Report by John Auld

This home match against our neighbours featured a loss in the Dawes and a narrow win in the Porter but a win by 226 imps in the Markham. Even with cross imp scoring that is a big score.

The teams with Butler imps:

Dawes:

John & Irene Auld -31; William & Daniel Crook 27; Steve Raine & Frank Ball -4; Ankush Khandelah & Mark Goddard -24

Porter:

Bill Whalley & Pravin Tailor -5; Dick Milne & Shirley Ashtari 10; Graham Lee & Gordon Fullerton -20; John Rolph & Gerry Franklin 33

Markham:

Michael Bleaney & Tony Stephenson 4; Anthony Pettengell & Toni Smith 29; Will Irving & Janet Jacques 81; Tim Anderson & Bernard Scanlon 10

Well done Michael & Tony, Anthony & Toni, Will & Janet, Tim & Bernard for scoring 226 cross-imps, and particular congratulations to Will & Janet who recorded the largest Butler imp score in memory.

The Dawes would have been closer without board 22:

I regret to report that partner and I perpetuated this sequence. 4S should really be opening values and lots of shape but not three aces so I take or share the blame for missing the diamond slam. Personally I dislike putting a nine card suit down in dummy so would always remove 4S. But we were not alone: everywhere after 2D and a spade jump confusion reigned. West used 4NT (Key card) and could not identify the keycards and East often thought spades were trumps. In fact one of our pairs arrived in 7S mercifully undoubled. Given that a Leicestershire pair managed 7D despite a confused auction this cost a packet, cross- imped.

What is the answer to the hand? In my view West must seize control of the auction-what is 2D going to achieve? Either on immediate 4NT if that is simple Blackwood  or 3D followed by 4D would do the trick. Nobody fancied the jump shift but why not? You have a solid nine card suit!! (forgive the exclamation marks). Even in these days of dealing machines that is something.

In every report I try to find at least one hand featuring good play. In this match there was board 17:

Frank Ball led C8 to Q, K and Ace. Now when Steve Raine won the trump ace he led C2 to Frank's 9 and a diamond took the contract 2 off. Nice work but declarer had erred. When I declared the hand I played low on the club lead to keep South off lead later. Now I played trumps and North ducked twice to deny me entries to dummy. That looked right so now I had to play hearts for discards. South obviously had lots of red cards so after some teeth gritting I played Ace and finessed the H10 to make 4S. Strangely North does better to let me have trump entries; I may well try to ruff out hearts.

Finally here is a fine play by Leicestershire on board 25:

I made 3NT easily after a diamond lead; running the clubs etc as happened almost everywhere. But against Willie West played CJ under the K and suddenly tthe clubs do not appear to run. Cashing the ten may strand the suit in dummy so what to do? Willie got it home but it was a nice false card.