Well, It's the County Pairs Final at Oxford BC on April 4th 2004....  You are playing a strong club system with Gillian Lonsdale and you've managed about 60% in the first session of  20 boards - things are going reasonably well.  You have your tea and cakes and again you aren't making too many mistakes in the second session.............  however you eventually sit down against Messers Smith and Wilson and pick up as East-

          Q8
          J82
          K942
          Q632

Not very exciting is it!  Any how Nick on your left passes and GIllian opens 1N (12-15).  Alan passes and so do you.  Ah well a nice quiet 1N to play for Partner........ you can have a doze!  No, Dr Smith is there with 2H whch is passed round to you and you reluctantly give in.

Gillian leads the 3 of diamonds and dummy goes down with-

       K10943
       643
       J8
       AJ5

Dummy plays low and your K goes to declarer's ace.  A diamond comes straight back (no surprise there then) and Gillian wins with the Queen.  The ace of hearts is played followed by the 10.  Nick wins with the King, ruffs a diamond and leads the lowest spade from dummy.  You rise with the Queen, Nick playing the 6 and Gillian the 5.  Now what?  Time for a bit of a trance.  Who has the spade 2?  If Gillian has it then Nick's hand is probably  2 spades (J6?), 5 hearts 3 diamonds and 3 clubs.  If Nick has it, then he has a doubleton club instead of a doubleton spade.  A quick tot-up of the points played to date means that Gillian must have the Club King and it looks right to knock the ace of clubs out now, hoping partner has the club 10.  So I return the club 2.  Gillian plays the King and Declarer the Ace.  Then a Club is played from Dummy and it's crunch time.  I play low from dummy and Partner wins with the 10.  I'm now convinced that Nick has a doubleton spade and we have the defence right.  We are  going to take 2 spades, one heart, one diamond and two clubs and it doesn't matter what Gillian plays as there is no entry to the spades.  Gillian exits with a diamond and the hand is over - but not in the way I had hoped!!  The full hands were-

                                        K10943
                                        643
                                        J8
                                        AJ5
        AJ5                                                        Q8
        A10                                                        J82
        Q1053                                                    K942
        K1074                                                    Q632
                                        762
                                        KQ975
                                        A65
                                        98
So I needed to score my spade ruff for one down and at least a few match points as most Wests were allowed to play in 1N making at least 7 tricks, usually more.  I think I should have risen with the Club queen when one is led from Dummy, 'cause if Partner has the 10 and it is standing up, she will make it. It was unecessarily risky to duck as declarer might have 10,8 doubleton.  Then, when I win with the Queen I should play my spade and let Partner decide.  I think playing that way that indicates that I had a doubleton spade in the first place.  Ah well, 2 hearts tick scored us 2 out of a total of 16.  If we beat 2H then we don't score much better either but at least it would be a positive score!   Still we got it back on the next board when Partner got the play in 3N right to make 10 tricks by dropping Nick's stiff king of spades when Allan had not led a club from 10xx but chose the 10 from 10x of diamonds instead (we had effectively shown both majors between us)!

At the end of the day we had had another 60% session to finish second to Csaba Raduly and Michael Hosking who had scored a staggering 69% in the first session and more than held it together in the second to average  66.6%.  A good outing for Abingdon Bridge Club!

On to the Corwen Trophy!

Clive Keep April 2004.