The Girls team got bronze in the National Women’s Teams Division 2

This weekend, I played the Women’s Teams with our youth team for the second time 🙂 We play in National Division 2 (DN2), and this year the competition took place over a three-day weekend instead of two weekends. 8 teams participate and two are promoted to DN1 the next year.

From our team last year, we have Clara, Constance, Eulalie and me.

Élise and Zoey, two new members of the Girls team who competed in the championships this summer, joined us!

We chose to rotate the pairs a little, so I played with Eulalie and Zoey 🙂
Clara, Constance and Élise rotated too, so that one of them was out every time.

A 3NT contract that I gave away on the lead!

My RHO’s 3NT bid gives a lot of indications: as I have 8 points, I know that the bid was not made with 25 points, but rather with playing tricks, obviously in clubs (6 or 7 clubs almost or fully established).

East is also supposed to have the diamonds and the hearts stopped, which are the two suits that we have bid.

Therefore, I think that East necessarily has a shortage in spades or at least no points in the suit. I should have really led a spade at least to see the dummy and then think it over.
At the table, I preferred to lead a diamond to my partner, which immediately gave the contract away, since we gave up the ace of clubs without being able to free a heart trick.

After some thinking, if I decide to lead in a red suit, I really have to lead a heart. In this type of sequence, East will rather have the diamonds stopped and the risk of giving up the ninth trick is really lower.

Conversely, a very good lead by Eulalie!

On the lead, we have the choice between a spade, the suit in which we have a fit, and a club to take a ruff. Playing a diamond is excluded, a neutral defence could only give the opponent some discards.

Usually, I would have been inclined to choose a club, but here we have QT9 of hearts. On average, we will always take a heart trick. It is especially important to take our outside tricks before the declarer plays two rounds of trumps and then discards her losers.

Eulalie chose the right lead with the ace of spades, and we took our two spade tricks and a heart, for a result of 5H -1. This good defence brought in some gains since at the other table our team-mates won 5H on the club lead (the spade going on the diamonds).

Eulalie, who is also my partner in Open pairs, being kibitzed by the coach of the French youth teams, David Harari.

The full hand:

A 3NT contract to ensure

I play in 3NT with these two hands, on the lead of the 7 of hearts. I count two tricks in hearts, one in diamonds, and let’s say four in clubs if the finesse fails. I will miss at least one even if the club finesse succeeds.

I have several options:
The king of diamonds onside, that is a 50% chance.
The 10 of hearts if West underled QJ76(x).
Taking one or two spade tricks, hoping for one or more cards onside (among the ace, the queen and the 9).

First, trying to put the 10 of hearts on the lead costs nothing, and it is better to play hoping for queen-jack with the opening leader rather than hoping for a mistake by East, who would play an isolated honour when seeing king-10 in the dummy.

Obviously, the 10 is covered by the jack.

Now, looking for an additional trick in spades seemed to me to be the best, because hoping for the queen of clubs and the king of diamonds onside means that you have a 25% chance of winning the contract, while the spades are more promising. If everything is offside, I will still take a spade trick, and if two cards out of three are onside, I will not need to find the clubs, provided that I make four.

I started by ducking the jack of hearts to protect myself against the 5-3 split. If the hearts are 4-4, I bet that the opponents will make a maximum of two hearts and either two spades, or one spade and one club.
And if the hearts are 5-3, I start by putting West on lead in spades, hoping that she doesn’t have another direct entry.

So, I win with the ace of hearts in hand on the second round before playing a club to dummy’s ace, followed by the non-covered jack of spades (it made things easier for me, yes!) taken by the ace in West. And then I know that the queen is with East and by finessing, two tricks in the suit are guaranteed, which allows me to lose one club.

West returns a heart to drop my second stopper in the suit. Then I have to choose between a spade and a club. In spades, I am sure to take two tricks, then I will have to play a club in hand at the risk of giving up a trick to the queen onside.
But it is much better because I can give up a club and I couldn’t care less about giving up a trick to the queen-third onside: if East still has a heart, it means that they are 4-4 and that I will lose only one spade, one club and two hearts.
Moreover, by playing the king of clubs in hand, I am protecting myself against the queen-second behind which would serve as an entry to West. So, I played a spade to the 10, then the king of clubs, to see the queen appear!

I cashed all my clubs and my king of spades and saw West discard her two master hearts (I would have gone down if I had given up the queen of clubs!).
I have already taken nine tricks and I know that there are only diamonds left (I currently have the queen-second in the dummy and the ace-second in hand). So, I tried a diamond to the queen, and West, overwhelmed that I took her queen of clubs, forgot to rise with the king.

Therefore, I took eleven tricks, while at the other table, Clara and Constance beat 3NT by two!

The full hand:

Matt, the mascot of our team who came to cheer us during the three days of competition!

We finished third in this competition, ahead of the fourth place by a match and a half!

The promotion to DN1 will be for next year, we have time to progress!

We were very happy to step onto the podium because theoretically we were 8th out of 8 teams in the rankings! The atmosphere was really great and it was a pleasure to play all together 🥰

Special mention to Zoey who finished second in the Butler despite that she has only been playing for a year and a half!

When all tables play the same deals, the Butler allows to make an overall ranking of the pairs. So, we can see who brings the most points to a team (like Zoey in ours 😝).

You should know that Zoey’s mother, Donatella Halfon, who is part of the French women’s team, also participated in the event. She got the silver medal, just ahead of us, but we still managed to win the match against her team, and it was funny that Zoey was ahead of her in the Butler!