Day 2 – after a total of 9 matches – Penticton CNTC

Well it has been a rough afternoon. In the third match of the day Keith and I sat out, – turns out we lost that one by 17 imps – scoring 10 out of a max 25 VP. We had slipped to 8/9 in the standings.

Keith and I sat in for the next match versus David Sabourin, Dave Colbert, Danny Miles, and Jon Steinberg. We lost this match by 21 imps – scoring only 9 VP of a possible 25 VP. They have not posted the scores yet but we have 136 out of a possible 225 – so we could be anywhere from 9th to 11th right now – the field still bunched up.

The last hand of this set was wild and woolly at our table. I held an innocuous hand – Q98 108x AQ6 987x. Keith opened 1C, no one vul. RHO said 2C – showing both majors, and I passed. LHO bid 3H, and Keith freely bid 4C. I was planning to bid 5C or even 4NT (a happy 5C bid) over the expected 4H bid, but David Sabourin bid the unexpected 5 clubs !

So I bid six clubs. Jon on my left bid 6H passed around to me. Maybe I should double to involve partner in the decision here. Some message like – well I have a trick, and if you don’t you can pull it. The theory being I would just pass 6H if I was reasonably sure I was beating it.

Anyway I passed it out, and Keith led a low diamond and dummy had about what you would expect:

AKJ10xx
KJ9xx
xx
Void

I won the Ace of diamonds and gave Keith a diamond ruff for down 1. Wow ! We won 7 imps on that board.

First hand of the match I had a brain spasm. I held 9x KJ10xx Q32 7xx

RHO opened 1S, and I passed. Jon on my left bid 2S and Keith said double. RHO said 4Spades and I chose of course not to save in 5H as that could be very expensive. All passed and I led the jack of hearts.

Dummy had Qxx xxx xx K10xxx

Keith won the Ace of hearts and played another heart as David ruffed on my right with a small spade. He played the Ace of diamonds from his hand; Keith playing the ten and me the two.

We play standard count signals – so Keith probably had an even number of diamonds.

Next came the Jack of diamonds from declarer and I stared at that for a minute or so. I was having a hard time envisioning how we were going to beat this hand. For sure, I should have just let this ride around to Keith – maybe he would have a better bead on what is required. He is marked of course with the diamond king.

I convinced myself to play the DQ from hand, thinking I could push trumps through the dummy from my side, perhaps protecting Keith’s holding on some layouts. Pretty obscure thinking actually.

So I played the D Queen, and Keith played the D King on top of it. Shit ! This meant declarer had six diamonds – and likely 5 spades and singletons in the offsuits.

We could not beat the hand now. Keith tapped declarer again in hearts, but it was crucial that declarer no longer needed the trump queen in dummy to ruff the diamonds good.

He banged out a spade honour which Keith correctly ducked, and then another spade honour from his hand which Keith won. Although Keith and declarer and dummy were all down to one trump, declarer had any answer for whatever Keith did.

Had I ducked the diamond like a human being rather than play the queen like a donkey, declarer would thrash and slash and end up down 1. We lost 12 imps on that board.

Like I keep saying, there will be errors, there will be bad boards. Let’s see if we can dig in our heels and tough this sucker out.

If anyone would like to contact me directly I can be reached at rosstaylor999@hotmail.com