BFAME Championships, 2021 - Indian Teams lift Womens and Mixed Championships
The Indian women's and mixed teams both won their respective categories in the finals today, albeit in differing styles.
The Indian women played the first session of their final with the relatively new combination of Asha Sharma and Vasanti Shah with Feroza Chothia and Aparna Sain in the other room. However, both pairs managed to land themselves in trouble with the Multi two diamond bids to drop 25 imps.
On this board, after the multi opening, was unable to gauge the power of Feroza's spade suit and quietly bid 4 Spades.
At the other table East simply opened 1 spade and rebid her spade suit over 2 clubs giving a perfect picture of her hand.
A forcing 2NT by West may have given her a better picture. East would bid 3 Diamonds showing strong spades and then, Blackwood would do the rest.
A few boards later, at the other table came this hand
Here, on the forcing 2NT, South chose to value her hand as the stronger variety of hearts propelling them into an un-makeable slam.
We hasten to clarify that this is not a commentary on the actual bids made at the table. Rather, it is more of throwing a light on how the multi- 2 Diamond convention can sometimes land their users into hot water.
India went into the second session 10.5 imps behind. However, in that session, UAE missed bidding 3 vulnerable games to all but hand the title to India on a platter.
Well done Indian ladies!
In the mixed final, India were simply too good for their counterparts. With a fine mixture of controlled aggression and good play they overwhelmed their opponents 81-21 to lift the title. The hand below is a fine example of their aggressive bidding and play.
1 Diamond was a transfer to hearts. The double of two diamonds was a support double for hearts. After diamonds were bid and supported by East - West, Kiran had no problems in bidding 4 Hearts with her hand.
The play by Satya was also worth watching. On the lead of the Diamond King, he first finessed the Heart Jack to the Queen. Ruffing the diamond return, he pulled a club from Dummy. When the Jack appeared, he covered with the Ace and cleared the suit. West backed a trump which also drew the King from East. Now declarer could draw West's trump en passant and then return to dummy with the spade Ace to pitch two losers.
A third diamond may have been interesting but, as the cards lie, declarer can simply discard from dummy to come to the same result. The other table played in a simple contract of 2 Clubs making 8 tricks!
BFAME Championships, 2021 - Open and Seniors Semi Finals
Both the teams held commanding leads after 3 sessions of the Semi Finals yesterday. The Open team was leading by 45.5 imps while the Seniors Team was leading by 39.5 imps. We wish them all the best to win the semi finals first and the finals thereafter.
Test Your Declarer Play
RealBridge and BridgeFromHome are presenting a small set of hands to test your declarer play. Interested pair may login to from this link from 1130 am onwards. The Game will start at 12 noon