Friday, May 22, 2009

Fingerspitzgefühl

Nation's Cup is an excellent 2-day invitational tournament held each year in Bonn-Bad Godesberg. 2009 was the 24th occurence, all organized by expatriate Swede Göran Mattsson. Everything is top-notch and the format is national teams, Germany as the host providing two, divided in two groups meeting in each other in a round-robin with the winners from each group squaring off in a final. The other teams continue in a Swiss for the remaining prizes.

This year the field consisted of 16 teams, Canada and a bunch of Europeans, and Sweden was represented by Ulf Nilsson - BG Olofsson and PG Eliasson - Thomas Magnusson. Teammates played well but we didn't play up to par and a 8th place finish was a disappointment for sure.

Here's a fine display of "fingerspitzgefuhl" by PG in our 2nd match. First take a poke at the auction:

AT2
-
KT987643
KQ

All red and the auction starts (1S) - pass - (2C) to you with 2C showing 10+ with 3-card spade support. Yes, this is Europe and bids that doesn't carry the same meaning as in the club game are allowed. It seems pretty obvious to bring the diamond suit into the picture, but at what level?

PG opted for 'the full Monty' and jumped to 5D which was greeted by RHO with a red card. The lead was the K of hearts and a decent dummy came down.

K4
T4
J2
JT97654

AT2
-
KT987643
KQ

A surprisingly few number of hearts in dummy is the initial reaction. What can the opponents hands look like? We know spades to be 5-3 and hearts are very likely to be 5-6. If diamonds are 0-3 we're toast so assume 1-2. So this looks like 5-5-1-2 vs 3-6-2-2 with KQ of hearts to your left.

Ruff the lead and play the K of clubs to find out who has the ace. West wins and shifts to a spade. This pretty much guarantees that East has the ace of diamonds and PG played three rounds of spades, ruffing in dummy and a diamond to the king, dropping the offside queen for a gratifying +750 and 12 imps.

Full results are available here:

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