Bridge
Newcastle Herald
Saturday November 22, 2008
THE team of Helena Dawson, Jamie Ebery, Normand MacLaurin and Ken Berry won the Newcastle Bridge Club's Teams Championship. They defeated Chris Dibley, Mike Seldon, Julie Gleeson, Robyn Fletcher and Paul McGrath by 77 to 49 imps in the final. Ken Wilks, Eileen Pickles, Ian Walker and Bernie Adcock defeated Mike Parfait, Pravin Nahar, Pam Robinson and Fay Larking in the play-off for third.
In the final there were lots of medium-sized swings to both teams but the victors scored three swings of 9 or more imps that was basically the difference between the two teams. Surprisingly on the deal shown (Dealer West, East/West Vulnerable) there was no swing. Both East/West pairs bid to 4H making 12 tricks. While there are only 25 high card points between the two hands they fit beautifully. Would you and your favourite partner bid to the very good contract of 6H? The auction shown is not too complex and would be one way of getting there.Once East has shown good heart support and promised a shortage in spades there should be no way of stopping East from driving on to slam. The heart slam cannot be defeated. Declarer can draw trumps in two rounds and give up a spade. There are still three trumps in dummy to ruff the spade losers.North/South have a reasonable sacrifice in 6S but that might be a little too hard to find.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald