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Wednesday 6 March 2024 at 5 pm via ZOOM.

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Release 2.19q
Oxford (BBO) 11/10/2020

A new season of the Midlands County Online League kicked off on 11 October. Notts put out three teams of eight against Oxfordshire and the great news is that the technology worked perfectly and it passed off without a hitch. Particular thanks to Oxfordshire who set up the matches as the ‘home’ team. The other plus point was not having to spend 4 hours travelling.

Unfortunately, despite having promising positions in all three matches at one point, we conspired to lose them all. A combination of missed opportunities, bad judgement, bad luck and that old bete noire: slams.

 The A team lost 1-19, B team lost 5-15 and the C team lost 8-12. The butler imps are below:

DAWES  
Sandy Fulton and John Rolph   1
Mark Goddard and Patrick Gaudart -39
Lloyd Eagling and Stan Zygadlo  15
Frank Ball and Graham Lee -74
PORTER  
Pravin Tailor and Toni Smith -14
Geoff Topol and Jane Hall -45
Shirley Ashtari and Dick Milne  -9
Bill Milligan and Steve Mulligan  25
MARKHAM  
Clare Batten and Graham Brindley -36
Louise Scull and Mervyn Jones -11
Keith Spencer and Michael Bleaney  23
Phil Gross and Ewa Hardwick   9

 

2

A number of people have mentioned Board 2 to me. Six pairs did not reach slam (sadly four of which were Notts pairs). A recommended auction (where not playing 2/1) is below (even better would be to bid 4D instead of 3S, but with such poor diamonds I understand why people do not wish to do that). At several tables 2NT was bid instead of 3D – that is a pairs bid, there is no rush to bid NT and diamonds may be where you want to play (as they are here).  Also of note is that the 3S is stronger than the 4S bid (as you are game forced), after which blackwood should get you to six.

3S: 4D instead?
5H: 2 Key cards no Q of spades
5NT: we have all keycards, any kings or anything extra (E is still unlimited)

Lloyd and Stan’s opponents had a bit of a mishap and ended up in seven – fortunately it was in spades (and not diamonds which is cold).

15

Board 15 had a range of scores. The par score should be 5Dx-1. Some people may go on to 5S, which makes on a non-heart lead, but surprisingly there were a few tables not in game or left in 4S. After a 1S opener, North should jump to 4S and East has too much playing strength to pass and should bid 4NT to show two places to play – this is a two way bet in that it could easily make (North could be very weak), or it could stop them making game (as it does here). However, this was a good news board at one of our tables where 3S redoubled rolled home with an overtrick for +1360!

17

Board 17 did bring some slam cheer though. A lot of tables played in some number of hearts, but three tables reached 6 spades, with only my partner bringing it home. The key is recognizing the need to play on hearts relatively early and getting them right - in our case West hopped up with the ace, but if they play low smoothly you have a tough guess (Sandy did play low and oppo got it wrong).

2H: 8-11 6+H
5C: 1 or 4 keycards

18

On board 18 4S was played at 9 of the 12 tables. The below auction was not uncommon where a strong NT was being played by E/W. Clearly you need to play the spade suit for no losers, so how do you do it?

The auction suggests that W has points and E has heart length. As such, it is not unreasonable to play W for the Q and tale the finesse (the percentage is 52/48 in favour of the drop, but that is so close, when you have other info to guide you then you should often use that). Unfortunately it loses as they are 2-2…the old adage 8 ever, 9 never when playing for the drop won out…though knowing my luck if I had tried that W would have had 3 to the queen!

20

Another slam hand was board 20. Slam was bid by every Oxfordshire pair, but not by four of our pairs. Again, there appeared to be an aversion to playing in a minor. A suggested auction is below - with East’s hand, opposite an opening bidder slam should be found, but it appears NT waylaid a few pairs.

4S: cue with diamond support
5C: 0 or 3

At our table, the opposition made up for bidding a cold off grand slam against Lloyd and Stan, by bidding a cold off grand slam against us after a blackwood mishap. Unfortunately, I did not find a club lead and so it rolled home – 12 imps out

Midland County League

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