What is the right contract? European Teams

If you haven’t been closely following the European Open Team Trials (selecting teams for the 2013 Bermuda Bowl), the teams were divided into two groups.  The top nine in each group proceeded to a section stage where they are playing nine more match, one against each of the top nine in the other group.  There scores (first round and second round) against all the final seventeen other teams in the competition will produce their score and final ranking.

So we already have the first eight scores for each team (their score against the other finalist in their group) and the teams are now playing their remaining nine matches.

At the end of “Round 19” with seven matches to go the top five finishers in the combined group are: Monaco (the new powerhouse of Europe), England, Germany, Italy and Israel in that order.

I found Board 5 an interesting deal.  The East-West pair has 27 high card points, yet no game is certain.  They have to answer the question, “What denomination?”

But of course East-West are not examining 26 cards when they select the contact and I would expect 3NT might be a top choice.

As it turns out the only contract that doesn’t make is 5♦ !  This was the whole deal

With hearts breaking 4-4 3NT makes on any lead.  With spades 4-3 and nothing wacky happening 4♠ makes.  But with diamonds 4-1 there are three top losers in a diamond contact on a normal heart lead, a trump and two hearts.  

So once more it is right to avoid that most hated of all game contracts, five of a minor.

In the Russia-Sweden match Dubinin-Gromob for Russia played in 4♠  making five losing an imp to Sweden when Slyvan-Wrang played in 3NT making 6 on a diamond lead.

In the England-Germany match both pairs went down 1 in 5♦  (so nobody was punished for getting to what I thinking is technically the superior contract).  Likewise in the Greece-Romania match.

When the leaders Monaco played Turkey both pairs arrived in the spade game.  And in the Iceland-Ireland match Hanlon-Mcgann for Ireland won an imp when they made 13 tricks on a club lead in 3NT and Einarsson-Adalsteinn made only 12 tricks in 4♠ .

In fact this board was only a significant swing in the Bulgaria-Poland and the Switzerland-Israel match where Poland and Switzerland were punished for playing in 5♦ .  The most popular contract (about half of all chances) was the spade game and oddly the least popular was 3NT.

Now the technical answer: 4♠ : Missing seven in spade: a 4-3 spade break is about 62 percent with some slight extra chances when spades are 5-2.  3NT: MIssing eight hearts the chance that hearts will NOT break 4-4 are 68 percent but there are a few cases where hearts might block and sometimes a heart may not be lead.  So 3NT is somewhat more than 32 percent. 5♦ : Holding 8 diamonds the chance of a 3-2 break is 68%.  

So it would seem that the most likely contract is the only one that doesn’t make.