Sunday in Canberra is cold and clear. Two sessions of 3 eight board matches to complete the Welcome Pairs.
At the end of the day these were the results.
Annie Bartlett & Mardi Grosvenor were the top performing Tasmanian pair finishing in 6th place.
Catherine Elliott & Felicity Wivell came 21st, Tania Lloyd & Hugh Grosvenor finished 29th, David Marshall & Merryl Darby were 37th, Pamela Lidl & Fiona Hickey were 39th, Hilton Francis & Julie Rhodes were 40th and Maggie Crawford & Julia Corr were 49th.
Our first match was against Simon Brayshaw and Karol Miller from WA. They play a strong club based system. We got off to a poor start when I had something of a brain snap on Board 1.
We like to pllay an active style when the opponents open a strong artificial club. My 1S overcall showed either a club overcall or a hand with both red suits. Karol knew that they had a minimum of 24 HCP so bid a practical 3NT.
My diamond lead went to Tania's Q who returned a diamond. For some reason I didn't cover the J with the K even though I knew the diamond layout. This allowed the declarer to establish the clubs and get to them with the DA. Covering the D would have doomed the contract. I had some vague plan but it was fundamentally flawed. My worst hand for some time! 7 IMPs away.
Board 3 was another close 3NT contract, this time played by Simon after Tania had shown both majors. Tania did well to lead a low spade rather than a heart. This kept us in the game however I erred by returning a spade. To beat the contract I needed to switch to a heart when I won the SA. Another 4 IMPs away.
Nothing good for us in this set and arguably lucky to only lose by 15.
As often seems to happen after this loss we drew another strong pair in Julia Hoffman and Pam Crichton. This was a fairly flat set. We lost 8 IMPs on Board 15 when we didn't bid slam with two balanced hands and a combined 32 HCP. Looking at the two hands you wouldn't really want to be in slam but on the lie of the cards 3 finesses and a squeeze resulted in 13 tricks.
Another loss by 2 IMPs.
Next we drew Pele Rankin and Paul Hooykaas, another strong pair from Queensland.
Board 17 Pele and Paul did well to play in their 5-2 spade fit which was cold for 11 tricks while 3NT was hopeless. 8 IMPs away.
Board 19 This time they played 4S in the 4-3 fit for 10 tricks when 3NT was again hopeless. 7 IMPs away.
Board 20 They bid 3NT with 9 top tricks and a tenth on a finesse. 6 IMPs away.
It feels like we are sitting in the wrong direction!
Board 21 This was somewhat self-inflicted. Tania overcalled 4C over Paul's 3S opening. This does not seem unreasonable but just after bidding it she remembered that we play this as non-leaping Michaels showing a good hand at least 5-5 in clubs and hearts. When Pele bid 4S, I bid 5C thinking this would be a good chance opposite an imagined S shortage in partner's hand. This was doubled and was 'lucky' to get out for 2 down and -500 against their failing game. 10 IMPs away.
The only ray of hope in this match was Board 18. We bid to an optomistic 3NT. This made 9 tricks with a little help from the defence.
An interesting set of boards but another loss - this time by 18 IMPs. Maybe lunch will change things!
Another non-optimal draw. Paul Gosney is a very fine player who played in Sydney for many years. Now living in Brisbane he is the captain of the Queensland youth team and playing with one of his team, Remco Spencer.
Tania had an interesting bidding decision on Board 2.
Tania chose 2S which we play as non-forcing in this situation. Paul bid 3D and Remco tried 3NT. This was a claim for 10 tricks, 630 and 11 IMPs. If Tania had chosen 4S it seems likely that Paul would bid 5D and this had 3 inescapable losers.
On Board 4 Remco did well to lead a diamond from 95 doubleton. A spade lead from Axxx would have resulted in a fairly easy 9 tricks. The diamond lead and continuation gave me no chance.
The whole match was pretty much one-way traffic. Loss by 23 IMPs. Does not seem that lunch helped!
We won the last two matches to salve some pride. At least we did not use up a lot of our supply of luck today. Maybe the teams will be better.
Tomorrow the Interstate teams starts with our Open Team playing Victoria, ACT and NT. Good luck to all of our teams.