Wednesday 28 September 2011
The world championships for the Bermuda Bowl (Open series), Venice Cup (women”s series) and Senior Bowl will begin in a couple of weeks. For the first time in a very long while, the US will not be represented by the Nickell team. Instead, one of the US”s two teams will be the youngest it has fielded for a very long time. On today”s deal from the trial to select the team, the contracts were different at both tables. You may say: “So what?” but I think you”ll agree that the discrepancy between the contracts was remarkable even taking those variations into account. I”ll show you just the East-West cards – see what contract you think you would have reached. Game all, dealer South.
At both tables there were two passes to North, who opened the bidding with one heart. When Justin Lall for the youngsters (OK, he is 29, but that is young in bridge terms) held the East cards he chose a conventional overcall of two hearts, showing five spades and five cards in a minor suit. He intended to bid again in the later auction to show the power of his hand – for the moment, he was content to give some indication of its distribution.
South passed and West bid 2NT, a request for East to show his minor suit. Lall might have jumped to four clubs with his extra values, or tried a cue bid of three hearts before revealing his minor, but such convoluted courses were not for him. He”d been asked to show his suit nbso online casino reviews so he showed it in the most emphatic way he could, by jumping to six clubs.
Joe Grue, his partner, put down a pretty suitable dummy, but as was remarked after the event he didn”t even need the six points he had. With North as expected holding the king and queen of hearts, and with trumps dividing 2-1 and spades 4-3, declarer would have made his slam if the ace and queen of diamonds had been the four and two respectively.
At the other table Fred Gitelman, not exactly an old-timer either though his accomplishments in the bridge world are legion, chose a different path. Over one heart he bid a simple one spade, hoping to show his strength as the auction developed. There was only one problem with this – the auction didn”t develop, and he was left to play in his overcall. He made it, in fact he made a couple of overtricks, but he didn”t make the US team.