Sunday - 1:st set of 16: Fredin 33 - Dansk dynamit 37
Monday - 2:nd set of 16: Fredin 10 - Dansk dynamit 51

2020-05-19
Are you a good loser? Is anyone? I am not sure, but after yesterday’s match against the explosive Danes, we just have to admit that they were lucky. Okay, okay, I admit, they played much better then we did too!
We had something that you could call a terrible start. At our table, we also knew that because we caused it ourselves without much help. We played Dennis Bilde och Emil Buus Thomsen, so much help wasn’t expected in the first place.

This was board 3:
As we rarely overcall 2C without actually having a fair hand with both majors, I expected 4S to have some chances. Besides, how could I invite and show a hand like the one I had. Since I was a passed hand, I think Dennis regret that he didn’t double when the dummy appeared. Emil signalled for hearts, and they took the first four tricks.

Already on the next two boards, we had one heavy blow and one disaster, and I am sure you know this: when you make a mistake, many times it doesn’t matter much. It didn’t cost anything. Yesterday it did. We were vulnerable on both boards and no pardon was given by lady Luck!

Board 4 looked like this.

Björn’s rebid 1H over my transfer shows a balanced hand with 12-14 but doesn’t deny four spades. As we could still have a slam in spades, I decided to investigate further. Björn could alternatively rebid 1NT which would show five clubs and two hearts and thus deny four spades. But I am not sure it would have made any difference for the lead.

However the diamond lead attacked dummy’s entries, while the spade lead at the other table put declarer in the right hand from start. Björn thought for a while and decided to play the club nine from dummy and run it to Emils Jack. After that, the contract was close to automatically to go down but if you play through the hand you can see there was some kind of squeeze-endplay against Dennis if declarer decides to give up the clubs. At the other table, declarer played a club from hand at trick two and the board was over.

In the next board, it was my turn to cause a big loss. It happened already in the bidding. When I bid 2H I was sure I showed my distribution, but as the bid is forcing Björn didn’t think I must have exactly 1444. He thought he was smart bidding 2S – as he didn’t expected me to pass, but I visualized that he hand a weak hand with five good spades in a 5-3-2-3 hand. Of, course 3NT was a far much better contract then 2S, but why does every card has to be placed right when you miss a game? At the other table, Kasper Konow opened a strong club with my hand, and a part-score was out of the question already then.

In the match we played the day before, we were fortunate at the end and could take back almost everything we lost at the start, but this time we couldn’t. Still, 16 boards to go, so who knows!