February 22, 2013: Today is the first day of the main event of the II Copenhagen Bridge Invitational. This is a IMPs-Pairs tournament with matches of 8 boards each. Today we bring you two slams that we could follow in the VG of BBO.
After two Pass, Martin Schaltz opened his hand with a 1 bid, Dennis Bilde begun to describe his hand with a double and South raised the bets with a 3 bid showing 5 or more diamonds and a weak hand. Jepsen seeing his 4 diamond cards, learned right away:
1) his partner had a diamond void.
2) and all his values and distribuiton were useful
So he showed his squalid 6 clubs. Dennis declared the spade slam.
Lead: A.
When declarer saw the dummy and the lead, located the missing high cards in opener’s hand and played accordingly. Ruffed the lead, continued with the A ruffed a heart with the A, and follow with a club to his Q. Ruffed another heart in dummy and returned to his hand ruffing a diamond. Now was trump time (4 rounds), North after the first two rounds of spades, pitched two diamonds. Now Bilde played his Q, and Schaltz had to win with his king and play club and give declarer his 12 trick and a very deserved 980 score.
In other table Hanlon & Hackett also arrived to the spade slam and Hanlon, the declarer, played a similar and also winning line. The same lead A. Hanlon ruffed to continue with to the A, heart finesse to the Q and ruffed a heart in dummy. Now club finesse, and trump time. Fleisher in North, in the first trump round played his 7, in the next two he pitched diamonds, and in the third one knowing what was going on he through a heart, but that made declarer’s 9 the 12 trick. If he would have pitched a diamond the end would have been exactly as Bilde’s end…
In the second match of the day N/S Fredin-Fallenius vs T.Bessis-M.Bessis in E/W.
In the last hand of their match F-F developed a nice bidding sequence and reached a nice slam:
After an inicial Pass from Thomas Bessis, Peter Fredin opened the bidding with a 1 bid, meaning:
1=2+, if BAL can have 5 + , but cant have 5 or .
Fallenius answered 1= Relay, inviting or better. Fredin redeclared 1NT Bal:
11-13, No 5 clubes (332), posible 5 (332) or 17-19.
The 2 were a relay FG and the 3 showed the 17-19 PH with 5 clubes (332). 3 another relay. After Fredin’s 3NT, Fallenius invited to slam with 4 forcing a 4 answer, to continue 4NT, showing a better hand than if he would have said 4NT directly.
Fredin accepted the invitation asking partner to chose the slam, when Falleniues suggested to play in spades, Fredin’s doubleton… he change to 6NT.
Declarer received a heart lead, he won in his hand and continued with the spade finesse and when it worked claimed 12 tricks.