The Round of 16 of the 2013 Spingold faced Cayne and Grue teams, seeding 8 and 9 repectively.
Cayne (8): James Cayne, New York NY; Michael Seamon, Dania FL; Alfredo Versace – Lorenzo Lauria, Rome Italy; Ron Pachtmann, Kfar Saba Israel; Eldad Ginossar, Moshav Zofit Israel
Grue (9): Joe Grue, Las Vegas NV; Leslie Amoils, Toronto ON; Brad Moss, Denver CO; Thomas Bessis, Paris France; Peter Bertheau, Taby Sweden; Jacob Morgan, Madison WI
After the first 32 boards (played in two 16 boards sets) the match was:
1/16 | 17/32 | ||||
8 | Cayne | 7 | 12 | ||
9 | Grue | 17 | 67 |
Today we bring you board 30 where an excellent intervention by Grue helped his team score 10 IMPs.
At his table Bessis made a minimum upgrade to his hand… AKQJ97 deserves some extra points and opened 2NT, Bertheau his partner, answered 3NT: Bessis made 4, +430. Surely they must have felt they had done nothing special …
At the other table was lurking Grue and with his intervention he complicated enough the bidding to convert a routine sequence into something special.
Lauria opened his hand with a 1 bid and Versace answered 1NT. This gave Grue the opportunity to show his spade suit: 2.
Lauria doubled showing extras and Moss added pressure with his 3…
Now Versace could have chosen to pass, looking for a penalty double, (Grue would have been two down:-300) but he decided to double showing good values. Lauria could not know that the spades were blocked and that 3NT were cold, so the pair landed in 5…impossible to make…A, K y A signed the death certificate…
PD: Moss lead a little club… he was lucky, declarer had two clubs and no place to pitch the second one…