As I may have said before, I’m getting back into directing and running bridge games. As of this season, I will be running the various team and pairs competitions in District 7 of the NBB, also known as a “midden en oost Gelderland”, or “middle and east Gelria”. The official title is “DKL” which stands for “Districts Competitie Leider” or “Disctrict Competition Director”. The K is a relict from the past, for a while some super modernists thought the Dutch language could do without the letter C. That was in the years when this role was introduced, when sanity prevailed, nobody bothered to change the mnemonic.
First, a couple of hands 2♣ showed a weak 2♦ or some strong hand, 2♥ natural, confirming the strong hand, 3♦ was not discussed. West leads the ♦K. You cash the ♣A, see west show out but you obviously still have 13 tricks.
First question. Even though it is a championship of champions, it is still a pretty mixed field. Even if though you got trumps right, there are a lot of higher scoring contracts available. Estimate the score.
Second question: Who to blame?
The next board: NS vulnerable, EW not. 2♦ multicolored by north, double by partner, 3♥ by south and it is your turn as east.
While you are thinking about this, time for a bit of background.
The district has almost 6,000 players and they frequent around 60 clubs all over the place. Most clubs run an internal club championship every season in order to determine the strongest player or pair in the club. The Aces Championship was introduced 12 years ago as a game where all clubs were invited to send their champions. The winner of that game is crowned the Champion of the Champions, or the strongest pair in the district for the season.
The 13th edition of this event was played last Saturday, and this was my first outing as a TD for the district. 25 clubs sent a pair (hence 2*25=50 aces), a little under average as theoretically 60 pairs could enter and certainly open for improvement. From my point of view, the game ran well: starting on time, finishing on time and 5 minutes after the last card was played, we had the final results. Overal, nice to be back as a TD, next game in 2 weeks and in the meantime a lot of stuff to be organized for the season.
After the game, the various hands were discussed amonst the players. Here are the two most interesting ones.
Even though it is a mixed field, most pairs will bid slam, so 13 tricks in the lowest scoreing denomination isn’t good. 27% in fact. Slam was missed twice and one pair sold out to 6♠x in EW (down 800). 7♥ was bid and made twice for 95%. To score above average, you need to be in hearts and score 13 tricks. The latter is probably easy, as most west’s showed lots of cards in the pointed suits in the auction, making the club play easy.
In the auction, I think that south should correct 6♣ to 6♥. Even opposite a void, 6♥ rates to play as well as 6♣. North should have bid 3♣ instead of a vague 3♦ cuebid. That would allow for south to ask about trump quality, basically all you need to make 7♣/♥. Note that 7♣ making is also close to 90%.
The second hand. You probably have a slam here if there is some sort of fit, but that is hard to find out now. Fortunately, the vulnerability works in your favor here.You only have to defeat 3♥x by 2 tricks in order to beat all pairs bidding only game. At the table where I was watching, west doubled and was right. Down 2, and 70-something %, even with 12 tricks available in spades or clubs.
At another table, I saw the eventual winners bid like this. I got lost after the first round of bidding, though double was later explained as “negative, showing 4+♠” (sic!) which makes a little less incomprehensible. But still, why spades were considered trumps is not clear to me. On the other hand, the contract made for a 90%. And as this pair won, I’m not going to argue too much with success.
The full results of the event can be found here.