Bournemouth 1999

I used to like Barometer scoring; watching your position and score rise and fall after each round seemed to add to the excitement of the event and also seemed to make each hand a little less anonymous.

However, last weekend I discovered a flaw in this method of scoring - it’s not much fun when you are leading! After two good boards on the first round of the final session in the championship pairs final, the director brought me a little slip of paper stating something like:

I decided on my strategy immediately; this was to keep these pieces of paper to myself and pretend to partner that we were just doing OK and to continue bidding like a lunatic. Not long to wait. You are dealt S- QJ62 H- T964 D- AJ C- KJ4 at love all, second to speak. You hear rho deal and open 3D. (actually, you only hear him bid 3D - his dealing was pretty silent). Naturally you take it as your beholden duty to enter the bidding for your side so you make a takeout double with this moth-eaten collection. Next hand passes and partner starts thinking, by no means a good sign. After a while he emerges with a bid of 5H and dealer passes. You are now slightly startled but if anything relieved. Although not a backward bidder, you have no intention of accepting any slam invite on this hand. At least you have four trumps and hopefully enough values for eleven tricks - partner usually has his bid. Then, uneasily, you begin to remember persuading partner to play 5 of a major as asking for help in the opponents' suit, if they have bid one. Normally it shows xx in the opponents' suit and you are instructed to bid six if you can avoid these losers. Surely partner hasn’t remembered that after all this time? The real problem is that you are slowly wearing down partner’s resistance to another half a dozen gadgets that you want to impose in the interests of bidding accuracy (it’s not just transfer responses after 1NT rebids Richard!), and if you get one of them wrong then your street cred. with partner will plummet. So, since you have the Ace of diamonds, you resignedly bid 6H.

This was the full hand:

After the diamond lead, partner was able to draw trumps, dispose of his losing diamond on the long spade and correctly place the club position for twelve tricks. At that point, I started to look forward to the director arriving with the barometer scores once again.

This was also an interesting hand, played against last year’s winners Jagger and Young.

As declarer in 3NT, South has three problems. How to avoid a diamond lead, how to play the heart suit and how to play the spade suit, which becomes vital if you need an entry to dummy.

I reduced the likelihood of a diamond lead by opening the South hand with one diamond. Winning the Jack of clubs lead with the King ( I wanted East to think that the lead was from AJTx, I considered the heart position. Clearly if the suit was breaking 3-3 then the right play was to overtake the second heart, while if the suit broke 4-2, then I should cash my heart winners and guess the spade position correctly (if possible) to get to table to enjoy three more heart winners. Another possibility was to play spades immediately and let your success or failure in that suit dictate how to play the hearts - ie if you failed to create a spade entry then you have to play for hearts 3-3. The problem with this approach is that a good defender will duck with Kxx in spades and you will never create an entry to dummy. Eventually, I decided to see if the opponents might give me some clues. At trick two I "ran" the Jack of hearts. LHO, thinking that it might be important to give his partner a count signal in this suit to clarify when to win the King, began a peter with the ten. When this peter was completed on the play of the heart K, it seemed likely that hearts were 4-2. After the K of hearts, I decided to play a spade to the ten, reasoning that west was likely to have led a spade at trick one from Kxx(x) and the rest was plain sailing.

I find the following hand from the Pairs Final quite amusing. As East, I hold

North-South are vulnerable, and there are three passes around to me. I open 1NT, and South overcalls 2 Clubs showing Hearts and another suit. Partner doubles, indicating penalty interest (he has either Hearts or the other 3 suits), and North bids 2 Hearts. I feel obliged to double (penalties), and this is passed out. What would you lead?.........

It is worth knowing that during the weekend, our team mate Nigel Wilkes twice found the lead of a King from Kx, and both times this lead proved to be a disaster. Thus it is with a wry smile that I table the King of Clubs.

Now I get to see dummy:

Partner plays the 8 of Clubs, and declarer wins with the Ace! Tell me honestly - do you think I am heading for a top or a bottom?

Remembering that partner has a passed hand, I find it difficult to imagine how we can defeat this contract now!

But all is not lost. Here is the full hand:

Declarer plays a heart to the Jack and Ace. Partner returns a Diamond to my King, and I play another Diamond to his Ace. Partner cashes the King of Spades and plays another Spade to my Ace, forcing dummy to ruff. Declarer now made the mistake of ruffing a club in hand, in order to run the 10 of Hearts. After the 10 of Hearts held, the only trumps left are Q5 in my hand, and the King in dummy, but declarer is trapped in his own hand. He can cash a Diamond and a Spade, but declarer can only make 7 tricks. So (despite my best efforts) we manage to get a healthy plus score.

Afterwards, we couldn't wait to ask Nigel what he would lead on the hand......