And the Slava Cup finished too!
In these four days of stay in Moscow something very special happened! We had four days of warm sun. The inhabitants say that in this period of the year this is incredible. The temperatures were very warm for these latitudes (between -10 and -3 °C).
Before speaking about the tournament in detail, please let me congratulate Henri Fissore, my team-mate in this competition. Henri is a well known player of Monaco team; he is not a professional bridge player, but once again he demonstrated his talent. He alternated with Franck Multon and Geir Helgemo, which are champion players but with very different styles. So Henri had to face an hard task, but he perfectly switched these two champions and kept relaxed just like a veteran.
The trio played a french standard system with some conventions, or better: the conventions were written in the convention card and were valid for Henri and Franck. Geir, as usual, said: “well, you can write down the conventions, anyway I will do as I want! I will gain my 10 IMPs and then we can talk about this!”
Even when he is playing with Tor, Geir doesn’t like using many conventions. Of course they play some of them, but compared to most of the strong pairs they are essentially pures. Bridge is in their DNA and they speak with it!
Let’s see some boards: 2 boards from the last round. You hold:
and after your partner’s 1
opening the bidding goes:
1 = 14+ with or 15+ balanced
1
= 0-11 with 4+
1 = 4 or 23+ balanced
1NT = 5-9 with 6
2 = Relay
2
= 6322
2NT = 23+ balanced, no 4
3 = minimum
4 = cue bid
4 = no cue bid, no cue bid, cue bid
5 = asks for values in
What would you bid now?
While you are thinking, let’s see the second hand. Click Here to continue reading.