Lockdown has opened up a new venue for bridge players all over the world: HOME! Last Sunday the Helgeland Junior Bridge Club organised an auction pairs online to raise money for their Juniors to play in the prestigious Marit Sveaas pairs tournament at the end of May. They opened the bidding online at the end of January, which gave everyone a chance to bid for the star of their choice, from near and far, raising more than £13,000. I was lucky enough to ‘buy’ young Danish superstar Dennis Bilde. Sadly, I was muppet of the match! On the very first board the visuals on the RealBridge website made me think Dennis had overcalled 1♠, so with my two Aces I bid a no-trump which immediately got doubled. Dennis, thoughtful as ever, pulled to 2◆ (also doubled) which cost -500 for an outright bottom! And I didn’t get a lot better.
Test yourself on this old beard, given to me by one of my first teachers, illustrating the importance of thinking before playing to the first trick:
South was forced to bid what she thought she could make – and awaited dummy with trepidation.
It turned out that she landed a good one – trump support and a source of tricks to boot. So she ruffed the Ace of Spades and did what? Went off!
Yes, trumps could have been 2-2 or the Diamond finesse working, but it doesn’t deflect from the fact that on the ♠Ace Declarer should simply discard the ♣Ace (for style points). Now she can ruff the next Spade, take two rounds of trumps and then K and Q of Clubs. When they live, she can enter dummy with the third trump and throw all North’s Diamond losers away.
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