Match 3 - Jordan

For our last match of the day, we are playing against Jordan, relative unknowns in the tournaments. For this match, we fielded our third pair, Fabian and Alex.

Our team is based mainly on 2 pairs with the third pair coming in to allow us to rest and recharge when needed. In such a long tournament, it is qt important to have a third pair. Even for the PABF championships before this, my pair and Kelvin/Liyu have played the majority of the matches.

In Sabine Auken's book, she talked about the elements of a team. In a successful team, it is important for everyone to know their roles and tasks. In this respect, I must emphasize that Alex/Fabian were great in the sense that they knew they wont be playing so much, yet they were ever ready to come on when needed. Whenever they played, they try their best and really played well in both PABF and WYC. Without them, we wont be anywhere close to what we have accomplished.

For that match against Jordan, our 3rd pair performed impeccably. there were 9 dbl-digit swings, 7 in our favour and the remaining 2 came from some bad bridge from our side. So there were no doubts that they did their part.

One of the adverse swing came from my foolishness:

Holding:
♠ A K Q T 5 4 2
♥ A K 7
♦ K
♣ T 3

Vul against not, partner opened 3C, you force with 3S and to your surprise pd raised to 4S. Do you continue? Well, as you should have noticed by now, in close slam decisions like this, I prefer to bid on.. 4NT RKC.. oops, 5C:no ace , 5S and pd put down a disappointing:

♠ 9 8
♥ 8 6 2
♦ 2
♣ K Q J 9 7 6 5

It was as unhelpful a hand as it can get. On a heart lead, I had one loser too many. There are a number of ways, including running trumps or leading D to create an illusion. it is fair to say I chose a wrong line, namely to lead the T C at trick 2. Opps did well to read the position correctly, took the ace and gave his pd a ruff. The opps at other table stopped in 4, so 13 imps away.

As mentioned in the bulletin the next day, I suppose it is right to pass 4S as pd could/should cuebid if he has the hand that can make 6S. It was until dinner-time discussion that I realise another mistake. 5C is cold, I should have passed my pd's 5C response. I just bidded 5S too hastily and didnt give other bids any thought. This would be a common problem which will prove to be critical later on in the tournament.

luckily for us, this error wasnt too costly as we continue to do good things on both tables to run out winners 92-23 in imps (25-2 in VPs)

so 68VPs on the first day gave us joint first with Israel, not bad a start for a country playing in it's first ever world youth.