And Your Little Dog Too
“I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too.” Sometimes you don’t just want to win, you want to win and be done with it.
Going into the fifth set of the quarterfinals Team Canada was feeling pretty good. They had made it through the first four segments with a virtual tie with Team USA 1. But this segment was all USA.
With the score still 119-118 for the US Weinstein took advantage of the vulnerability (white on red) to make an off-center 3♦ bid with
As a result the USA missed the 4-4 heart fit and played in 3NT while Canada played in 4♥. As the cards lie 3NT fails on a club lead with a 5-3 club break while 4H makes when hearts play for no losers missing QJ543.
It really isn’t clear to me which is the better contract. Even if clubs break 5-3 or worse you may not get that lead and 3NT will make.
At this point Canada led 129 to 119 but aside for 1 imp on Board 15 that was the last imps Canada would score.
USA not only didn’t give up any imps they scored big numbers on a lot of boards … they didn’t just want to take the lead they wanted to win big … enough already.
The biggest loss came on Board 16. Let’s start with Smith-Thurston in the Closed Room. They arrived in a slam that might have made on a good day.
Jeff Smith held this hand and opened 1♠ . Paul Thurston bid a game forcing 2♦ . Jeff bid 2♥ and Paul showed spade support with 2♠ .
After a series of cuebids Jeff bid keycard. Paul showed one keycard I presume and Jeff asked for the trump queen. Paul denied the trump queen. It seemed reasonable that missing a keycard and the trump queen Jeff would settle for five. But he went on to the slam. I am not sure why. Maybe in their auction Thurston could have had four spades although most players would bid a hand with good diamonds and four spades differently. Maybe he just wanted to play for a swing since he had good enough spades to pick up the queen onside to four. But today the queen was offside and he had no play.
Down 1.
Things were even worse for Canada in the Open Room. The auction started off the same. Korbel passed in first, Levin, North opened 1♠ and Weinstein responded 2♦ . Now West, Korbel entered the auction with 2♥ . I am sure he did this to get a heart lead. He figured at this vulnerability he might not go for too much into a vulnerable game even if they doubled him right there. He was soon to find out the size of that number. Levin doubled for penalty and that was passed out. Woops!
The defense was merciless. Levin started with two rounds of spades ruffed by Korbel. Korbel played a diamond trying for a ruff in dummy but Weinstein just led trump through. Eventually Levin was able to draw trump and the defence took all the tricks except for the trump ace and the spade ruff at trick two. Down 5. 1100. 16 imps. Ouch.
The segment ended with USA1 leading by 51 imps, 181 to 130. USA1 did everything right.
Good try Team Canada. And that leaves the fine USA1 team to represent North America’s hopes in the Bermuda Bowl. And I like their chances
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Bridge-related
Club pip missing in the East hand, he has 5 clubs I believe.
Why does the second diagram say “Smith” in the North instead of “Levin”?
Anyway, my main point is that you’re right the second hand was down 5 — but that means declarer took three tricks. The third trick came in the endgame, when Levin was down to AJ of clubs and JT of spades. His partner had indicated suit preference for clubs, and if Levin had played CA and another, or CJ, then the defense would have taken the rest (trumps were all gone, and Weinsten had good diamonds). Instead Levin played the SJ, so dummy’s queen scored. Only a 1-imp difference, to be sure.
South was stranded in the dummy, and could only score one more trump and the heart ace: down four, for a penalty of 1100. That was a gain of 14 imps for the Sharif team. In the replay, Zia as North intervened with a double a round earlier, and two spades by West was the final contract.