Promotion!

This week was a big one for the Hillhead team, with both a semi-final in the Jackie Josephson (a handicap cup competition) and our final league match, which would decide promotion. We won both, and after a slightly tense evening waiting for the scores from other matches, we did enough, and will be back in the first division next season, which some in our team find intimidating, but I'm very much looking forward to it. I also played in the West Distict Congress on Saturday and Sunday with Norman and Adam. I'm not going to say much about that, apart from that Adam was remarkably understanding when I revoked to let through a doubled part-score when playing at table 1 of the Swiss Teams on the Sunday... a very useful feature in a partner! (not that I intend to make a habit of it...)

With the league season winding down, I'll be trying to figure out how to make sure I continue to get my bridge fix over the summer, and at some point this month I'll have to work out whether or not I'm playing in this year's National League.

Just one board from yesterday's league match. I played in 4♠ after the auction above, and the defence got off to a reasonable start with two ♦ tricks and a ♦ ruff. West now switched to a small ♣, and as I've pretty much got no chance if the finesse is wrong, I ran this to my ♣10. Now what? I think basically it's about guessing the ♠ suit. I got this wrong, playing a club to the 9, ruffing a ♣, and playing two rounds of ♠s from the top. I figured that W was less likely to have played for a ruff if he had the ♠Q. However, I did know that he had fewer ♦s that his partner, so maybe playing him for greater ♠ length than his partner was correct, but this was exactly balanced out by what I knew about the ♣ suit. In any case, no-one else managed to make the game, apart from the pair who got a helpful ♥ lead, and our 1500 point margin was enough for us to secure promotion to the First Division next season.