Valentine's Day Match Point Swiss Pairs
Congratulations to Bhabesh Saha and Debabrata Majumdar who won the Matchpoint Swiss Pairs tallying 96 VPs. Prakash Bhandari and Dipak Santra finished runners up with 92 Vps followed by Sowmik Das and Pritish Kushari in third place with 91 VPs.
Matchpoint Swiss Pairs was a new format: Seven 6-board rounds were played with a swiss draw. Each board in a round was scored by matchpoints, and the matchpoint score for a round was converted to VPs.
Detailed results and hands here. Two interesting hands from this match:
When Life Gives You Lemons...
Bhabesh played in 3NT on the ♠6 lead to the deuce, eight and... wait! Bhabesh meant to play the ♠Q from dummy and misclicked the ♠2. The director was called, and an undo was disallowed. Bhabesh then won trick one with the ♠J! This wasn't another mis-click. Unfazed by the turn of events, Bhabesh won the jack to encourage a spade continuation and deter a diamond switch. When he banged out ♣A and a club, North won the ♣K and duly continued with the ♠K. Bhabesh ended up with ten tricks for an Ave+ score. At matchpoints, North might not switch to diamonds even without the bait in the spade suit, but that doesn't detract from Bhabesh's composed deception.
There have been several discussions in social media about allowing of undos. This bulletin will content itself with commenting that the law states that undos may be allowed only in the case of obvious misclicks. This means that if a misclick does not appear obvious to a director, he is bound to disallow such requests.
Grand in Spades Needs Luck in Spades
Question: How do you play 6♠ on a trump lead?
On this board, 6 pairs played in 6♠, 2 played in 6NT, and 7 played in 7♠.
6♠ is ironclad with little chance of avoiding a diamond loser. 6NT can be a good matchpoint contract; with 11 top tricks, it needs either a specific diamond honor onside or a working heart finesse - about a 75% chance. It is, however, hard to intelligently prefer 6NT over 6♠. In 7♠, the only chance is to take a heart finesse for the 12th trick and squeeze an opponent in the minors for the 13th. Lucky day, this play succeeds! North holds the ♥Q as well as the ♦K and the long clubs. the A pair each in 6♠ and 6NT also made seven on this line of play when a heart lead offered them a free finesse.
Answer: In 6♠, it must be right to refuse the heart finesse which risks going down in a cold contract. After drawing trumps, declarer should cash the ♥A-K before cashing clubs. If the ♥Q happens to drop, declarer can make an over trick if an opponent also guards both minor suits.
Bridge From Home Club
The next BFH Club event is today's Monday Musings Match Point pair. We hope to see a huge number of players in today's regular event.
Wednesday Wonders IMP pairs will be on 17thFebruary.
Sudhir Chokshi Memorial Swiss Pairs
This high prize money, prestigious championship commences this Friday. Over 25 participants have registered already. In light of the response, BFH will be applying for Federation Master Points to be awarded for this event.
Trios are permitted.
Remember, a lot of prizes are there to be won by all of you!
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