We have broken our journey from Australia back to Europe in South America. We are here to see the final stages of the trials to select the Brazilian open team for the upcoming South American Zonal Championships, which will be staged in Cali, Colombia in April.

Six teams began the quest to represent Brazil. The format was a double round robin of ten 14-board matches, with the leading two teams advancing to the final. These were the standings at the end of the round robin:

ADRIANO 141.15 VPs
CHAGAS 129.22
NADER 99.83
B.R.S. 92.34
BIONDILLO 74.15
POASP 63.31

The leading two teams dominated the field throughout the round robin, and deservedly advance to the final. It will be ADRIANO (Adriano Rodrigues, Joao-Paulo Campos, Miguel Villas-Boas, Marco Toma and Mauricio Figueiredo) against CHAGAS (Gabriel Chagas, Diego Brenner, Jose Roberto Brum and Pablo Ravenna). The final will be played over 96 boards, divided into six 16-board stanzas.

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

What action, if any, do you take?

Next, with only your opponents vulnerable, you are sitting in the South seat with:

What do you bid?

There was a problem with the VuGraph coverage of the opening stanza, so we begin with CHAGAS ahead by 24 IMPs (47-23) going into the second set. Early in the set, both North players faced a variation on the first of the problems above.

Mauricio Figueiredo raised his partner’s opening pre-empt to game, forcing Diego Brenner (left) to start bidding at the six-level. Brenner’s cue-bid suggested two places to play but, when his partner advanced by bidding diamonds, Brenner settled for choosing to play in his strongest suit. This left Figueiredo with the save-or-defend decision.

Of course, it is clear that 7♣ will be relatively cheap if the opponents are making their slam, but you do not want to concede a big penalty when the slam is going down. Do you think you have enough defence that you might beat 6♠? Figueiredo decided that the answer was yes, and chose to take his chance defending.

Declarer ruffed the ♣A opening lead and followed with the ♥A-K. A heart was then ruffed in dummy, South’s discard confirming that North had begun with four hearts. A trump back to hand and a second heart ruff with dummy’s last trumps set up declarer’s long heart. Brenner ruffed a club back to his hand, drew trumps, and took the diamond finesse for an overtrick. E/W +1430.

After an identical start, Joao-Paulo Campos offered his partner a choice of majors by bidding 6♥ over 6♦. Adriano Rodrigues duly corrected to 6♠, leaving Gabriel Chagas (right) with the choice of defending or sacrificing. Chagas decided that his defensive values were insufficient and took the save.

The defenders began with three rounds of hearts, declarer ruffing high. When declarer led a diamond towards dummy late in the hand, Rodrigues played low, so the ♦K won. With declarer’s diamond loser disappearing on a good heart, the defence came to only three of its four tricks. E/W +500 and 14 IMPs to CHAGAS.

ADRIANO kept pace with a number of mid-size gains, but then came a deal that contains an important reminder for any aspiring player.

The first important decision falls to North. Should you introduce your spades or raise hearts immediately? (Playing strong jump shifts, you can do both, but that was not an option here.) Chagas chose to start by bidding spades (his 1NT was effectively a normal 1♠ response). When Pablo Ravenna (left) showed a minimum hand with a spade fit, Chagas made one slam try with a jump to 4♦, but then gave up when his partner failed to show any enthusiasm.

West led a club, so declarer was soon claiming eleven tricks, losing just the two black-suit aces. What looks like a mundane N/S +650.

Faced with the same problem, Mauricio Figueiredo chose to agree hearts with an artificial jump to 3♣. When he then showed slam interest with a 3♠ cue-bid, Miguel Villas-Boas (right) admitted to a club control. When players first learn to play Blackwood, they are taught to only bid 4NT if they can handle any response from their partner. This lesson evidently slipped Figueiredo’s mind when he rolled out the Old Black. Villas-Boas’s 5♠ response confirmed that there were two key cards missing, but it had carried the auction beyond the safety of the partnership’s agreed suit at the five-level. Now Figueiredo had to guess what to do.

One possibility is to guess to pass 5♠, hoping that partner holds a hand that will allow eleven tricks to be made in a suit where his holding is completely unknown. The other option is to hope that one of the missing key cards is the ♥K, in which case the odds are that a heart slam will depend only on a working trump finesse.

Choosing to take the gamble with the biggest potential upside, Figueiredo bid 6♥. That was the losing option on this layout, and the defenders quickly took their two aces to put the slam one down. N/S -100 and 13 IMPs to CHAGAS.

Despite losing two big swings, ADRIANO still won the stanza 39-29, reducing the deficit to just 14 IMPs (76-62) with two of the six segments played. The match had been fairly close so far, but the third stanza was almost a total whitewash, with six-double-digit swings, all going into the same column. By midway through the third set, the match score stood at 95-76 in favor of ADRIANO. Then came a deal on which both South players had to answer the second of this week’s problems.

Marco Toma (left) made a pre-emptive raise to 3♦ with the South hand. Ravenna doubled and Chagas’s 4♦ cue-bid enabled the partnership to find the 4-4 spade fit. It was a combined 25-count, but the wasted diamond values meant that the contract was marginal at best. With trumps 4-1 offside, even a declarer with the legendary status of Gabriel Chagas had no chance. He ended two down: E/W -200.

At this table, Diego Brenner pre-empted all the way to the five-level at his first turn. Adriano Rodrigues doubled on the West hand but, at this level, it was much more of the “I have a good hand” variety rather than for takeout. With his scattered values, Joao-Paulo Campos (right) saw no reason to try to make 11 tricks rather than three.

It looks as if declarer should lose six tricks, but the defence managed to lose one along the way. That was still three down: E/W +500 and 12 IMPs to ADRIANO.

Late in the set came a bidding challenge for the N/S pairs. The spade grand slam needs trumps 2-1 and club no worse than 4-2, so fairly decent odds. Could anyone get there?

Miguel Villas-Boas showed a good hand with four spades and a decent club suit with a jump to 4♣ at his second turn. The heart cue-bid wasn’t really what he wanted to hear, but he ploughed on with Blackwood. With a ten-card fit, Toma showed the virtual ♠Q when asked, but the grand slam was never really in the picture. Not only did Villas-Boas know that the ♦K was missing, but he also could not be sure there were not three low clubs opposite.

With both black suits breaking, declarer quickly made all 13 tricks: N/S +1460.

Unless there is something I do not know about their system, I cannot understand Roberto Brum’s 2NT rebid. There is no alert or explanation in the VuGraph records, so I can only assume that 2NT is natural, rather than some sort of spade raise. The objective of bidding is to do two things, identify the best strain and to reach the right level. To my mind, the sooner you do the first of those, the more space you have to get the second right. It therefore seems to me that North should do something to set spades at his second turn, rather than describing his hand as a balanced 18-19 (which is not a particularly accurate description anyway).

By the time North eventually told his partner that spades were trumps, at the five-level, there was no room to investigate much of anything, and even the small slam was missed. N/S an unimpressive +710 and a windfall 13 IMPs for ADRIANO.

This deal rather summed up the set as far as the CHAGAS team was concerned. ADRIANO won the stanza by a massive 88-3, so they went into the halftime break with a 71-IMP lead, 150-79. There are still 48 boards to play, but it is a long way back…

We will be back soon to see if CHAGAS can make inroads into that margin and at least make the match close in the second half.