The Norwegian Division – 2/2

At just 22, Sofie Graesholt Sjødal, a member of Team Funbridge, is already emerging as one of the rising stars of Norwegian bridge. In this article, she shares her journey through the Norwegian Division tournament, the challenges she faced, her successes, and the strategic decisions that make all the difference in key moments.

You can (re)discover her first weekend of competition here: The Norwegian Division – 1/2

The Norwegian Division is split into four groups, with more and more teams the further you go down. There is one First Division group with twelve teams and three Second Division groups (to which I belong), also with twelve teams. Both divisions play with the same cards at the same time, so the results can be compared. The tournament is played over two weekends. The first one was held on 15-17 November and I’m going to tell you about the second one, which took place on 1-2 February.

Time for a comeback

My team was playing in one of the Second Division groups, and if you read the last article about the first weekend you might remember that things did not go our way last time.

So, halfway through the tournament we had 40 VPs, about 10 VPs behind the penultimate team, and we had to finish in the top 9 out of 12 to avoid relegation. We had a job to do! I had a new partner this weekend because he was busy the first weekend.

The schedule is quite full, with two 12-board matches starting on Friday at 7pm, then 72 boards on Saturday, playing from 9.30am to 8.45pm with just a short lunch break. Then, we finish with 36 boards on Sunday from 9am, a bit too early for us late night owls. 132 boards in one weekend, let’s just say that there is a reason why we wanted to have more players on the team, and having two new pairs did not help. So, we really needed to focus to make sure that we kept our place.

The lucky 19

We ended the last weekend in the middle of a match, one where we were quite far behind, by 34 IMPs. So, our first goal was to try and make up some ground in the match so that we didn’t lose too much. We started well and won the second half of the match by 19 IMPs. It was not enough to draw or win, but at least we didn’t lose that much. I talked to a friend about that match and we agreed that if we just won every set by 19 IMPs, we would have no problems. It was getting late on Friday evening and I had been at work since early morning, but I had no choice but to play and concentrate. We were playing the penultimate team, so we really needed a victory. We started quietly until we were halfway through and played board 2:

I was sitting North and could smell blood. Hoping that my diamonds could give a few tricks in defence if partner passed, and happy if partner bid a suit, I doubled 1NT. My partner led my diamond suit which went to the 10, jack and king. Then declarer tried the ace of clubs and, seeing the terrible break, he switched to a spade. My partner made it easy for me by hopping on the king of spades to play a diamond through the dummy, so my diamonds were good. Things were not looking good for declarer and he tried to go back to the clubs. My partner took the king and played a spade to my hand, and I was able to cash all my diamonds, another spade and a heart. I had to give up the last trick to the king of hearts, but we took 9 tricks and scored a nice 500, which was worth 9 IMPs.

On the very next board I was on fire and it went pass to me in third position, where I picked up this hand:

We were favourable and I decided to open 1♠, knowing that my partner would not go crazy because we can have aggressive openings in third hand. The hand escalated quickly with:

As you can see, East-West can make 13 easy tricks, but it was not so easy for them to reach slam after that start from us. At the other table, our team-mates got to bid alone and found the slam. Another 13 IMPs for us.

We had some more IMPs in and out, but we won the first set of the match by 19 IMPs. This was going according to plan. So, at breakfast on Saturday morning, I declared that I was going to win every match by 19 points, no more and no less. Easy job, right? Maybe not, but we were going to try.

From relegation to promotion?

We won the first set by 21 IMPs, oh no that was a bit too much. The next match we won the first set by 14 and the second by 18. So we had averaged just over 17 IMPs per set in the morning matches and we were happy to go to lunch, even if we hadn’t met our ambitious goal of 19 IMPs per set. During the lunch break, I had some time to look at the results of the other matches and realised that it was extremely close. That was the score after eight matches:

I was playing in Team Berg in 8^th place, so we had climbed high enough to not be relegated (for now), but we were also only less than 14 VPs behind the leaders, who will be promoted to the First Division next season. The team had been given a new perspective and we were very motivated to start again after lunch, and my partner showed us why we had turned things around:

The lead was a small spade and now we have to count tricks. We have one spade trick, at least three in hearts, five in diamonds and we can establish the clubs for at least one trick. However, since East opened 3♠, it is likely that he has a shortness, so finessing the hearts can be risky. My partner thought about it, we were playing teams after all. So, he took the ace of spades, the ace of hearts and another heart to East’s king. He could now cash his spade and play a club to partner’s ace, but he did not have another trump to get a club ruff and there was nothing more the opponents could do. However, at the other table, they were greedier. They won the ace of spades, played a diamond to the ace and tried to finesse the hearts. When that didn’t work, East played a club to the ace and a club to ruff for one down. 12 IMPs to the good guys. Here is the full hand:

We won that set by 17 IMPs and the second one by 11. We were on a roll and less than 10 VPs behind the team ranked first that we would play next.

The fight to the top

We had a job to do to catch up in the morning. On that set I got an interesting play in 2NT.

The lead was the 9 of diamonds, which went to the 10 and I ducked. West now decided to switch to a club, to the queen and king and he played another club back. I played the queen of hearts from my hand, which was covered by the king, but I decided to duck it to try to keep my entries. Now East went back to diamonds to partner’s ace and a new diamond to my king, and I took all my club tricks. Before playing the last club, the cards looked like this:

When I played the last club, East was squeezed. If he pitched a heart, I could play a heart to the 10, and the ace of hearts and the 8 would be good. So, he pitched a spade instead, hoping that I would finesse the spades. I played a heart to the 10, which held the trick, and cashed the ace of hearts. Since East kept his hearts, the 8 was not good, so I played a spade to my hand. As I was only playing in 2NT, I would have played a spade to the ace either way to secure my 8 tricks, but I was also rather certain that the king of spades was in East from the way they were both pitching. So, I would have played it the same way in 3NT as well, but this time I got an overtrick for an IMP in 2NT.

The overtrick in my contract didn’t help the match much, the opponents were good and we not so much, so we lost that set by quite a lot as well. Going into the last match, we had a decent score and chance to get into the top 9, which was important to avoid relegation. However, we were not fully safe. The first set was not a good one and the second half was unstable for both teams and ended with us winning a 1 IMP victory. The way to the top had therefore stopped quickly, but we ended up 7^th and about 5 VPs separated us from the relegated team, so we met our goal for the weekend.

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