We return to New Zealand for the conclusion of the final of the trials to select the team to represent the Kiwis in the Mixed Teams at the South Pacific Championships and at the World Bridge Games in 2024.

The two teams who have made it to this final are BERRINGTON (Ian Berrington/Fuxia Wen and Pam Livingston/Malcolm Mayer) and CARTER (Julie Atkinson/Patrick Carter and Jenny Millington/Barry Jones). The format is a 56-board match divided into four 14-board stanzas.

When we left things at the midway point of the match, CARTER had built a 27-IMP lead, 93-66.

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

What action do you take?

Next, with neither vulnerable, you are sitting in the North seat with:

Quelles mesures prenez-vous, le cas échéant ?

Finally, with both sides vulnerable, you hold in the North seat:

Quelles mesures prenez-vous, le cas échéant ?

Finally, with only your opponents vulnerable, you are the Dealer in the South chair with:

What, if anything, do you open?

The good news for those watching live on BBO VuGraph was that The Great Dealer continued to produce deals with plenty of potential for action. While you consider those problems, we resume our coverage a few deals into the third stanza.

Jenny Millington (left) came in with a pre-emptive 3♥ overcall, setting Fuxia Wen the first of the problems posed above. It seems clear that Wen’s 4♠ bid is just not enough on this hand. If you are going to raise to game in spades, you should surely do so via a 4♥ cue-bid, although perhaps even that would probably not be enough to get Ian Berrington to venture beyond game on this North hand. Indeed, the objective of the deal is to reach 7♣, which will make despite the 4-1 spade break, even without North’s ♦K.

The bad trump split limited declarer to twelve tricks in his spade game. An unimpressive N/S +680.

Pat Carter’s Strong Club opening attracted an even bigger pre-empt from Malcolm Mayer. Reaching the grand slam after this start was never going to be easy, but Julie Atkinson (right) at least got her partnership to a reasonable contract despite the barrage. N/S +1390 and perhaps an unexpected 12 IMPs to CARTER.

Our next deal raises numerous questions that regular partnerships (and others) might find worthy of discussion.

The auction began with a 1♥ transfer response to East’s 1♣ opening, a method that is becoming ever-more popular, so it is important for regular partnerships to know what various actions by North mean. A reasonable structure is to play double as showing hearts and 1♠ as a hand that would have doubled after a natural (1♣)-P-(1♠)-? Logically, Ian Berrington’s 2♠ cue-bid here should be Michaels type, showing hearts and a minor, which is obviously how he intended it, although the VuGraph operator revealed that Fuxia Wen told her opponents that they had no agreement about its meaning.

Now let’s move around to the South seat, and assume you know that 2♠ shows a two-suited hand. It is worthwhile considering how you should advance facing a Michaels-style overcall, whatever auction it occurs in. What you should NOT do, is use 2NT simply to ask partner which minor he holds. If you just want to play in partner’s minor at the three-level, you should be able to do that via a pass-or-correct 3♣.  You will often want to make a game-try in partner’s major and, as the cue-bid is fairly wide-ranging, 2NT needs to find out whether partner has extra values as well as which minor he holds. I suggest the following responses to 2NT: 3♣/3♦ shows a minimum with length in the bid minor, 3♥ shows extra values with clubs, and 3♠ extra values with diamonds. The 2NT bidder should then be better placed to choose between playing 3m, 3M, 3NT, 4M, or investigating something higher.

Here, Wen advanced with 2NT, whatever it meant. Berrington might have taken heed of Barry Jones’ double and realized that the hand did not belong to his side. He might then have given partner an out by bidding 3♦. Whether the opponents choose to defend or to bid their 3NT is unclear but, judging from West’s inaction when 3♥ was passed back to him at the table, I’d guess you might have bought the contract in 3♦ for -50 or -100.

Berrington’s 3♥ bid put his head firmly on the chopping block, but the opponents not only failed to double, failed to bid their game, but they then compounded those errors by dropping two tricks in defence. Berrington therefore escaped relatively unscathed with seven tricks. A paltry E/W +100.

In the replay, Malcolm Mayer (left) opened a weak (12-14) 1NT and Pam Livingston’s 2♥ transfer then left Pat Carter with the second of this week’s problems. Here, too, you need partnership agreements.

Firstly, what would Double mean? Against a strong NT, most people would play a double of the transfer as just showing hearts. When your opponents are playing a weak NT, you need to be able to show a penalty double of the 1NT opening whether responder passes, transfers or uses Stayman. Other than doubling, what else can you do in those situations when you have been dealt a balanced 16+?

The next question is, what does a 2♠ cue-bid mean? Is it just a takeout double of spades or is it Michaels-style, showing a two-suited hand? On grounds of frequency, you probably should use it as the former, or you will be stuck on 1-4-5-3 and similar shaped 13-15 counts. One final question. What would 2NT show? Is it just both minors, or should it show any two-suits? If you have decided to play a 2♠ cue-bid as a three-suited takeout, then I’d suggest 2NT should show any two-suited combination, so that would then have been an option on this North hand.

Perhaps you prefer a simple 3♥ overcall. Even that would have been a winning choice when compared to Carter’s jump to 4♥. At this table, West did double and the defence collected the maximum.

Mayer led the ♠Q, and continued the suit when the queen won. Declarer ruffed and did not help his cause by playing a diamond next. Livingston won with the ♦K and played a club to her partner’s ace. Now came the ♦A and a diamond ruff. Back came a third round of spades, declarer pitching a diamond and East scoring a low trump. A fourth round of diamonds was then ruffed in dummy and overruffed by Livingston. Declarer still had to lose to the ♥A, so that was five down: E/W +1100 and 14 IMPs to BERRINGTON to close out the third set.

That meant that, although CARTER still won the stanza, it was only by a score of 36-35. The margin stood at 28 IMPs (129-101) with 14 boards still to play.

On this early deal from the fourth stanza, it may look as if the swing came in the bidding, but both declarers and defenders had chances to significantly change the size of the swing and the direction in which the IMPs flowed. First, both South players had to decide what, if anything, to open on the last of this week’s problem hands.

Barry Jones did not open the South hand, so Pam Livingston (left) got things rolling with a weak (12-14) 1NT. Muppet Stayman then resulted in Malcolm Mayer declaring 4♥ from the short side. Looking at all four hands, it is clear that declarer has four unavoidable losers, three trumps and the ♠A.

Jones opened his singleton club and there then followed a game of ping pong between North and East. Mayer won the opening lead in dummy and led a trump. If Millington rises with a high heart and cashes the ♠A, she will automatically come to two more trump winners in the fullness of time. When she played low at trick two, declarer can make the contract, whichever heart he plays. In fact, Mayer finessed against the ♥J, so the ♥6 won the first round of trumps. If declarer now switches back to clubs, North has to follow to four rounds. Declarer can therefore dispose of both spade losers from dummy and North will score only her three trump winners.

When declarer instead crossed to dummy in diamonds and led a second round of trumps, North was back in control. Again, she can take the trick with a top heart and cash the ♠A to beat the contract. Millington won with the ♥K but then switched to a low spade. Mayer won with the ♠Q and did not give the defenders a third chance to beat him. He cashed his clubs, discarding dummy’s remaining spade. North came to just three trump tricks: E/W +620.

Fuxia Wen had a 2♠ showing spades and a minor in her arsenal, and she decided to use it on this South hand. She quickly found herself in 8♠ and Julie Atkinson was tasked with difficult job of finding the winning opening lead. Of course, everyone would lead a high diamond from that West hand, and that’s what Atkinson did. (Only the ♣A and a second club legitimately beats the contract, as it removes a vital entry from declarer’s hand prematurely.)

Atkinson switched to clubs, playing two rounds, but it was too late. With spades 2-2 and diamonds 3-3, declarer has just enough entries to set up her diamonds and get back to cash them. However, after ruffing the club at trick three, Wen wasted the entry by playing a spade to the ace. A second round of spades split the trumps, but declarer was now an entry short. Pat Carter (right) got out with a third round of clubs, declarer ruffing with her penultimate trump. She ruffed a diamond and started on hearts, ruffing out the ♥Q, but dummy still had a losing club at the end. One down: E/W and 11 IMPs to BERRINGTON.

After just five deals of the final set, the match score stood at 120-130, so the margin was down to 10 IMPs. That, however, was as close as it was to get. The very next deal did serious damage to the comeback effort…

A delicate auction ended with Fuxia Wen passing Ian Berrington’s quantitative raise to 4NT. With only eleven tricks, and a choice of minor-suit finesses to take, stopping out of game might have been the right thing to do.

Julie Atkinson led the ♦10, dummy’s king winning. When declarer then cashes six rounds of spades, the West hand was squeezed in three suits. On the final spade, Atkinson had to discard from ♦A, ♣K-x, ♥10-x-x-x. Atkinson released a heart, which then allowed declarer to cash four winners in that suit. The defence made the ♣K at trick 13, but that was their only winner. N/S +690.

Jenny Millington’s jump to 3♠ seems a better description of the North hand, and encouraged Barry Jones (left) to advance with a 4♣ cue-bid. Millington showed her diamond control, and the partnership was then off to the races. The auction as shown in the VuGraph records seems a little strange. Was North’s 5♥ bid asking for a heart control? It would be a rather unusual treatment, and perhaps it is a typo in the records and she actually bid 5♠, which would surely ask about hearts. Anyway, 6♠ was duly reached.

An opening club lead would have seriously tested declarer’s card-reading skills. She would have to win with the ♣A and play five rounds of trumps, squeezing two discards out of West. If West pitches two diamonds (best), declarer plays three rounds of hearts throwing her club loser and then leads a diamond and has to read the end position.

At the table, Mayer led a diamond to his partner’s ace, so declarer was soon claiming twelve tricks. N/S +1430 and 12 IMPs to CARTER.

The rest of the set was all CARTER, and they ended up winning the stanza 27-21. CARTER had just edged all four segments, and they deservedly ran out winners by 34 IMPs, 156-122. Congratulations to the CARTER team, Julie Atkinson, Patrick Carter, Jenny Millington and Barry Jones. We will be seeing them in action later in the year at both the South Pacific Championships and at the World Bridge Games in Argentina.

We are now packing our bags for the long trip across the Pacific Ocean. We are headed to Louisville, Kentucky, home of The Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Louisville Slugger baseball bats and Muhammad Ali (yes, the airport there is even named after him). It is also the venue for the 2024 North American Spring Nationals, and we will be there to bring you the best of the action from the prestigious Vanderbilt Knockout Teams. If previous years are anything to go by, this rates to be a massive slugfest between the top American teams and, fitting in Ali’s home town, a number of world-class heavyweight invaders from Europe.