Three U31 medals for MKB, Vincent and Luc
A competition just for Juniors!
On this Easter week-end, the Federation hosted a crowd of under 31 year-olds, to take part in two events – the U31 Pairs (34 pairs present) and the U31 Teams (17 teams participating).
I was partnering Romaric who is my partner in the French Juniors team. We had already played in the same event last year when we won the silver medal. 🥈
Here we shall also follow the fortunes of Vincent, a staff member of Funbridge, and Luc, who is a Funbridge ambassador.
Margaux Kurek-Beaulieu
MKB
Romaric Guth
Rondoudou
Vincent Gallais
the Galesh
Luc Bellicaud
Ninja turtle
A poor assessment by me
I am sitting South and Romaric bids 3♥ in response to my 1♠: this is a super forcing, which shows a very strong hand with a fit in Spades, and a strength in Hearts. A super forcing is stronger than a splinter.
Over that, I closed out with 4♠, but this was not a very good assessment of my hand: with five trumps and an Ace, I should have bid an encouraging 3♠.
It was clearly a bit difficult for Romaric to imagine that I had an Ace when I jump straight to 4♠, and thus start Blackwood.
But at least I managed to make 13 tricks, which saved 25%.
Here’s the full deal:
A hand played by the Luc-Matt pair
Sitting East, Luc decided to bid 3NT, based on the assumption that, if Matt had not opened at the start of the auction, it was because he had 4 Spades alongside his six Hearts. Here are the four hands:
South led the King of Spades, followed by the 6 of Clubs. After rising with the Ace of Clubs, North continued with another Club. Luc then cashed all his winners except those in Diamonds. A delightful double squeeze, with both opponents constrained to try keeping only two cards in Diamonds. 75% for the Matt-Luc partnership!
A second silver medal in the Pairs!
The same result as last year, but a bit more disappointing for me: after a first session at 69%, in the 2nd I made a number of blunders, which meant we dropped to third place.
Fortunately, the third session was good, which enabled us to repair some of the damage and we finished just behind Thibaud and Benjamin.
As usual, it was a great pleasure to play with Romaric 🫶
The U31 Teams event
This time, Romaric was in my team along with Arthur, Manon and Zoey, who was to be my partner in five of the six matches.
We play together regularly as I am a sort of bridge godmother to her and I try to give her some lessons from time to time. Thankfully, she doesn’t only have just me!
For this competition, our aim was to enjoy ourselves whilst being really focused and we also gave encouragement to the teams with Luc and Vincent two of the favourites in the tournament.
A 4♠ to be made against the favourites for the event
First the bidding: I’m sitting South with a 5-5 in the black suits needing to bid over the 1♦ opening on my right.
I started with 1♠. Following the Double by West, Roro bid 2♥, which showed a fit in Spades (8-10 points).
With the fit, my hand presents few losers. I only needed to lose just one trick in each suit.
I used a trial bid of 3♣ to enable Romaric to re-assess his points in the suit, and he closed the bidding with 4♠.
It was clear that West had a hand with four Hearts and a strong Diamond fit, whereas East appeared to have a balanced hand with minimum strength.
We are playing against the team leading at this stage with Luc, Matt, Eulalie and Nao.
Eulalie led the 7 of Diamonds, which leads me to think that there are 6 Diamonds with West, accompanied by 4 Hearts. I ruff and play a Spade to the King, taken by East’s Ace.
Nao now plays a small Heart and I let Eulalie make her King. She decides to play another Heart, ducked by Nao. I now know that Nao was 4333 with 4 Diamonds.
I was then able to finesse the Jack of Spades rather than cashing the Queen, and give Eulalie her King of Clubs.
Ten tricks after having conceded one Spade, one Heart and one Club!
Here’s the full deal:
A high-level auction
I have chosen this hand in the last match simply to demonstrate the effect of pre-emptive bids for hindering the opponents. I am sitting South and the auction comes round to me at 4♠. I used the bid of 4NT which shows an unspecified two-suiter.
West continued the good work of the pre-empt with a raise to 5♠ and Zoey announced 6♣, which is an excellent bid even though it doesn’t work well here – I could very well have had the Ace of Clubs on top and, in teams competitions, it is better to attempt to make a slam with the risk of failing whereas the opponents would also go down.
That is what happened here, but all the bids at our table were correct and well thought through. As it happened, at the other table they also went one down doubled in 6♣.
A watershed for Vincent’s team
With Clara, we played the penultimate match against the number 1 team in the theoretical table, full of confidence after their convincing victory in the morning. In their team there was an U26 European Champion and an U31 World Champion – so clearly formidable opponents!
I am dealer with a fairly distributional hand, green against red. We play an interesting convention which enables us to open 2♠ with 5 Spades and at least one four-card minor. But here my hand, with 4 Hearts, was not at all suited to such an opening bid (the idea of the bid is to prevent the opponents from finding their fit) and in addition the number of points was insufficient for a ‘pre-empt’ with this configuration.
I finally decided to open with 1♠; this did not present any problems for a re-bid and I was looking to impart as much pressure as I could in such a tense match. The tray came back to me with an intervention of 2♥ on my left, a 3♥ cue-bid from my partner (a four-card game-forcing fit), and a pass on my right.
I really was not sure what I should bid here. No wasted points in Hearts and a void but also a fairly minimum hand with a suit headed by QJ (hardly ideal for a slam), etc. Finally I settled for 4♠.
At the inquest, we discovered that our opponents would make a small slam in Clubs! My opening bid not having been used at the other table, our team-mates easily found the Club fit and pushed the opponents to go one down in 5♠ doubled (+12 IMP).
The winning team!
🥇 Congratulations to Vincent, Clara, Eloïse and Farès who became Champions of France in the U31 Pairs category. They were very consistent, always in the top few in each match, and fighting against Luc’s team who finished second. So bravo as well to his team!
Summary of the week-end: a very pleasant occasion and, personally, delighted to have been able to train in person with Romaric as preparation for the U26 World Championships this summer. 🩵
In addition, playing with Zoey was really good – she is progressing in leaps and bounds and is very assiduous. I shall be very happy to play more and more tournaments with her. 🤍
And naturally, congratulations to Clara who was my very first partner in the France Girls team – it’s so heart-warming to see her winning the Junior Teams event with her team! 💛
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