. Thus from 10-9-6-2, the correct cards are nine and then six. What this means is that any other high-low, 9-2, 10-6, 6-2 for example, therefore always shows a doubleton. Perhaps this partnership had that agreement and Wrang simply pulled the wrong card, or perhaps they had no specific arrangement and Palma had to guess.

After the same start, Simon Hult had to make a negative double on the South hand (presumably, 2♠ would not have been forcing). West’s raise to 3♥ then effectively shut out the spade suit. Leif Bremark did not give his partner the chance to defend. I suppose Hult might have passed 4♣, but that seems like trying to land on a dime, and his raise to game looks normal. Of course, there were three top losers: N/S -50 and 10 IMPs to HANS.

HANS won the second set 40-16, turning the match around to lead by 10 IMPs (52-42) at the halfway point. In the other match, the lower-seeded team had also overcome a deficit, and FLEISHER led 77-61.  ZIMMERMANN scored 7 IMPs on the first two deals of the third set but FLEISHER then picked up 33 unanswered IMPs before both East players faced a variation on the first problem posed at the top of this article…

Piotr Gawrys made a defensive raise to 3♠ at his second turn, but that was not sufficient to silence Alfredo Versace. When 4♥ came back to him, Gawrys opted to play, which was the right decision, as even the 4-0 trump break will not defeat the Italians’ heart game.

Versace led the ♥K, declarer ruffing. Worried about his third-round club loser, Gawrys advanced the ♦10 at trick two, covered by jack and king. Now he led a club to the king. Winning with the ♣A, Versace cashed the ♣Q and continued with the ♣J. Gawrys ruffed high in dummy, but Antonio Sementa overruffed with the ♠A and returned a diamond. South’s ruff was the fourth defensive trick: E/W -100.

Multiple world-champion and a regular member of USA teams at World Championships since his international debut 40 years ago, Chip Martel (left) needs no introduction. In third seat, you have plenty of leeway, and Martel opted for a fairly heavy ‘weak two’ in spades. When the extra level of pre-emption still failed to keep the opponents out of 4♥, Martel also took the save in 4♠-X.

Here, too, South opened a top heart and declarer ruffed. Martel did not give the defence a chance: he played a spade to the king at trick two. Bas Drijver won with the ♠A and switched to the ♣10, which won. A second club went to king and ace, and Brink continued with the ♣J, ruffed in dummy with the ♠10. Martel now drew trumps, led the ♦10 to jack and king, and ran the ♦8 on the way back to pick up North’s ♦Q. Nicely played! E/W +590 and another 12 IMPs to FLEISHER.

FLEISHER won the third stanza 45-7 and thus led the Bermuda Bowl champions by 54 IMPs with a set to play. There was no way back, and FLEISHER completed a dominant victory. You could have made an enormous profit betting the Over/Under on this one – it was FLEISHER by 98 IMPs (175-77).

The other semi-final was much closer: BREMARK won the third set, so there was another change of lead and the Europeans led 84-61 after three sets. HANS almost halved the deficit on the opening deal of the set but, by the time our last deal arrived midway through the set, the match score stood at 103-73 in favour of BREMARK. Both East players had to decide whether to bid (and what) on the last of this week’s problems.

Frederic Wrang heeded the adverse vulnerability and kept quiet on the East hand. The result was that the Australian pair bid efficiently to their game. Declarer got the trumps right and thus lost just two aces: N/S +450.

Michael Whibley could not repress his Kiwi sense of adventure, so he entered the fray in his six-card suit at the two-level. Johan Upmark (right) made an expectant pass and Frederik Nystrom did not disappoint, re-opening with a double.

When 2♥-X was passed around to Nabil Edgtton, he knew his side was in the frying pan. How bad could the fire be? With 5-4 in the minors, Edgtton redoubled for rescue. Whibley retreated to his longer minor, only to discover that he had jumped into a volcano in full eruption mode.

I’m sure it didn’t feel like it if you were from the Antipodes, but the Swedes were in a benevolent mood, dropping a trick on the opening lead and another later in the defence. (An opening spade lead would have beaten the contract by six, but Upmark opened a trump.) Declarer thus escaped (if you can call it that) with five tricks, but that was still N/S +1100 and 12 IMPs to BREMARK. Perhaps the frying pan wasn’t such a bad place to be after all.

BREMARK won the final set 38-27, and advanced to the final with victory by 122-87.

The final will be #14 BREMARK (Sweden/Portugal) against #4 FLEISHER (USA/Italy/France). With Sweden’s Simon Hult and Frenchman Cedric Lorenzini on opposite sides, I am delighted to report that the BBO expert bidding panel is guaranteed a member in the winning team at the 2023 Spingold. We will be back for our last visit to Chicago to bring you the best of the action from that final.