Dublin North Region Hand of the month

Dlr: N Vul: E/W T QJT63 9 KT6542 A72 A84 AQT85 87 J843 5 K643 AQJ3 KQ965 K972 J72 9

Last night while playing a bridge game on BBO with my friends the following hand turned up. Eamon was seated in the West seat with Dealer North and EW(us) vulnerable

North East South West
2H P 4H ?

2H alerted as 5+5+ hearts and minor and 6-10 hcp
4H is the normal bid with the East hand exerting maximum pressure.

So its your go and you are vulnerable and are you a woman or a mouse.

Much to the dismay of the opponents I emerged with a 5D bid and everybody passed quickly and to further dismay found that I was making 5Ds.

After some examination of the hands my opponents indicated a large WOW factor for my bid followed by well done dude.

This hand was played on the internet and there was no pauses before East passed or any indication that the beautiful dummy was held. There are many folk out there who might produce a double with the EAST cards ...its pretty close and has the shape. However my pard deemed it a pass which is ok.

My main reason for bidding is I can visualize a Heart singleton in partners hand and thus there will be support for my suits in some shape or form.

Half the other folk who played the hand also reached 5Ds but none of them had to deal with 2H P 4H bidding beforehand.

What do people think... Of course it is much easier to bid 5Ds if partner pauses and passed ..thus the old HESITATION pass ...well known throughout the country or WEASEL as its known in the borough of Waterford... two squirms and shift in the chair is 10 points.

My gracious opponents Peter Pigot and James Heneghan were not so giving in the rest of the hands and myself and partner Maria Whelan fell behind by several imps.

The Malahide Strong-weak player event

Last night in Malahide Regional Bridge club the first Charlie Higgins Invitational was run. The event has been run before but this was the first time it was christened the Charlie Higgins invitational.
Charles Higgins is a long time member of Malahide Regional Bridge Club and possibly of other bridge clubs before the Regional premises was built. Every Friday night there is Open Bridge in Malahide Regional at 8pm organised by Charlie Higgins. Charles has performed many jobs for Malahide Regional Bridge club over the last 22 years that I have been around that club.
On any Friday when Charlie is away he always has somebody organised to take up the slack ..
Usually this will be his right hand man Brendan Redmond or his left hand man Dermot McCourt.
Danny Doona has also stepped in once or twice.

Jobs I remember are he was Captain on various nights on various years. Being Captain means doing the scoring and being present most of the nights of the year on your specific Captains night.
You got to turn up 30 minutes early and prepare the club room for play.

Charlie also looked after club maintenance for at least one term.

Charlie also finds time to play competitive CBAI tournament bridge and can be found at most national bridge bashes at the top level. He can usually be found at the annual Holmes Wilson event which is the CBAI flagship and will be around for all Dublin North Region events.

Last night during a break in play I was perusing the result sheets of the previous few weeks in Malahide and I was rather surprised to note ...65.5% Dan and Mary Cowhie ...
Moving along the board I then spotted 70.3% Dan and Mary Cowhie ...
Now I know Dan and Mary a long time as I have been drinking tea in their house in Malahide several times back in the early 90s when they had a dog called Sheeba who you could push.
However scores of above 50% would be normally their lot so I am happy to see the Cowhies post some big 65% plus scores. I doubt that any more then 10% of bridge players ever manage a 70% game. Dan has been on the audit committee of Malahide Regional Bridge club for years. I presume he is still there.

Anyway lets have a few hands from last night ...a bigger er post will follow later.

On Hand 1 I held a large 2 count so felt I won't be doing much here

Q86543
T754
2
93

So I sat back and listened as North Mr Brilly chose to pass and that went
Pass Pass PAss to my partner who emerged with 2NT back to me ..
So being a lad who likes to play the hands as people seem to hand me tricks more often then the rest I made a plan of campaign..
Lets try stayman as if partner is playing this we need a good trump fit as she is not so good on the Notrumps ...you cannot ruff in NT. Happily partner responds 3D to the Stayman and it looks like the Gallo has chances of grabbing another hand to play. While pondering a soft 3S or a pushy 4S there is some shuffling from the Brilly. Now the Brilley seldom bids unless he has a monster but he pushed out the double card. I looked at my singleton Diamond and my nice 2 count and decided if Brilly got Diamonds then my singleton is nice so I pushed out 4S ..
The diamond lead and the appearance of the Spade ace pretty much ended Brillys passed hand bidding so it was easy enough to bring in the good 4S contract.
Partner a beginning player perused the result sheet and my curtain card muttering you only had 2 points and you bid game....I said I don't need points ..I just need Brilley to tell me my diamond singlton is good. Strangely enough up to then the 7 players had all missed game.

Board 2 .. I held

AK984
8
2
AKJT52

and I opened 1C and reversed into 2S and pard placed me in the normal 4S contract.
Sadly I ran into the heavy weather of a 5-1 club break and drifted 2 off.
The analysis says 5S makes but I only managed 8 tricks
The analyis would know about 3-2 breaks and 5-1 breaks before playing the hand though.
However some wizards managed to reach the heights of 6C and 6S and obviously drifted 3 and 4 tricks off so Gallo got average . Some other wizards played in the Master Novice contracts of 3NT. Surely with a 5-3 spade fit and 3 singletons the bidding can hardly not reach 4S.

Board 3 was our first board and our hero Brian Wallace opened 2N partnered by his sister.
3NT was the contract and Wallace has some problems. Disdaining the spade finesse and later taking a diamond finesse after Eamon pitched the Diamond Queen at trick 11.... given he was squeezed by the dummy he had no choice but a diamond finesse later and Wallace had only 10 tricks when I dunno what he was doing as with 2 cards left ..and JACK and KING of diamonds missing it can only have been a practice finesse.

Board 4
Eamon played in the quiet Master Novice 3NT ...and failing to drop the club queen only managed 11 tricks.

Board 5

Saw Eamon at the helm in 2H and that yielded 9 tricks after losing 2 diamonds and a ruff fishing out heart queen and then lost Club aCe ...a good score

Board 6

Here we defended 1NT and pard managed to block the spades severely and then pinged away her club King entry for some reason ..Scary stuff
A spade contract would have yielded 8 tricks and at least she could see all our cards

That will do for now ... Next blog will have BBO style hand diagrams ..

Oh Murphyslaw the famous BBO ACol Club player has retired from bridge ....the poor fellow