A couple of week ago, a TV crew showed up at the club in order to take pictures of a bridge game in progress. The footage was broadcasted yesterday, in a TV-show called “Lekker Leuk Leven” (roughly translated that would be “enjoying life”) showing possible, somewhat unusual hobbies that one could pick up. If you want to see the show, click here, the item on bridge starts at 23:15 into the program. Of course, one cannot explain bridge in the 3 minutes or so that were available, but the game was presented as an intelligent game, much more interesting than poker, suitable for all ages. Combined with the fact that the show was broadcasted on a TV station aiming at a young audience, this was a good promotion for the game.
Reporter Bart had never played bridge himself but showed some talent on the first board. You are in 6♥, after an uncontested aution where you as south opened 1♥ and partner essentially checked for keycards, then bid 6♥. The ♣6 is led, 3rd and 5th, ♣2, ♣9, ♣K. Plan the play.
It looks as if you have 2 losers that cannot go anywhere. There is one option though, an endplay. For that to work, the ♥A should be singleton and in the same hand as the ♦K. Win the opening lead, play another club and ruff a club. Now play the ♠AK and ruff a spade as well. Assuming that there are no overruffs, continue with a heart to the ♥A. If the person winning that trick has the ♦K and no more hearts, he is endplayed. Somewhat surprisingly, this was missed at 3 tables, so some of the A-players at the club should start to attend the Thursday training sessions. The reporter claimed the hand on a partial elimination, that is not the correct phrase, though there was an elimination and endplay. Or had club owner Ruurd instructed him?
The TV crew did take some half hour of footage and selected only a few minutes of that. They did the right thing by including pictures of my 3 lovely teammates from the internal team of 4 competition, Veri at 24:30, Moooo at 24:45 and of course my own Geert at 23:45. The team was called ‘t Poezewoefke, after a song by the Belgium band Fixkes.
One comment: the way the word “bridge” is pronounced. For some reason, everybody in this country who is not a bridge player, seems to think that it should be pronounced “burridge”, not “bridge” as any native English speaker would call the construction to cross a river. NBB, the next time you sent your PR people together with a film crew somewhere, please explain this to them.
That leaves one question open... What was Geert playing when she made it on TV?
Well, I’m not 100% sure anymore, but must have been either one of these hands. Geert and I were playing against one of our least favorite opponents at the club, 2 spinsters we’ve nicknamed Daisy and Hyacinth. In both cases, Geert was defending. Scoring is IMP pairs.
The first board, EW can make about 10 tricks in clubs or 8 in NT. At our table though, NS did a good job in the auction, after a light opening bid and response, neither east nor west has an attractive balancing action available. With the datum score being about -110 for NS, that will be a 5 imp gain if north makes the contract. Fortunately, NS didn’t do a good job in the play. The opening lead was a small club, for the ♣K and ♣A. Declarer then proceeded by ruffing a club and... found out that she had just thrown away all options at making the contract. She tried a couple of things and ended up -300, for a 5 imp loss.
The next board. NS obviously ended up in a contract that is way too high. It looks as if NS had a mixup with their ranges for the 2♦ overcall and 2♠ response. The final contract is pretty hopeless after a heart lead. Down 2, for another pickup of 4 imp’s as most pairs scored a small plus in a diamond contract.
All this added up to +9 in the first round against these opponents, combined with Geert’s the first TV appearance, not a bad start to an evening.