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Release 2.19q
Warwickshire (home) 13/10/2013
NOTTS v WARKS Sunday 13th October 2013

Report by John Auld

VP scores of 10-10, 11-9 and 8-12 made this a pretty close contest.

The teams:

Dawes: William and Daniel Crook; Mark Goddard and David Hodge; John Rolph and Gerry Franklin; John and Irene Auld

Porter: David Burgess and Gordon Fullerton; Nick Clark and Graham Brindley; Robin Fisher and Graham Lee; Kyle Lam and Simon Spencer

Markham: Phil Dale and Ray Furlonger; Liz Plumb and Bernard Rothwell; Shirley Atari and Ian Dovey; Bernard Scanlon and Tim Anderson.

Normally a close match with Warwickshire would be considered something of a triumph for Notts. However on this occasion we were 30 imps up in the Dawes after set 1 and lost 29 of those by the finish to draw 10-10 in VPs. Certainly Mark Goddard, David Hodge, William and Daniel Crook would not have been thrilled with a draw after registering +45 imps.

The Porter team started even better being +41imps after 2 sets, so an 11-9 victory for them was not too gratifying. 

The hand I shall remember from the match was board 6, a small partscore swing:

I played 3H as North and had three rounds of diamonds led which exposed West`s high cards. Knowing that two trump losers were inevitable I led a small heart and settled for a routine one off. The Warwickshire declarer also reached this position and made a small but important change to my play-he led the the ten of hearts from table and when East sleepily played low so did he. Impossible contract made. This is an example of a Tony Forrester tip: if possible lead suits from dummy towards the closed hand. 

At half time the Dawes team were 19 imps up and I received some advice from William about our next opponents methods. "They are playing a relay system so you must not give them a free run. Bid!"

We sat down and dutifully told the oppos of our intervention policy. Freely but not insanely we stated. The first board was 27: 

West opened a strong club and I tested the theory with a 2D intervention, which gave East pause for thought. Apparently a take out double was not available (I think they use penalty doubles to punish this kind of frivolity) so a natural 3C was bid. 3NT made all right even on the spade lead but we should have gained on the board. Our team mates bid well to 6C by East. Unfortunately East got a trump lead and had a lapse with the entry situation. He delayed tackling diamonds so that when North won the Ace and played a spade declarer guessed wrong and took the finesse. Playing diamonds early before trumps and hearts would have led to an easy establishment of the suit for spade discards.

Finally Wiliam has drawn my attention to board 19: 

Steve Wood for Warwickshire as North in 3NT won the heart lead on table and assessed his chances. Running clubs yields nine tricks but if the Jack does not drop in three rounds you are off. It must be better to take two spade finesses so Steve played a small club from dummy to create an extra entry. Two losing finesses and two losing diamonds meant one off.

The only other small complication for this play (apart from both spades wrong) occurs if a diamond comes through from West, and another when a spade finesse loses. With really bad luck that could be three diamond losers. However that is a lot of bad luck and inspired defence so this losing line was probably over 70% to succeed. The best play does not always win.