Earlier this week, this flyer landed in my inbox.
Click on the image for the original.
For the non-dutch speakers amongst you, it is an announcement of the 37th edition of the Dombo Teams Tournament. This year’s edition will be on Ascension Day, May 17, in Utrecht. 7 rounds of swiss, starting at 10:30. Pre-registration is required, contact Eldert Bessels for that, by email dombotoernooi@gmail.com or phone +31.6.12962722.
The Dombo Teams tournament is, as far as I know, the longest running open team tournament in the country. Of all current open tournaments, only the Kaasstad tournament has a longer history. As some of you know, I organized this tournament for a number of years myself. After a few tournaments on a Sunday in the spring, the idea to move the tournament to ascension day was mine. The reason? Sometime in the early 1980’s, the tournament was scheduled on Saturday in May, when the pope announced a visit to the city of Utrecht, in a nearby church. Security measures were such that the tournament site would be unreachable that day. Now what? I noticed that a few days later, it’d be Ascension day, which is a public holiday here, but no tournaments were scheduled for that day. The decision to move the tournament was a success, within days the event sold out. Since then, the tournament is on that day.
With 36 tournaments played, there is a lot of interesting material in the archives. Here are a few hands from the 1995 event.
This hand won the prize for the highest scoring Biltcliffe coupe. For those of you not familiar with this coupe, it is the situation where you balance over a part score only to find the opponents making a doubled game or slam a few seconds later. South entered the hand himself, his 13 cards have been lost in history, but the EW hands were distributed like this:
2♣ was a regular game force but east apparently forgot that 3♣ isn’t a game. NS were about to score -190 for 3♣ making 7, when south did bid another spade. Surprisingly, this got past west who passed, where most players would have bid at least 5♣ with a sigh of relief. However, east finally found his club support and raised to game. West raised again. South didn’t believe him. 6♣x made 7, -1740.
This hand won a prize for best defense. 2♥ showed hearts and a minor, 6-10 points. South made the most minimal bids at both turns but north understandably bid game. Looking at all 4 hands, it is hard to see how south can go down. A neutral opening lead is won in dummy and, with no entries to the hand, south can do little more than cashing the ♠AK. With the ♠Q10 dropping, that means 10 tricks. But wait and see what happened in practice.
West led the ♥J, making declarer believe that his holding was ♥JTxxx. The ♥J was covered by the king and ace. East returned the ♦Q to the ace. Declarer now cashed the ♠A and west continued with hiding his hand by dropping the spade queen!
Declarer obviously thought this was a singleton and tried to make the contract with a 4-1 spade split. In trick 4, he cashed the ♦K, then tried to ruff a diamond, overruffed with the ♠10. West continue his brilliancy by returning a small heart. Declarer was still convinced that he started with ♥JTxxx and finessed. East won the 10. A club was returned to the ace. West played a third round of hearts, ruffed by east. Down 2.
A very nice defense by west, rewarded by a bundle of imp’s and the brilliancy price for the day.