Friday February 20 2015
The Slava Cup 2015 is being held from February 20 to February 22, 2015 in the Danilovskaya Hotel. Official Site.
10 teams with many of the best bridge pairs in the world, are participating in the teams tournament. After the first 6 rounds and with only three more rounds to arrive to the semifinals, the Vitas team leads the field.
Vytautas VAINIKONIS, the leader team captain, is a well known business mas from Vilnius, Lithuania, and with his team participates in many of the better european bridge torunaments. To understand the excellence of his team is enough to mention that in 2013 the team Vitas (Vainikonis-Olanski, Skrzypczak-Gierulski y Fisher-Schwartz) won the Monaco Patton defeating the Zimmermann team: Fantoni-Nunes, Helgemo-Helness and Zimmermann-Multon.
Vitas Team
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Here are some of the boards that led Vitas to the number 1 position after the first 6 rounds.
In Round 4 Vitas played against Germany: Welland-Auken, and Piekarek-Smirnov, winning 28 to 7. These are some of that match boards:
Board 26
Gierulski opened 2
, showing a weak major and Welland chose to pass. North answered 2
, pass or correct, and South said 2
. Welland considered a good moment to show his hearts with a 3 bid and North with A Q x support, and 12 honor points competed to 3. Auken closed the heart game and South with a heart singleton, and his partner’s vulnerable support competed with 4.
The contract was cold, only two losers. At the other table, after the same opening bid N/S chose to play a spade partscore and lost 10 IMPs. 
Board 27
After two Pass, South opened 1
(Polish) and Auken very quickly showed his partner a weak hand with a spade void, perhaps he would like to make a sacrifice. South showed his spade suit, and North closed the NT game. South chose to play the spade game.
Welland led his 10. Auken covered dummy’s Q with her A and switched to a heart. Welland hold up his ace, and dummy’s Q won the trick, the declarer continued with the K, and West covered with his A.
West played his 9. The declarer won the trick with the K, pitched a heart in the Q and played a heart. After winning the trick Welland with his ace, he returned a trump, dummy’s Q won the trick, declarer ruffed a club in his hand, continued ruffing his last heart in dummy…and claimed 10 tricks.
At the other table N/S played the same contract but declarer with a not so good play was one down.
In the first round Vitas faced Poland and won 23 to 21.
Board 3
After a 1 opening bid, North started showing his spades. South showed his two colored strong hand with a reverse: 2, Kowalski continued with 3. South closed the NT game, buying the bidding…The declarer made 12 tricks.
At the other table Fisher-Schwartz were more ambitious and were rewarded with 10 IMPs.
Fisher also opened 1 and his partner also showed his spades. Fisher also reversed 2, but now Schwartz chose to show his diamond three cards support. This started a cue bidding sequence, that ended in a keycards asking bid. When North listen that his partner had two keycards with the trump queen, closed the diamond slam.
All suits were nice for declarer and 10 IMPs for N/S. 
Board 5
In this board the leader team lost 11 IMPs.
East opened 1 (Polish), and West answered 1. The opener continued with 2NT, showing 18-19 balanced points, Gawrys jumped to 6 and Tuszynski decided that if his partner could make 12 tricks without knowing for sure that he had the trump king and queen … then 7 had to be the ideal contract.
The nice diamond king position…helped them to arrive to 13 tricks and to win 11 IMPs when at the other table E/W only played the club slam.
Esta entrada también está disponible en: Spanish