Léo, silver medallist in Mixed Teams
My first Mixed Teams national final
Hello everyone, it’s Lélé from Team Funbridge! I am going to tell you about my adventures in the Mixed Teams national final.
In France, the Mixed event takes place over three weekends, one for the committee, then one for the league and finally we have the national final. We were playing in the Val de Seine committee, which is pretty tough, and qualifying for the national final is already hard enough. We came 1st in the committee and 2nd in the league (the top three was qualifying for the national final).
I would like to introduce you to my team, which is quite young, even though I I am by far the youngest. We all get on very well, there is a great atmosphere in the team and that is essential for me to get good results and also have fun.
The team is made up of Clément Thizy, Fabrice Charignon (not on picture), Laure Favard, Anaïs Leuleu and Mathilde Thuillez, my partner.
For the national final held on 11 and 12 January, there were 28 teams and we were playing 8 matches of 12 deals, 4 on Saturday and 4 on Sunday. Unfortunately, Fabrice wasn’t available for the weekend, so we were five and I had the pleasure of playing a few halves with Anaïs. For the record, my father was Anaïs and Mathilde’s captain 10 years ago in the Girls’ team, so it is funny that I am now playing with them.
A bad start
We started the competition with a first defeat by around 15 IMPs. Fortunately, Mathilde made a good decision on a deal, which enabled us to limit the damage and score 11 IMPs:
(1) Mathilde decided to double over 2♥ weak two, which I believe is a good choice. The other option would have been to overcall with 3♦, but with four nice spades, doubling is preferable.
(2) Over the double, we play 2NT as a “mini cuebid”, showing at least 8 points.
Mathilde now has to decide what to do next: she can bid diamonds but it would show a minimum hand, or she can make a cuebid to ask if I have a heart stopper or four spades (the cuebid shows at least 16 points and is game-forcing).
Mathilde chose to re-evaluate her hand and make a cuebid, which led us to the 3NT contract played by North. After the heart lead, I was able to easily take 10 tricks, scoring 630 points as we were vulnerable.
The full hand:
As you can see, on the deal even the club lead doesn’t beat the contract. Can you see why? Because hearts block. West has stiff QJ, so when he will play the queen, if I don’t put the king, East won’t have any entry to make his heart winners. And that will make only two clubs and two hearts for the defence.
How to invite to the best game?
(1) I chose to open 1♠, but I don’t know if it is good when vulnerable in an ugly 5-5 of 10 points. Anaïs said 2♥, which is game-forcing in our system, with 5+ cards.
(2) I bid “garbage” 2♠ (3♣ would show at least a mid-range hand).
(3) 2NT by Anaïs (relay), over which I was able to show my clubs.
My partner now knows that I have four or five clubs in a hand that didn’t allow me to show my two-suiter on the previous round.
(4) Anaïs then bid 3♠. Since she denied a fit in spades with 2NT, 3♠ shows a big honour-doubleton in spades and above all no diamond stopper. I think that she is likely to have a fragment in clubs.
At this point I don’t know whether to bid 4♥ or 5♣, if this is our only fit, with 3NT ruled out. I chose the 4♥ bid, which for me offered 5♣ as an alternative. My partner passed, and in order to beat us, the opponents must find the trump lead and West must duke on the first trick:
4♥ +1 on the deal, which paid off for us. As you can see, 5♣ was a better contract… but hard to bid!
Last day: aiming for the podium!
We knew that the next day would be very important. The morning match could already be decisive as it was against the best team in the competition by far. They are very good friends. Thomas Bessis (Open team) was playing with his wife Irene, who is Italian, while Quentin Robert was playing with Anne-Laure Tartarin, a member of the French Women’s team. We have already played in the same committee and won against them. They got their revenge by beating us in the league, finishing first ahead of us. The next game will be the decider!
The last day of the competition arrived. Unfortunately, it didn’t get off to the start we had hoped for, with a 64-12 defeat that left us with 0 VPs.
We didn’t play very well and our opponents did everything right and made all the right decisions. They were very successful. Now we found ourselves a long way from first place, ejected from the podium but quite close. Our objective was a medal, and for me it was totally achievable.
The “remontada” is on!
We followed with a small 21-15 victory, which gave us a boost. Here is a deal played by my team-mates Laure and Clément during this match:
Clément opened 1NT in North, and Laure in South had several options: make a transfer to diamonds to show the shortage in spades afterwards, or do what she did, i.e. sign off in 3NT without describing herself.
I think that this was well played because for example, here together they had a very good spade stopper, but if Laure had shown the shortage, they would have gone down in diamonds at a high level like at the other table (they were losing a heart, a spade and a club).
It is not at all the same if Laure has a small spade or a big honour, which allows to have the suit stopped as soon as partner has the 10-fourth or the accompanied Jack-third! Moreover, even if partner has four small spades, nothing prevents the suit from being 4-4, and it can also happen that the opening leader doesn’t find the lead or tries to underlead the ace-fifth, to dummy’s stiff king.
Well judged by Laure!
Emotion right up to the end
The match was going perfectly on our side with Mathilde and we were confident that we could score a big victory. We had to hope that the leaders have a bad match. After the match, we counted the points and calculated that we had won it by 32 IMPs. Thomas and his team were playing their match broadcast on BBO and we saw that they were losing, with one deal to go. We could win! Unfortunately, they caught up on this last deal and won the match by 7 IMPs.
Before the rankings were announced, neither their team nor ours knew who had won because it was so close.
We finished second, 0.16 points behind the leaders, but we kept smiling because we were very happy with our game and proud of the comeback that we almost pulled off.
Of course, there was a small disappointment because I always prefer to finish first, but this time I was a little less disappointed and also happy for my friends who won. Congratulations to them!
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Congrats Léo !
I noticed that also with this compétition you just came before me in the National French ranking, your dad is proud of you but you could have wait a little bit more 🙂