From Murchison New Zealand … the WSMG exciting finish

Ray and I had a wonderful day in Hamner where the hot springs were well hot and the breakfast as promised was 3 awesome courses. Murchison is an isolated small resort town which is pretty empty as the season hasn’t really started. We did some hiking and are contemplating white water rafting. The Internet here is excellent which gave us the opportunity to check out the world championships and what a finish.

Before the bridge,,, here is a picture of me wielding an axe in middle earth

and today resting on one of our hikes…

 cv

So here we are after dinner going through the final match of the finals. The Chinese ladies started down 53 imps. So how did they make the match exciting? It started right at board 1 where they were the only table of the 8 in play to get to 4S. It need the club ace onside, a 3-2 spade break and a bit more. Do you want to be in this game not vulnerable. Let’s call it a Hamman game … one that makes and besides down 53 imps you can’t just hope for the opposition to mistakes.

In general the way to win imps on board 2 was to avoid bidding game. The Chinese ladies were not going to do that vulnerable but somehow they made it (the only table to do so) on a brutal defense that I won’t describe. So the aggressive Chinese ladies had pulled within 31 imps and it seemed possible that they might somehow pull off a huge comeback.

Meanwhile in the seniors not much had yet happened and we arrive at board 3 with the USA trailing Japan by 24 imps.

Board 3 was an interesting deal with a lot of imps changing hands across the field. Here are the North-South hands

North

• S void
• H AKJ843
• D J872
• C QJ10

South

• 85432
• Q2
• AQ96
• 42

After Wang opened 2C Precision which could be 6C or 5C with a 4 card major, Smith overcalled 2H and Ming doubled. After that England arrived in 4H and got the lead of the SK. This tap meant that Smith had to play diamonds for no losers because even with the 3-2 trump breakshe didn’t have the time to set up clubs and concede a diamond trick. With repeated spade leads the defense would set up a spade winner before she could get diamonds going. The DJ was covered and from the play and auction she could deduce that West had at most 2 diamonds so reasonably she hooked into the D10. Unlucky and 6 imps for China who played in part-score at er table. Sam Lev made it for the USA senior team on a similar auction and opening lead. At trick 2 BEFORE drawing trump he lead the CJ from his hand. When West won, worried about a possible club ruff, he returned a trump and Sam was home. I like that play, don’t you?

Things are getting closer but more about these exciting matches, next time.