The last day of the ANC. Stage 3 of the Australian Butler Pairs Championship has four 12 board matches to go.
Match 6: Pauline Gumby and Warren Lazer.
A small win against a good pair. 7 IMPs.
Match 7: Michael Courtney and Chris Depasquale.
23 IMP loss. The cards were not really in out favour here.
Match 8: Joachim Haffer and Ron Cooper. Joe was one of my teammates in the Asia Cup in Goa. Ron is a very experienced player from WA. They play a strong club system with transfer openings.
15 IMP win. This felt a little lucky.
Match 9: The last match of the event against Tony Nunn and Paul Dalley.
Board 17 was tricky.
Tony led the CA and continued with a low club. After you trump in the dummy what is your plan?
If the trumps and the diamonds are both 3-2 you have no problem. Given that Paul seems to have 5 clubs for his lead directing double it seems fairly likely that Tony has either 4 spades or 4 diamonds.
If he has both the contract will probably fail.
If he has 4 spades you need to trump another club in the dummy. Cross to hand with the HK, lead a club and ruff or overruff in the dummy, draw the trumps and play diamonds hoping to be able to overtake the third diamond when they break.
If he has 4 diamonds you need him to also have exactly 3 spades. Draw 2 rounds of trumps leaving the Ace in the dummy. Then cash 3 diamonds. The spade ace provides the entry to the dummy for the last three red winners.
How did you do? I played for the spades to be 4-1 and went down whe n they broke but the diamonds didn't. One down was 11 IMPs out. Making would have been quite a few in.
-38 IMPs, our worst loss of the whole event. We would have done a lot better if the 6S bidding card had been removed from our bidding boxes!
The end of a long week and 7th out of 10 in Stage 3. Final results here.