Welcome back to Australia, where we are down to just two teams remaining in the 2023 National Open Teams. The final will be contested by LU (Charlie Lu, Peter Gill, Liam Milne, James Coutts, Tony Nunn and Nabil Edgtton) and SPOONER (Andrew Spooner, Philip Markey, Mike Doecke, Will Jenner-O'Shea, Shane Harrison and Matt Smith). The format is a 120-board match played over two days and eight 15-board stanzas.

As usual, we start with a couple of problems. Firstly, with only your side vulnerable, you are South holding:

What do you bid?

Next, with both sides vulnerable, you are sitting in the North seat with:

What action, if any, do you take?

While you consider those, we start our coverage in the first session of the final. This deal was all about choosing the best game.

It is a matter of style but, for me, I cannot see why East would not raise to 2♠ at his second turn, rather than rebidding 1NT with three-card support and a weakish doubleton. That would have simplified the auction, but both players in this final chose to rebid 1NT. When Matt Smith then forced to game with an artificial 2♦, Shane Harrison (left) quite rightly in my view, showed his four-card heart suit. (If responder is 5-4 in the majors, you want to find the 4-4 fit, but showing spades first will not help you to do that.) When Smith then jumped to 3NT, Harrison knew that his partner must have five spades. (If he didn’t have four hearts or five spades, why would be ask rather than simply raising 1NT to 3NT?)

Declarer was able to ruff a diamond in dummy. Had trumps behaved, Smith would then have had ten tricks. However, with the trumps breaking 4-1, he had to fall back on his additional chance, so he was able to bring home his game when the heart finesse worked. E/W +420.

The auction in the replay began the same way, with Peter Gill also rebidding 1NT on the East cards. When Charlie Lu also advanced with an artificial 2♦, Gill showed his three-card spade support. Lu’s decision to jump to 3NT now raises two questions. Firstly, if he was not going to bid 4♠ when his partner showed three-card support, why bother with 2♦ rather than just rising to 3NT? The second is a matter of hand evaluation.

You need to have a good reason for choosing to play 3NT when you have an eight-card major-suit fit. In general, hands with slow tricks (holdings such as K-Q-10 and Q-J-9-x) are best suited for no-trump play, whilst hands with aces and king tend to play better in suits. The honour structure of this West hand is very suit oriented, and possession of two unguarded suits should also steer one away from 3NT.

3NT was not a great contract. For a start, it needed the defenders not to be able to cash five (or more) diamond tricks on the go. Declarer was lucky there, and the defenders had only four diamonds to cash. However, when the spades failed to break, declarer in 3NT had no fall-back position. Conceding a spade would be his fifth loser, so he needed to score nine tricks without a fourth spade winner. Finding the ♥Q onside would therefore only help him if that suit also broke 3-3. It didn’t, so he was one down. E/W -50 and 10 IMPs to SPOONER.

LU led for most of this first set, but SPOONER scored 22 IMPs on the final three deals to win the opening stanza 37-27.

This was hardly the greatest auction of all time, but it did benefit from being relatively effective. I think we can all agree that the North is not even close to a 2♠ rebid. Quite why Peter Gill (right) chose to advance with a fourth-suit 3♣ rather than agreeing spades with either 3♠ or a jump to 4♣ is also a mystery. When Lu continued with 3NT, Gill had lost the ability to ask for key cards, as 4NT now would sound like a quantitative raise. His jump to 6♦ was the pragmatic solution, although quite why he preferred diamonds to spades is unclear.

There was little to the play. Lu won the club lead, laid down the top trumps, and claimed 12 tricks when the ♦Q did not fall. N/S +1370.

In general, you do not want to bid to a 50% grand slam. So often, we have seen pairs go down in a grand only to find their opponents at the other table stopping in game or collecting an inadequate penalty, so that simply reaching slam would have been sufficient to score a large swing. Going down in a grand slam is nearly always a bad board, at any form of scoring. So, as Clint Eastwood might have asked, “Are you feeling lucky?”

The early auction here seemed more sensible. Andrew Spooner rebid the obvious 1♠ and Phil Markey jumped to 4♣, showing a control and agreeing spades. Spooner advanced with Blackwood and then jumped to the grand slam when his partner showed three key cards. Could he have asked for third-round diamond control with 6♦ over 5♣? If so, that would have been the sensible thing to do, but perhaps they did not have that option available.

You can cope with a 4-1 trump split in spades, but you still have to bring in the diamonds however anything else breaks. There was no reason why Spooner should guess the diamonds correctly on this deal, and he duly didn’t. N/S -100 and a 16-IMP windfall to LU.

Despite this deal, SPOONER still won the set 54-36. They thus led by 28 IMPs (91-63) after two of the eight stanzas. Still a long way to go yet. The second board of the next set suggests that the lesson had not yet been learned…

James Coutts (left) began his international career as a member of the New Zealand team at the 2008 World Youth Championships. He represented the Kiwis again in the Mixed Teams at the World Championships in 2016. Last year, at the Salsomaggiore World Championships, he made his debut in the Australian Open team.

Coutts did extremely well on this deal. Liam Milne’s 2♠ cue-bid showed an invitational or better three-card heart raise. When Shane Harrison pre-empted to 4♠, Coutts rolled our Blackwood and discovered that his partner held the two missing aces but no ♥Q. When Harrison competed to the five-level, Coutts could have collected +1100 by doubling, but that was not so easy to judge. Coutts decided to give up on the penalty and bid slam but, knowing of potential holes in the agreed trump suit, he did so by suggesting an alternative strain. Milne also did well, by passing 6♣ rather than correcting back to hearts.

6♥ is destined to fail unless declarer somehow divines that taking a backward finesse in trumps, playing East for a doubleton ♥10, is the right thing to do.  Unlikely in practise! 6♣ did have additional chances beyond a 3-2 heart break and then one out of two finesses.

Coutts won the opening spade, crossed to dummy with the ♣10, and played a diamond to the jack. The finesse failed and Coutts ruffed the spade continuation. He then drew trumps, unblocked the ♦A, crossed to dummy with the ♥A, and cashed the ♦Q, pitching a heart from his hand. When the diamonds broke 3-3, he was able to discard his two remaining heart losers and claim his slam. A spectacular N/S +1370.

The situation was completely different at this table, as Nabil Edgtton opened the East hand with a weak 2♠. Mike Doecke had the answer to that, a Leaping Michaels 4♣ bid showing a strong hand with at least 5-5 in the rounded suits. When Tony Nunn joined in with 4♠ and Will O’Shea jumped to 5NT, Doecke was left with the first of this week’s problems. What did you make of partner’s 5NT, and what was your response?

In one way, O’Shea had done well to offer his partner a choice of suits, as guessing to bid 6♥ would very likely have led to a minus score. However, Doecke concluded that his hand was so good that, if his partner could commit to the six-level, he should bid a grand slam.

7♣ on this deal was far worse that the unsuccessful grand slam that his teammates had reached in the previous set. With both the ♥Q and the ♦K offside, it had no chance. N/S -100 and the same result as in the second stanza, 16 IMPs to LU.

LU had by far the better of this stanza, winning it 55-21. That wiped out the early SPOONER lead and left LU with a 6-IMP advantage (118-112) going into the last set of the first day’s play in this final.

Early in the fourth set, one North/South pair had a major misunderstanding in a situation recently discussed by the BBO expert bidding panel (without reaching any definitive conclusion). It is certainly a situation that members of regular partnerships might find worthwhile discussing.  Let’s start with the table where the auction was easy…

Declarer doesn’t seem to have an abundance of tricks, but the defenders have no obvious point of attack. Charlie Lu won the opening heart lead with the ace and played three rounds of diamonds, setting up a third trick in that suit. Winning with the ♦Q, Harrison exited with a diamond. Declarer now played a spade, putting in the eight from his hand. Harrison won with the ♠10 and again exited safely, with a second round of spades. A 3-3 spade break and a successful club finesse then brought declarer’s tally to nine tricks. N/S +600.

Liam Milne (right) opened the West hand with a club pre-empt, setting Andrew Spooner the last of this week’s problems. Pass and 3NT are certainly possible options but, when Spooner chose to make a takeout double, his side were in trouble. Phil Markey advanced with a 4♣ cue-bid, expecting to find a 4-4 fit in one of the pointed suits. When Spooner bid hearts, Markey clearly expected his 4♠ bid to offer a choice of games. However, it seems clear that Spooner expected his partner’s 4♣ bid to show both majors, as he clearly took 4♠ as a cue-bid agreeing hearts. He rolled out Blackwood but then, despite apparently finding both missing key cards opposite, he passed 5♥. All rather strange!

I am sure that many kibitzers wondered why James Coutts did not double 5♥ with his enormous trump stack. However, one should always be wary of doubling the only contract that you are certain is going down if you have no defence against potential alternatives. As we can see, on this layout, Coutts could have doubled quite safely as North/South have nowhere significantly better to which to run. I supposed they might have tried their luck in 5♠, but even that looks likely to go for at least 500.

Playing in 5♥, even at 100 a trick, was not a pleasant experience for declarer. Spooner managed to make seven tricks: N/S -400 and 14 IMPs to LU.

LU won the set 40-13, so they led by 33 IMPs (158-125) overnight. With 60 boards remaining on day two of this final, such a moderate margin does not even qualify as ‘one hand on the trophy’. Still all to play for.

We will be back soon with the highlights of the last day’s play in the 2023 NOT.