Tuesday, October 28, 2008

India vs Italy in China

Date: 10th Oct 2008 - Friday
Venue: Beijing International Conventional center.
Focus: U-26 team swiss round 15 of 17: India vs Italy.
India's aim: To retain the last position.

Players: Guthi and SP in Open Room
Dashu and Arijit in Closed room ( Vinoth & Karan were supposed to play - but we were
misinformed.)

You can find our results here.

I shall post about what happened in the first two deals here, others will follow. Most deals are intersting. A cute Italian girl who was my screen mate. Lets call her - cig and her partner aig (amorphous Italian guy?)


Board-1

Full credit to SP for finding a diamond switch at trick 2. ( little credit to Guthi for not stupidly leading Ace of spades?)

The auction.

P - P - 2S - X
4S* - X - End.

Q1) Do you agree with the first Dbl by West? (2S is a regular weak bid)
Q2) after winning the first heart with the Jack, what do you shift to?
Q3) do you agree with the 4S by north?

A1) Its fine by HCP count, and the rule that there is 3 card support for other suits, such auctions run into trouble w/o 4 cards in the other-M. What say? Another option is a 2NT overcall, especially because others have passed.
My order of preference is this X>2NT>Pass>3D. What is yours?

A2)
Play went: Heart to Jack; low D - Q - Ace - ruff; club A; club Q - discard H; spade A; low spade.
cig had no way of goin to dummy now. ended up losing 1S+1H+2D+1C.
I think declarer can hold the contract to -1 on this defence by cross ruffing the minors suits - losing 2S+2H only.

Full credit to SP for finding a diamond switch at trick 2. ( little credit to Guthi for not stupidly leading Ace of spades? Like in the other table?) removing the entry to the table incase clubs get set up. He did not cash Heart Ace thinking it could get ruffed - placing me with 4Hs - which is the right thing to do.

I can easily imagine what happened at the other table: spade Ace, heart shift, ruff the thrid heart, spade king, club to Q, then Ace, ruff one, ruffing finesse of D gives a total of 10 tricks.

Correction: Vinoth points out that after diamond switch the contract can be made peacefully by crossruffing. So it turns SP has to switch to a spade at trick two - stealing the first 4 tricks. It follows that the contract is cold after the lead of Spade Ace.

A3)
The toughest question? I wonder what is 3C in many juntas agreements ( in 2S-(X)-3C! )
by an unpassed hand its obly forcing, by a passed hand should it be fit showing? as in raise to 3S with values-length in clubs. 4C is surely that by a passed/unpassed hand. This will help partner to decide if its worth a save in 4S - if opps bid 4H of course.

************************************************************************************

Board-2

Bidding was very intersting here.
1D* - 1S - 2C - 2S
P - P - 2NT* - End

1D was precision. 2NT was some kind of scrambling showing minors, denying 4 carder heart(?) with a 4 carder heart I would double. SP passed it to play.
I managed to get 1S+4H+1D+1C for down 1. I don't see any line to make it on low spade lead. Opps will run with 4 spades, 1 club and 1 diamond.


Q1) Do you open Easts hand K9xx;AKxx;J8xx;T

A1) I agree with opening a 2.5 trick hand which has both majors. Yes, even in standard.

************************************************************************************

Cheers
Guthi

6 comments:

Ashok said...

Board 1: I don't agree with the first double. I think 2NT is clearly better because of the combination of three reasons: (i) It shows the spade stopper (it will probably suffice against an opposing 6-2 break), (ii) it doesn't lie about the heart length, (iii) and it limits the strength well. Partner should be able to place the final contract. Double is justified, however, if you're looking at your screenmate instead of at your cards (bastard!). It's only unethical to stare at partner.

The lead suggests strongly that declarer is 6241, (5 hearts with partner gives declarer at least five diamonds). I can think of nothing better than a diamond shift at trick 2 (which is pretty good thinking). I don't know why playing trumps is bad. I also don't see why the lead of the ace of spades is bad, because the raise to four spades is surely based on distribution (in view of partner's double).

Board 2: The East hand satisfies the Rule of Twenty-One and a Half.

Prashanth said...

On the second one, I interpreted your 2NT correctly but chose to pass because (1) 3D needs a trick more (2) I didn't think my spades would be worth anything in a suit contract. Turned out to be the wrong decision. Little things like this add 5 IMPs here, 5 IMPs there, sigh.

Vinoth said...

1st board: Contract can be made as the cards lay..
after the D return, cash club A, ruff a C, ruff a D, ruff a C and ruff a D, play Q C and (i) discard a H if E discards a H; (ii) ruff with T if east discards a D (iii) overuff with K if E ruffs.

Vinoth said...

screw it.. there is a mistake in the above line.. :D

Anonymous said...

I forgot. On the second board, why is 2NT scrambling? What does responder do with an invitational hand and spades securely stopped? Here SP's hand strongly suggests that Guthi does not have a spade stopper, so he can guess that perhaps Guthi is showing the minors.

In my opinion, 2NT should be scrambling (without explicit agreement) only when a natural notrump makes no sense and a scrambling hand is not ruled out in the auction. Here, Guthi has no need to scramble, I think. If SP's pass is forcing, doubling is 100 % clear. Even if not, I would double. Note that Guthi has more or less denied 4 hearts by not doubling at his first turn.

Anonymous said...

Board-1: I'll correct the post. Thanks Vinoth.

Board-2: I too was not sure if 2NT was scrambling in that position. Bid it anyways expecting SP to figure out. (Which he did! ) Looking back at it I feel that 2NT there is not scrambling. Should read more and write down the agreements.