Welcome to our penultimate visit to the second weekend of the 2023 The English Premier League. The league is divided into three eight-team divisions, and the leading two teams in Division One will be invited to represent England in next year’s Camrose Trophy.

A complete round robin of seven 16-board matches were played in the first weekend. The same thing will happen over this weekend, and the process will be repeated on the final weekend, in November. We have so far seen the highlights from the opening three matches of this second weekend. These were the standings in Division 1 after Round 10:

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

What action, if any, do you take?

Next, an opening lead problem. With both sides vulnerable, you are sitting in the North seat with:

What do you lead?

Finally, with both sides vulnerable, you hold as South:

What do you bid?

While you consider those, we start with the best of the action from the last of Saturday’s matches, with the leaders, HINDEN, taking on MOSSOP.  North at our first table had to answer the first of the problems above.

Phil King opened 1♠ in fourth seat and Derek Patterson advanced with Drury, showing a maximum pass and three-card spade support. King showed at least a sound opening by bidding his second suit and Patterson jumped to 3♠. Holding 15 HCP and facing a passed hand with only an eight-card fit, I would expect the 4♠ bid chosen by King to receive almost unanimous support on an expert bidding panel. Would it even occur to anyone to look for slam? And, yet, the hands fit like a glove and there are more or less twelve top tricks, via five spades, four clubs, two hearts and a heart ruff. N/S +480.

North’s interest in slam was significantly increased when Graham Osbourne (left) opened the South hand. His 1♠ rebid suggested a weak no-trump hand type without four-card spade support. Chris Jagger forced with a 2♦ cue-bid and Osbourne showed real clubs. Jagger’s jump to 4♦ agreed clubs. It is possible that it was just control-showing but, more likely, it was RKCB. Whether Osbourne’s 4♥ showed a heart control or was a 1-or-4 response to Blackwood, Jagger decided that he had heard enough. Great judgement.

Playing in the Moysian club fit, declarer needed little more than trumps breaking no worse that 4-2. He had eleven top tricks and a diamond ruff in dummy added the extra one required. A magnificent N/S +920 and 10 IMPs to HINDEN.

On the very next deal, both North players had to find an answer to a variation on the opening lead problem posed at the top of this article…

Justin Hackett raised his brother’s natural weak two opening to game and Chris Jagger led a pedestrian ♦J. Jason Hackett (right) won with the ace, crossed to the ♥A, and then played three rounds of spades, pitching a club from his hand. Then came dummy’s last spade winner and, when South followed suit, declarer threw his remaining club. Jagger could discard or ruff with the ♥K. Either way, declarer lost just one trick in each red suit. E/W +650

Neil Rosen opened with a three-level pre-empt here, but the contract was the same and thus so was the lead problem.

Phil King (left) attacked with the ♣A and a second club at trick two. Patterson won with the ♣J and continued with the ♣K. Rosen ruffed with the ♥9, but King overruffed with the ♥10 and exited with the ♦J. Rosen won with the ace, played three rounds of spades pitching his diamond loser, but then took the inevitable trump finesse, losing to the now-singleton ♥K. E/W -100 and a hard-earned 13 IMPs to MOSSOP.

This was a very entertaining match, thoroughly enjoyed by all those watching live on BBO VuGraph. MOSSOP just eked out a victory by a score of 43-40. MOSSOP remained on VuGraph for the first of Sunday’s matches. Their opponent this time was BLACK.

This North hand is very awkward combination. If you choose to open with a strong/artificial 2♣, do you then rebid a game-forcing 2♠ or a 23-24 2NT. Gunnar Hallberg (right) sidestepped that question by opening with a quiet 1♠ on this monster. David Mossop raised to 2♠ and Hallberg tried with a shortage-showing jump to 4♣, but he was never likely to get much encouragement from Mossop, whose hand was close to a minimum for his initial raise.

The hands fit superbly well and slam is a decent contract, needing a little more than trumps to play for at most one loser. The double finesse alone is close to 75%, and you have two fast entries to dummy, but you probably need trumps to break too. (Although you can handle some 4-1 breaks, a singleton jack or king with West, for example.) You might also lose occasionally to a 4-1 diamond break, but slam is certainly better than a 50% proposition. Today it was making: N/S +680.

Strange things happen at bridge, though, and 50% slams are best avoided. There are plenty of ways to gain when you score +680, but bidding a slam that goes down is inevitably a losing board.

Andrew McIntosh chose to open 2♣ and rebid 2♠ on the North hand, leaving Tom Paske with the last of this week’s problems. If you chose to raise to 3♠, you might soon find yourself putting down dummy with partner in the good slam. With a square shape and such soft values, Paske preferred to start with 2NT and, when Tosh raised to game, he then converted to spades. Traditionally, this is how you bid a hand with three spades and no values at all. (A direct jump to 4♠ over 2♠ shows a very weak hand with four-card support.)

However, it would seem that this pair have agreements that are not standard, about which we don’t know, as Tosh clearly expected his partner to hold some values for this sequence. His jump to 5NT would usually invite partner to choose a slam. I’ve certainly never seen it played where passing is an option, but there’s a first time for everything (even at my age).

Once again, the spotlight fell on Phil King to find a winning opening lead. On any lead but a club, declarer will be able to concede a spade and eventually score four spades, four diamonds, three hearts and a club for twelve tricks. King made no mistake, looking no further than his very moderate six-card suit.

Paske won with the ♣A and cashed one heart and four diamonds before leading a spade to the nine. (In this contract he essentially needed to find West with both the king and jack of spades.) No luck! East won with the ♠K, but there was at least a little silver lining to the cloud, as the clubs were blocked. East could cash his ♣K-Q but then had to concede the rest of the tricks to declarer. N/S -100 and an unexpected 13 IMPs to BLACK.

High-level competitive bidding decisions are often difficult, and they are frequently worth large numbers of IMPs. Two out of three players were rewarded for judging this deal particularly well.

I suppose this is a matter of style, and Gunnar Hallberg is even older and more set in his way than I am 😊. Whilst I would have chosen between 1♥ and 3♥ on that North hand non-vulnerable in first-seat, he decided it was a weak two opening. Mossop jumped to game after David Gold’s 2♠ overcall, but who is supposed to compete further after Andrew Black’s 4♠ bid?

The defence could make no more than their two red-suit aces. E/W +650.

Tosh chose 1♥, and this time it was Patterson in the East seat who took pre-emptive action, with a vulnerable jump to 2♠. Tom Paske (left) showed an invitational or better heart raise with 2NT. (Readers should note that even if you usually play a cue-bid as a three-card raise and 2NT to show four-card support, this auction is the exception. As you cannot cue-bid below three of partner’s suit, 2NT has to be used to show any invitational raise, three-card or longer.)

King jumped to 4♠ and Paske showed excellent judgment to press onto the five-level, despite only holding three trumps. Did anyone know who was saving and who was bidding to make now? 5♥ made it past King, but Patterson, the original pre-emptor, influenced by his seventh trump and the knowledge that his partner was short in hearts, elected to bid five-over-five at red. Well judged indeed. That trailed around to McIntosh, who was under no illusion that his side was bidding to make. He could be fairly sure that Patterson had not bid 5♠ at adverse vulnerability unless he was at least very close to making. Deciding that his opponent had done the right thing and that even the six-level would be a cheap save, Tosh exhibited the third example of excellent judgement in this auction. Phil King closed the exciting auction with a double to reach absolute par on the deal. Well bid everyone!

The defence was accurate and they collected the maximum, at least, theoretically. Patterson cashed the ♣A and accurately switched to the ♦Q at trick two. Tosh won with the ♦A, drew two rounds of trumps, and then ruffed his spade in dummy. When he exited with a diamond, West won. King cashed his ♣K and played a third club, which Patterson ruffed, at which point declarer claimed two down, which everyone accepted, even though the defenders had already scored four tricks. The board was officially scored as two down: E/W +300 and therefore 8 IMPs to BLACK.

Another close match and excellent fare for the spectators. The final score was a 37-34 win for BLACK.

With twelve matches now completed, these are the standings:

This time it is BLACK inching back to the top of the table ahead of HINDEN. There remains only a couple of IMPs separating those two teams, who have opened a gap of more than a match over the rest of the field.

We will be back soon with the best of the action from the last two matches of this second weekend of the 2023 EPL.