Striking gold

Things are likely to change now – the client has finally gained enough gold points to achieve the goal of her obsession, life master status. The momentous occasion has been a while coming. She has needed just a couple of gold points for some time, but a couple of regionals went by without our being able to clinch the deal. Perhaps my last chance to come through for her was the Smithtown (Long Island) regional, and saints be praised we featured 5th in the overalls at the gold rush pairs, for 4.86 gold. Actually, 3rd through 8th were all between 57 and 58%, and we finished a tantalising .06% behind 4th (that's 0.2 matchpoints, a difference that probably arises from factoring for different sized sections). But I'm not sour. The relief at finally getting the job done is incredible, for me, and the client is positively bubbly.

In the first session, we finished second in our section, greatly helped by the slam hands. There were two slams our way, and we bid them both, and three slams for the opponents, none of which were bid against us. I don't know that we can claim too much credit, though. Our opponents seemed pretty clueless.

 

 The 3S bid is a bit bizarre, but I don't think East should pass it. The result was down one, while 6C is cold and was bid twice, and 6NT makes if you escape a heart lead (that happened once). With 5 quick tricks and only three losers, I think West should start with 2C. That seems to lead to at least 4H or 5C quite easily, although bidding the 6th is not so easy. On the other hand, the slam does depend on the club break, so maybe stopping at 5C is good.

I was lucky on this hand.

 

 Perhaps I should have bid 6NT, but with a known 9-card fit, I confess the thought never occurred to me. If East leads his AD, I'm down in 6H, but fortunately he led a spade, and I wasted no time drawing trumps. One pair did make 6NT, and one pair was unlucky enough to be the only -100.

This hand featured an unusual auction (although it used to be one of my favorite Acol auctions, you don't see it much in ACBL-land).

 

 The client's choice of 3S is not too bad, I think. She actually only has 7 losers, and the high cards are a bit thin – perhaps 4S would be more appropriate. But 3S isn't far off. My hand started out pretty good, and looks even better opposite a limit raise. So I decided to just bid six – maybe if there were two diamond losers off the top, they wouldn't be able to find them (with the thought that a more scientific approach might tip them off). To some extent, this may have worked. A diamond lead (hard to find) would have removed a dummy entry, and put me under some pressure. The safer-looking JH lead applied no pressure at all. I was the only declarer to make 6S – three went down.