Report by John Auld

The first match of 2013/14 was at home to Gloucestershire.

The teams:

Dawes: John and Irene Auld; David Burgess and Gordon Fullerton; William Crook and Sandy Fulton; Mark Goddard and David Hodge

Porter: Graham Lee and Graham Brindley; Lloyd Eagling and Keith Rodgers; Bernard Moore and John Rolph; Bernard Scanlon and Tim Anderson

Markham: Janet Jacques and Will Irving; Ian Dovey and Shirley Atari; Frank Turton and David Langdon; Daphne and Mike Coggles

William Crook, Sandy Fulton, Mark Goddard and David Hodge are representing Notts in the Pachabo later this month. The good news from this match is that they were +35 imps against strong opposition. The bad news is that this was not enough to offset negatives from their teammates.

There were several interesting play hands creating problems not solved at the table. This was board 22, a routine 4H by me as North:

East led a diamond and after drawing trumps I ducked a club to West`s Jack. I won the diamond continuation and played another club on which East played the ten giving me a critical decision; should I duck or play the King? Initial odds obviously favour playing East for the Ace but has anything changed? We are in the mysterious world of Restricted Choice. One line of argument is that West is more likely to have AJ because with QJ he had a choice of plays on the first round. But then again by similar logic East is more likely to have A103 than Q103. Perhaps one of our professional mathematicians on the team can advise me. Whatever the odds I guessed wrong. Maybe table presence was the key but I was uninspired.

Another interesting issue is whether I should have put pressure on the defence by executing some kind of elimination eg play spades and diamonds before touching clubs. I considered this-including slipping a spade past West`s Ace but felt sure that Gloucestershire`s Paul Denning would have no problem counting the hand and not helping me with a club play. However I now think that best is to play off diamonds but leave Kx of spades on table when leading clubs. This is less clear for West and when he concedes a ruff and discard in diamonds there must be some inference he has Ace of clubs.

So lots of interest but no success as was the case on board 16:  

At least our bidding was not bad. Minor suit slams on a 4-4 fit are always elusive.

Irene got a diamond lead which allowed a "free" finesse against the queen. Not so free in fact as it cost a trick. This contract takes a lot of counting and a normal line is to assume a club break which together with a heart break or spade finesse gets you home. Sometimes you just need a trump break and cross ruff. Unfortunately Irene took out insurance against clubs being 4-1 ( Ace dropped an honour and the 9 was run). The premium for this insurance was -13imps instead of +13imps when the spade finesse failed. It would have been fine without the diamond play at trick one.

Finally the opponents got one wrong on board 19:

After my weak but normal spade opening bid East reached 3NT. 

We led top spades Irene discarding a club at trick 3. Declarer now had 8 tricks and mindful of a famous Bols Tip cashed his long suit expecting something to materialise. I discarded what I could spare on the clubs-three diamonds and one heart in random order. Note that I cant spare a spade winner because it allows declarer to develop hearts. So now it is again a matter of table presence: did I start with 5 diamonds to the King as here in which case two hearts cashed and a spade exit endplays me-or did I start with 4-4 in the reds and have I smoothly bared the King of diamonds? Declarer erred cashing the Ace of diamonds and was one off.

The Dawes team lost narrowly 8-12; the Porter won 15-5 and the Markham just won 11-9. A reasonable outcome but as ever it could have been better.