Falmouth Tournament

North Falmouth Sectional and Senior Regional

            The Vineyard bridge team distinguished itself at the ACBL tournaments at Falmouth last weekend, winning events in both the Sectional (silver points) and the Senior Regional (gold and red points). It is always amazing to me that our tiny little duplicate club does so well in the high-powered world of tournament bridge.

        Nancy and I will take home the Vineyard trophy, winning overall in flight C in the featured Senior events on Friday on Saturday - two-session Senior Pairs. On Friday there were 36 tables in play, and we narrowly missed winning the whole event. After the afternoon session, we had a section top and were in a virtual tie for the overall lead in A, but although our evening game was 55%, we had to settle for second in B and fourth in A overall. Saturday afternoon we had a terrible game, but bounced back in the evening session to win the C flight combined overall (11^th in B). There were 54 tables in the Saturday Senior Pairs.

     Ed Russell and Deirdre Ling were runners up for the Vineyard trophy, winning three I/N events overall, and finishing second in another. They were also fourth in the Sunday I/N Swiss teams. Ed and Deirdre won more points than any other I/N players in the tournament, and were tied for fourth among all players in the Sectional.

            Claus Buchthal, as usual, was amazing at almost 95 years old. He entered six events and won points in all of them. He was second in both B and A in the Friday afternoon silver point game, playing with his son Steven, and first in B (second in A) in the Saturday afternoon senior side game, playing with Elizabeth vonRiesenfelder.

Here are the standings for the Vineyard Trophy: Dan and Nancy Cabot 12.58; Ed Russell and Deirdre Ling 12.12; Bill Blakesley 7.18; Claus Buchthal 6.76; Barbara Besse 4.76; Robert and Ency Fokos 2.06; Eric Stikoff and Rhonda Cohen 1.70; Sue and Dale Collinson 1.03; Cecily Geenaway 1.02; Hugh Knipmeyer 0.44; Simmy Denhart and Gerry Averill 0.23.

            Here’s a hand from the Friday afternoon sessions:

Board 28: Dealer West, N-S vulnerable

                          ♠  AJT6

                          ♥  K2

                          ♦   KT92

                          ♣  T75

                              N                                                                               

     ♠ –                                   ♠  5

     ♥ AT97643                         ♥  Q85

     ♦ AQJ6       W            E      ♦  743                                     

     ♣ Q9                                  ♣  AKJ862                 

                                 S

                          ♠  KQ987432

                          ♥  J

                          ♦  85

                          ♣  43

Here’s how the bidding went at our table:

West    North   East   South

(Nancy)            (Me)                                                                                        .

1♥        Pass     2♣       4♠

Pass!    Pass     5♥        Pass

6♥!      all pass

            South must have certainly jumped in here at every table with some number of spades (2♠, 3♠, or 4♠). If partner has nothing at all, 4♠ could be down 3, but it’s unlikely that partner has nothing at all. South has only 6 of the points in the deck and neither Nancy or I have shown great strength yet. From our South’s perspective, 4♠ might even make, and if it doesn’t, it’s probably a good sacrifice.

          The 4♠ bid gave Nancy a problem. She has a strong hand, and South’s bid tells her that my values (I have at least 10 HCP) are probably not wasted in her void suit. But what should she bid? 5♥ underdescribes her hand, but if she’s going to cue bid 5♠, she may be committing us to a slam when we have a misfit. 5♦ is possible, but if I answer with 5♥, I may be just putting her back in her first suit with a low doubleton. Nancy chose to pass. This is a forcing pass. After an opening bid and a raise to the 2-level, followed by a preempt, I cannot let the preempt stand. She was giving me a choice of doubling 4♠, raising her hearts, or further describing my hand. Pass was a great bid, which Nancy followed with another. After I bid 5♥, she could reevaluate her hand. Now she knows I have a strong 3-card raise in hearts. With a 10-card heart fit and help for my (at least) 5-card club suit, she went on to 6♥.             There was nothing unusual about the play. The opening lead was the ♠A, which Nancy ruffed in her hand. The preempt told Nancy there was not much chance of losing two hearts tricks. She put down the ace, dropping the jack from South, and led a heart toward the queen. Even if North had started with KJx, she still would have lost only one heart trick. Could South have held KJx in hearts? Yes, but the chances were tiny. After taking the ♥K, North had nothing effective to do. When the clubs behaved, Nancy didn’t need to try the losing finesse in diamonds.            The results in our section were interesting. Only four of 13 E-Ws bid 6♥ (making +980 for 10 ½ match points out of 12. Most of the rest stopped in game for +480 and 3 ½ match points. Now look at the North hand. Wouldn’t you have raised South’s preempt? I’d have bid 5♠ over 5♥. Yet apparently only three of thirteen Norths did. One N-S was allowed to play undoubled for down 2 (-200) and a top of 12 matchpoints. The other two were doubled (-500), which meant that they beat the four teams whose opponents bid the slam, but lost to all those whose opponents didn’t. This result got N-S only 3 ½ matchpoints, but I still think 5♠ was the right bid with the North cards. I might have even bid 6♠ over 6♥, figuring my ♠A was going to get ruffed in a heart contract. -800 would be a good score if I’m about to look at -980.

            If you played a particularly interesting hand in any pairs game, let me know and I’ll find the hand record and put it up here, along with your commentary.