Marc Smith visits the second round robin of Heat 6 in the New Alt Competition

Over the past two weeks, we have seen the best of the action from the first round robin in Heat 6 of the New Alt Competition. BLACK (England, Sweden) have built a substantial lead: these were the standings in Group A when we left with five of ten matches played:

BLACK	70.90 VPs
DE BOTTON	51.91
MOSS	50.16
VINITA	45.06
FREDIN	43.58
DONNER	38.49

Elsewhere, LEBOWITZ (USA, Italy, Sweden, Denmark) have taken the lead in Group B, with ORCA (England, Norway) trailing by just a handful of VPs. In Group C, PARSLEY (France)  lead BUQQY (China, Pakistan, Bulgaria), with those two well clear of the rest. Group D is headed by LION (Spain, Singapore) with CANADIAN & FRIENDS (China, Canada) close behind.

As usual, we begin with some problems. We shall see how your choices would have worked later. We begin with an opening bid problem: in second seat with neither side vulnerable, you are North with:

What action, if any, do you take?

Next, with just your side vulnerable, you hold as South:

What action do you take?

While you consider those, we start with the action from Round 6. BLACK went into this match with a lead of almost 20 VPs over the field, and they began the second round robin with a match against the team lying in second place, DE BOTTON. It was not a match for the faint-hearted!

Board 8 generated similar, significant swings in all three Group A matches. All six North players had to answer the first of this week’s bidding problems, with a large number of IMPs dependent on their answer:

This auction was duplicated at one table in each of the three Group A matches. Thomas Paske opened 3♠ and the Norwegians quickly found their way to game in their 6-4 fit. Andrew McIntosh had no particular reason to take action on the South cards, so there matters rested. The defenders had two diamonds and a club to make, but that was all: E/W +420.

As is so often the case, Artur Malinowski bid one more than what looks normal to mere mortals. East doubled here too and Simon Hult correctly judged that the five-level was too high for his side. Whilst Four Spades can be beaten in theory, it was never going to go down in real life. If you gave this East hand as a lead problem, I doubt you would find a single expert who did not start with a top heart. Only an opening diamond lead defeats the contract, though, as East can get in with both the ♠K and the ♣A before West’s trumps are drawn. The defenders can then make two trumps, the ♣A and a diamond ruff to beat the contract by one.

On a top heart lead, Malinowski ruffed and advanced the ♣Q. Hallberg won with the ♣A and switched to a diamond. Malinowski won in dummy and played a spade to the nine and king. Hallberg continued diamonds (nothing else is better) and this time declarer played low from dummy, winning in hand with the ♦J. A club to the jack and a second round of trumps ended the defensive hopes. West won with the ♠A, but he had only major-suit cards left. Malinowski ruffed the heart exit, drew West’s last trump, and threw his remaining diamond loser on the ♣K. A spectacular N/S +590 and 14 IMPs to DE BOTTON.

In DONNER vs FREDIN, Gary Donner also played in 4♠-X after opening 4♠. He ruffed the opening heart lead and played a low club, East ducking and dummy winning with the ♣K. A spade went to nine and king and Alon Apteker continued with a second high heart. Declarer ruffed, crossed to dummy with a diamond, and played a second trump. Peter Fredin won with the ♠A and exited with the ♦10, covered by the ♦J. East could not afford to play the ♦Q without giving declarer four tricks in the suit, so he allowed the jack to win. Declarer could now draw the last trump and play the ♣Q, establishing the ♣J as a discard for his fourth diamond. N/S +590 and 14 IMPs to DONNER.

Vinita Gupta was the only player to pass on the North cards:

Michal Nowosadzki opened a natural 1♦ in third seat and Morten Bilde overcalled 2♣ on the South hand. Jacek Kalita was able to bid a non-forcing 2♥, and now Gupta introduced her seven-card suit. Nowosadzki showed a good heart raise via a spade cue-bid and Kalita showed something in spades via 3NT, but facing a partner with enough to overcall, Gupta was not to be deterred. She bid 4♠ and Nowasadzki had a fairly clear double. On course, the defence began with a top heart: N/S +590 here too, and 14 IMPs to VINITA.

Board 12 saw more than one South player facing the nightmarish high-level competitive decision posed in this week’s second problem:

You may not think much of West’s 3♦ opening, but over the past 2-3 years this style of pre-empting has become the norm at expert level. Indeed, all six West players in Group A made the same opening bid. Thor Erik Hoftaniska really stuck it to Andrew McIntosh with his direct raise to slam.

Of course, anything could be right. Even though you hold the ♦A, there is still no certainly that 6♦ is going down. Of course, 6♥ could be an easy make, but it seems unlikely with partner also certain to be short in diamonds. Even so, when the deal was used as a problem in the November BBO Prime Bidding Challenge, 8/17 experts and 42% of readers duplicated Tosh’s decision to bid on.

Hallberg cashed the ♣ A-K and there was still a spade loser to come, so that was two down: N/S -500

Gunnar Hallberg was less aggressive, preferring Blackwood to the direct leap to slam. This allowed Janet De Botton to support her partner’s hearts at the five-level. When that came back around to Hallberg (presumably Hult’s pass meant something, but it was not alerted or explained), he tried his luck in 6♦. Artur Malinowski’s double ended the auction. The clubs came in for declarer and the spade finesse worked, but he still had to lose two aces: N/S +100 and 12 IMPs to DE BOTTON.

At one table in each of the other matches, South had to deal with the same bidding problem that faced Andrew McIntosh above. Both Sandra Rimstedt for DONNER and Morten Bilde for VINITA doubled East’s jump to 6♦. A pair of matching N/S +100s.

In FREDIN vs DONNER, that was a flat board. In the other match, Denmark’s Emil Jepsen started as Hallberg did above:

Jepsen also started with Blackwood, allowing Kevin Bathurst to show his heart fit at the five-level. When 5♥ came back to him, though, Jepsen doubled. The defence came to the three obvious tricks in the black suits: N/S -200 and 7 IMPs to VINITA.

DE BOTTON won a huge victory, 70-19, over the runaway leaders. Runaway no more: BLACK still topped the table, but their advantage over their conquerors was now a mere 0.59 VPs. MOSS defeated VINITA 56-43 to remain in third place, but now less than 8 VPs behind BLACK. FREDIN’s 65-42 victory over DONNER enabled them to climb up a place into fourth, and left DONNER in the relegation spot.

In Round 7, the key match was second-placed DE BOTTON against MOSS, currently in third place but the winners of four of the five previous heats in this competition. Once again, though, the match was mostly one-way traffic.

The Polish Bermuda Bowl winners conducted a sensible auction to 4♠. Jacek Kalita won the opening heart lead in dummy with the king, South following with the ♥10. He then drew trumps and played a heart to dummy’s eight, establishing a discard on the ♥Q for dummy’s third club. With the ♣K onside, he then had twelve tricks: E/W +480.

Roger Lee’s takeout double of West’s opening 1♠ changed the dynamic of the auction, Tom Townsend immediately showing his spade support and invitational or better values. When David Bakhshi showed a better than minimum by jumping to game, Townsend judged to risk the five-level. Facing two slam tries, Bakhshi’s good trumps persuaded him that he had enough to bid the slam.

North’s takeout double marked the club finesse for declarer, but there are still only eleven obvious winners. As we have already seen, though, the heart position allows declarer to set up a fourth trick in that suit. Indeed, Bakhshi may well have brought home his slam anyway, but he was not tested as Roger Lee opened with the ♦ A-K. Declarer ruffed and dummy’s ♦Q then took care of the third round of clubs. E/W +980 and 11 IMPs to DE BOTTON. The deal was flat in 4 ♠ in both of the other Group A matches.

After 12 of the 16 boards, DE BOTTON led the leaders by a remarkable 63-0. Spectators always enjoy seeing experts with egg on their faces. This curious deal provided them with plenty to discuss and restored a modicum of balance to the scoreboard.

This time, it was the turn of the Norwegians at this table to bid accurately to a sound contract. With trumps behaving, there was nothing to the play. Clubs split 5-1 but it was the ♣10 that fell singleton, so the same 12 top tricks were also available in notrumps. N/S +1370.

Once Roger Lee opened the bidding, there was always the chance that Sylvia Moss would carry the partnership too high on her monster hand. The worthless doubleton in spades deterred Lee from a 1NT rebid, and thus the awkward shape compelled him to rebid 2♣, which would usually show a six-cad suit. Moss rolled out Minorwood and Lee showed two keys plus the ♣Q. Now Moss thought she could count 13 tricks (6♣, 4♦ and three top cards in the majors), so she jumped to the grand slam.

Alas for the Americans, Lee’s lack of a sixth club meant that there were only twelve tricks. However, all was not lost, and Townsend quickly grabbed the chance to go from hero to goat in the blink of an eye: virtually certain that the ♥A would be in dummy, he sought to put declarer to a guess at trick one by leading the ♥2 from K-2 doubleton. With no other option, declarer ran the opening lead around to his queen and 12 had suddenly become 13. N/S +2140 and 13 IMPs to MOSS.

Of course, no one but an expert would even have considered leading a heart, so most of the large crowd watching on BBO VuGraph were delighted to see that they would all have done better than the star at the table. Not that it mattered greatly, as DE BOTTON still won the match 64-25 to take a healthy lead at the top of the table. The runaway leaders just two matches earlier, BLACK, went down to a second consecutive defeat, this time 45-10 against FREDIN, which allowd the Swedes to climb into second place. VINITA outlasted DONNER 32-28 in the other match.

With three matches remaining, the Group A table looks like this:

DE BOTTON	89.03 VPs
FREDIN	76.59
BLACK	74.20
MOSS	65.71
VINITA	63.30
DONNER	51.17

Elsewhere, LEBOWITZ (USA, Italy, Sweden, Denmark) still leads Group B, trailed by ORCA (England, Norway) and JEDI KNIGHTS (England, Wales). In Group C, BUQQY (China, Pakistan, Bulgaria) have overtaken PARSELY (France) with the rest of the field miles behind. Group D is still headed by LION (Spain, Singapore), with BRIDGE24.PL MIXED (Poland) just behind them.

We will be back next week with the best of the action from the closing matches of this heat.