Notts v Gloucestershire - 13^th December 2009

Our winning streak ended in disappointing fashion against Gloucestershire who are always one of our strongest opponents.

The Teams:

Dawes - David Burgess & Frank Ball; Willie Crook & Sandy Fulton; John & Irene Auld; Geoff Topol & Mark Goddard.
Porter - Ellen Overton & Martin Mellor; Mike & Daphne Coggles; Lloyd Eagling & Graham Lee; Steve Mulligan & Bill Milligan.
Markham - Mary Cook & Bernard Moore; Phil Dale & Ray Furlonger; Sylvia Goodlud & Nick Clarke; Janet Jacques & Will Irving.

The Dawes match started well for Notts with some nice swing hands such as Board 16:

E/W Vul - Dealer West

As North I opened 1♠. This struck some as a tad aggressive, but I was not bidding a weak 2♠ with three first round controls - nor was I passing at favourable vulnerability.
Whatever my judgement, 1♠ worked well - East overcalled 2♥ and caught a raise to 3♥ (defined as minimum).
Now East succumbed to 4♥ and Irene, who had lurked over 2♥, lurked no more and +800 was easy on the ♦Q lead. East was partly to blame - his hand may have 16 points, but where are the losers going?

Board 3 was a play hand:

E/W Vul - Dealer South

At our table, the opposition South opened 4♥ and played there. The normal defence of a diamond lead and trump return meant that 9 tricks was the limit. Declarer won, ruffed a diamond, played a club and in due course lost the ace of spades and another diamond.
A straightforward one off but at another table Sandy made it. At trick 3 he led a spade. This simple manoeuvre says more about winning technique than a volume on squeeze play. How does West know to duck? He played the ace and that was that.

At half time we were down in the Porter and Markham matches but +44 in the Dawes. Things took a turn for the worse culminating in Board 24 (now one of my personal Hands of Horror):

No Vul - Dealer West

If you like double dummy problems you will see that 7♠ can only be defeated by a heart lead which scrambles your entries. Of course 7♠ is a poor contract and can never be made in practise...can it?

Irene opened 2♣ as West and our bidding proceeded 2♠-3♣-4♣-4♠ before I quite unjustifiably took control and got us to 7♠. That was bad but worse was to follow.

The opponents asked about the bidding and established that we had inter alia shown all the top spades, after which South carefully selected a club lead. Why I thought lead our second suit? Why not lead a safe trump for example (This latter is a rhetorical question - please don’t send me the answer).
I decided that South was being tricky and finessed, as a spasm of anguish crossed my partners normally calm countenance.
A long time ago, a future world champion told me never to credit opponents with abnormally clever play. Quite so.

Amazingly, one Gloucestershire East/West pair did much worse. They conceded 500 in 6♣, doubled for a spade lead (ruffed) and a few inevitable wrong views.

We lost the Dawes 8-12; the Porter by 2-18 and the Markham by 4-16. Our best pair according to the Butler IMPs was Graham Lee & Lloyd Eagling playing in the Porter match.

Match Report by John Auld