Monday November 24, 2014
The Maria João Lara team is the new 2014 Portugal’s Open Teams Champion
During this weekend was played the KO stage of the 2014 Portugal’s Open Teams Championship, where the Maria João Lara team = Maria João Lara, Manuel Capucho, Juliano Barbosa, António Palma, Pedro Pratas defeated Miguel Teixeira team.
The semifinals were: Maria João Lara vs Francisco Costa-Cabral and Manuel Oliveira vs Miguel Teixeira. The 5th to the 8th positions were: CBE – José Moraes, CBP – José C. Henriques, CBP – Carlos Gonçalves e NB-CBL – José Pinheiro.
All the Results: Click Here
This is a board played during the final:
Board 18 (Set 1/3)
Caputo in second position opened 1
and West interrupted with a 3
preventive call. Maria João Lara, aggressively invited to the heart slam informing about her support + spade control. N. Paz supported spades showing club lead interest.
Capucho continued accepting the invitation with a diamond cue bid, but North returned to the heart suit…as saying nothing to add. East competed in spades but South closed the heart slam.
After a club lead, declarer made 12 easy tricks.
At the other table, the bidding started the same way, but here North chose to say 4 instead of the 4 cue bid, East competed with 4, South passed and North chose to say 5…THE END.
In this table the declarer also made 12 tricks, and 14 IMPs for the champion.
At the end of the first set the Maria João Lara team was winning the match: 55 to 26. Texeira recovered 17 IMPs in the second set, but finally the champion added another 13 IMps to win the championship.