Grand National Teams

I'm just back from playing in the GNT (busy weekend!). Last year, I played with Elwood and our usual Regional team, and we crashed out early. This year, our teammates weren't available, so Elwood and I teamed up with the Feuer brothers. They don't go in for fancy bidding, but they aren't bad, and we felt that we made a reasonable foursome.

There were 8 teams in Flight B, apparently, so today was the quarter-final and semi-final. We started out with an easy match against a team that probably should have been in Flight C. It was supposed to be 28 boards, but the director pulled a board from us in each half because of slow play. (It wasn't all our fault, one of the opponents at our table was even slower than Elwood). But even so, we racked up +87 IMPs in the first half and added another good chunk in the second half. So, on to the semi-final. The second match was scheduled for 26 boards, and we knew that our opponents were not push-overs. But we also figured to be in with good chances to win.

In the first half, Elwood and I felt rather unhappy with our performance, figuring that we were responsible for at least a couple of swings against without really bringing anything in. But the Feuers returned a great scorecard, flattening a lot of dangerous-looking boards and giving nothing away. On one hand, I held:
KT9x
xx
Axxxx
xx
and Elwood dealt and opened 1H. I bid 1S, and he jumped to 3D (of all things). Now what? I decided that there wasn't likely to be much play for slam, even if he had 19-20 points, so I jumped to 5D. Of course, things broke etc, and Elwood made all 13 tricks. He was a little upset, feeling that I should have bid 4D (which would have been Minorwood), because 6D was actually not a bad contract. +640 didn't look too good, but the Feuers came back with +200 from beating 3NT, so our bad board actually was +13 IMPs. We were ahead 42-19 at the halfway mark.

The second half was also not that great from us, and this time the Feuers couldn't make up for it. When the smoke cleared, we had lost the second half 16-39. And when you add it up, that means that after 26 boards, we had fought each other to a standstill, 58-58. The remedy was a 6-board playoff. I promised to bear down a bit more.

The first playoff board was something like:

2C was game-forcing. 3H was a probe for 3NT, but 3S suggested something better. 4C was minorwood, 4S showed 2 keycards without the CQ, and 5S was the SK. We probably both pushed a little, but I liked my controls, and Elwood was determined to win the playoff. He played the hand nicely, ruffing two hearts in dummy and choosing the right path back to hand to finish drawing trumps and concede trick 13. The opponents settled for 3NT, and that was enough to win, although there were a couple of other swings and we actually won the playoff 24-0.

So, one more match to see if we represent NYC in New Orleans (Flight B).