October 23: At the end of the second session of the pairs Cavendish, in the Open Gromov-Dubinin were first, and in the Ladies Cavendish the first pair was Smederevac Jovi y Neve Joanna. These are some of the 10 boards of the third session.
Few pairs arrived to the slam. Grue-Moss that were fighting the pole position, had a problem in this board, after a weak NT opening bid by Grue, Moss showed his 4441 short diamond and y Grue dedicated a lot of effort to arrive to the club slam, but on the way he used the 5NT call and his partner thought they had all the keycards and decided to play the club grand slam, one down. 10 pairs played 3NT (+71 points), 9 pairs played the club slam (218 points).
West-East was one of the few that played the only winning game, but because of a misinterpretation, when East thought that his partners double showed 4 heart cards. They were so lucky to find trumps 3-3 and scored a TOP…Fantoni-Nunes the € 57.000 pair should not have felt good about the board result … the fate of some is the bad luck of others … Only three pairs played game … the rest were down…
After Levin’s 1NT strong opening bid, West showed his hearts with a 2 diamond bid and East with such nice diamonds chose to pass. The pair scored +150. In almost all the tables North showed his spade suit (with or without interference) and N/S ended playing a partscore in spades done.
Board 8
Very few pairs could resist the slam temptation…that is doomed because of the terrible breaks. Vainikonis was one of the few to not let him be seduced by the siren song and after seeing both misfit with his partners suits decided to play only game and he was rewarded with an excellent TOP. The majority of the pairs arrived to the slam in club or spades … who could imagine such a distribution …