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Release 2.19q
Staffordshire (home) 09/11/2014

Report by John Auld

This match was an improvement on recent efforts in that overall we achieved parity. Team members with butler imps scores were:

 

Dawes:     John & Irene Auld +1

                 David Hodge & Steve Raine -35

                 William Crook & Sandy Fulton -6

                 Gordon Fullerton & Frank Ball +8

Porter:      John Rolph & Gerry Franklin -23

                 Lloyd Eagling & Keith Rodgers +25

                 Graham Lee & Dick Milne -14

                 Bill Whalley & Pravin Tailor +8

Markham: Faye Staton & Dianne Abbott +41

                 Phil Dale & Ray Furlonger -28

                 Will Irving & Janet Jacques -15

                 Ian Dovey & Shirley Ashtari +29

 

Faye and Dianne registered the best Butler score which helped the Markham win 13-7. The Porter team drew whilst the Dawes lost 7-13.

 

Things started brightly in the Dawes match with William and Sandy punishing the opponents Lucas two bid on board 2:

 

 

 

 

East applied the weak two suiter gadget and Sandy chose well by doubling as North. Six five is not a classic shape for a takeout double but this is a special situation. East has five spades and West (who passed) probably has less than four and not a particularly strong hand. The chances of South having a good hand with a spade stack are very high. And so it proved. William had no trouble passing to collect 500 where every other North South pair blundered into a hopeless 3NT.

That was perhaps unfortunate for East West but they created their own problems on board 6:

 

If there is a problem with Lucas Twos it is with the users who deploy the weapon on all sorts of unsuitable hands. If this East hand is a weak two suiter (or weak one suiter) then to misquote from a famous libel trial "I am a banana". Game was duly missed when it was easily reached after a 1H opener.

Our forward march was halted on board 8:

I was North and led a heart won on table as partner played the ten. After due consideration declarer led DJ which worked a treat. Later he cashed SA dropping my K so that was an overtrick. Meanwhile our declarers finessed a spade immediately and won the heart continuation in hand to draw trumps and avoid the impending heart ruff . That meant two trump losers and no entry to tackle diamonds leading to two losers there. This is an awfully difficult hand to analyse and two days after the match I do not know the best theoretical line. David Hodge is working on it.

So losing points on board 8 could be considered unlucky but the performances on 25 were lamentable all round. 

Six diamonds is excellent and easy to make but nobody bid it; in fact only one pair of twelve managed even game in diamonds. The popular choice was the awful 3NT going off, bid on some such sequence as shown. After a 2C checkback East denied 3 hearts or 4 spades and West guessed 3NT. This is a prime example of minor suit aversion brought on by too many club pairs events. As William pointed out a further probe of 3C could get you to  6D-perhaps via 3D and then 4S showing a shortage.

When I was East I committed a different mistake when the opponents sacrificed in 4S doubled. Ideally I should bid 5D which in our sequence Irene might have raised but alas not. The scope for errors at this game is almost unlimited.