National League First Weekend, Sunday
Well, that didn't go well. Norman and I went from 4th on the X-IMPs table at the end of Saturday to 20th at the end of Sunday, which suggests we had by far the worst performance on Sunday of anyone involved. Admittedly we did play one round against probably the strongest pair in the division, but I'm not really sure what happened for the rest of the day. We totally collapsed in the last match, managing just 0.09VPs as a team, and apparently we were -3IMPs a board, which seems nearly impossible.
With all that said, I think I'll just write up a hand they played in the first division, which Frazer Morgan did very well to get right:
You find yourself in 6♠, and West leads a ♠. You cover this with the ♠K, E wins and returns another ♠. You win this, and when you draw the last trump (pitching dummy's 3rd ♦), East thinks for a while, before pitching a low diamond. You play K♥, A♥ and then ruff a ♥, everyone following, then play K♣, A♣, and ruff a ♣, but the ♣ doesn't appear. You now play off the last ♠, pitching the ♣J from dummy, and East pitches ♦. You're now in this position. Seems simple right?
You have to decide whether West has discarded down to ♦Qx and has the 4th ♥, or whether East started with five ♦s to the Q. Frazer eventually decided that if East did indeed have 5 diamonds then he shouldn't have had anything to think about on his first discard, so successfully dropped the ♦Q offside. Well played, and the Piper team with Phil Stephens, Frazer, Alex Wilkinson and Douglas Piper are deserved leaders of the first division after the first weekend. Harry Smith's team, who I think were clear favourites going into the weekend, lead the second division narrowly from Archie Bouverie and Cathy Ferguson.
Your final three matches seemed to be against experienced partnerships who are difficult to play against. Plant/Moss (Polish Club) and Fryer/Wickens (Fantunes) play systems that would be unfamiliar to you and this takes a lot more mental effort; McPaul/Wilkinson play a regular system with irregular aggression, so they will put your defence under a lot more pressure.
ReplyDeleteIf the boards run well for these pairs, then they can be particularly difficult to beat.
So I would not be surprised to see you struggle at the end of the weekend facing these pairs, especially when you've never played so many boards before. It's a pity that your full team was not available to share the load, since this is one of the advantages of a team of six.
But I'm sure the experience will serve you well.