Team Funbridge at the German Trophy
📌 Real-time follow-up: this article will be updated every day druing the German Bridge Trophy so that you can follow Team Funbridge’s progress step by step.
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First place and a perfect weekend!
Who’s going to Germany?
After the Winter Games in Prague and the Cyprus Festival, Team Funbridge is now heading for Hannover-Langenhagen, to the South of Hamburg, where the German Trophy will be held.
Next destination: Langenhagen, a charming German town. Known for its international airport, it’s also a peaceful place to live, with verdant parks and lakes, making it a perfect spot to relax.
Between deals, we hope that Team Funbridge will be able to recharge their batteries there: a stroll along the banks of the Silbersee, a stop by the Wietzepark or an evening at the local theatre to discover the German culture.
Picture by Liggraphy from Pixabay
The German Bridge Trophy will start with a warm-up pairs event (scored by IMPs) on Friday 6 June at 7.30pm. The main tournament, an international event, will follow on Saturday 7 June.
Europe’s bridge elite will gather for three days of intense competition. Team Funbridge will be represented with Olivia (United States), a future participant in the Women’s and U26 World Championships, Nachiketa (India), a member of the U21 team, and Ella (Denmark), selected for the Girls U26 and the Women’s national team.
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Special event on Funbridge
The special German Trophy BP100 tournament starring Team Funbridge members will take place from Saturday 31 May to Monday 2 June.
Team arrival on site
Hello everyone! It’s Nachiketa, number 18 from Team Funbridge. I arrived in Hannover at 15:00 on 5 June. I came here from Bengaluru via Paris. I checked in and relaxed for a few hours before going on a wonderful walk around the lake outside our hotel. I got a wonderful view with a lot of greenery and even managed to see a beautiful duck family swimming.
The trip to Hannover was a bit of an eventful one for me! I live in San Francisco and came to Hannover as the first leg of a much longer trip. Lucky for me, I flew direct from San Francisco to Frankfurt in around 11 hours. I had a middle seat next to a baby, so it was not my favourite flight ever, but I made it safely to Frankfurt on Thursday.
After spending one night in Frankfurt, I left for Hannover by train. The trip was only one connection. Pretty easy, right? For some reason, this was quite difficult for me!
First, I got on a train going the wrong direction. 🫠 This added about 2 hours. Then, when I was finally in Hannover, I couldn’t find my bag when it was time to get off the train! The door closed 10 seconds before I found my bag, and I was stuck on my way to Hamburg—75 minutes both ways!
This added 3 hours to my trip. When all was said and done, it took me 8 (!) hours to get to Hannover instead of 3. Needless to say, everyone had a good laugh at me once I finally got in.
Unfortunately, the jet lag and long travel day were not conducive to good bridge. But luckily for me, it was a warm-up day and Nachos was patient with me. I feel hopeful that today is a new day and that my brain is more effective! But luckily, I don’t have to take any more trains 😝
Day 2 with Olivia
Today was a good day for the team. We won 3 matches and lost 2. There are 3 more qualifying matches and we are currently in 18th place with 66.65 VPs after 5 matches. Once the qualifying stage is over, the teams will qualify into groups of 8. Each group will play a round robin. With 3 matches left to play, our hope is to make it to the top 8 in order to qualify for the top bracket. It will be tough with many good teams, but we are less than 6 VPs away from 8th place, so it is within our reach.
In the first match, I had a good patience exercise as declarer. I wanted to conceal my hand, so I bid 4♠.
South led the king of hearts very quickly. North followed with the 2 and I won the ace. Since king from Kx in hearts is a strange lead, the opening leader’s confidence made it almost certain that they were leading from a sequence instead.
When making a plan, the first question that arises is what to do with the diamonds. With a loser in spades, hearts and clubs, I needed to play the diamonds for no losers.
I could try cashing two top diamonds and ruffing one in dummy. Ignoring the various problems with over-ruffs and trump promotions, this line is simply very likely to fail if either player holds Qxxx. I had no immediate entry back to my hand, so if I successfully ruffed one diamond in dummy and tried to set up an entry to ruff a second one, the opponents would simply draw dummy’s trumps. Ruffing the diamonds will be successful if diamonds are 3-3, but there is no rush to ruff the diamonds out if I only need to ruff one. I could of course finesse in diamonds, but there is no reason to do that now. So, I shifted my attention. I could try to sneak a club now, hoping that South holds the ace and ducks, seeing king-jack in dummy. However, I decided to play a heart now. Hearts could still be 3-3 and I wanted to start gathering information about the opponents’ hands.
South played low on the heart and North ruffed. This was a slightly strange play by South, but it felt clear that they wanted to clear trumps and didn’t want to lead trumps from their own hand. North played a trump to my king and South’s ace. South now continued trumps, North followed, and I won in hand with the ten. Now I know that South holds Ax KQJxx in the majors and is getting very close to a 2♥ overcall over my 1♠ opening. Still, there was no rush to play in diamonds, so I played a club to gather a little more information and to potentially pseudo endplay North if they held something like xxx x xxxx AQxxx. South followed small and I played the jack from dummy, knowing that South could not hold the ace. North won with the ace and played another club.
Now that South was marked with the queen of clubs, they had at least 12 HCPs. With 14 HCPs and KQJxx in hearts, I think that most people would overcall 2♥, so I assumed that they did not have the queen of diamonds. In case North had Qxxx(x) in diamonds, I cashed the king and played a diamond to the jack. This was necessary because the hand was as follows:
The other table played in 3♠ just making, so we picked up 7 IMPs on the board.
Day 3 with Ella
Today did not start out very well. We secured a good place from the first 5 qualifying matches but ended up losing the last 3.
That’s life, so we made the best out of it. We won all 4 of the first matches of the finals in Group D, which we were playing in. Lots of dynamite bridge, as we like it.
Here is one board that I played with Daniel on which we had a good defence. There was a pretty cool double dummy counterplay.
I’m sitting West.
I drew the ace of spades on the lead and Daniel played his smallest card (Lavinthal)! I played a small club to the ten and jack. Then a spade again, and declarer laid a diamond. I played the king of clubs to the ace.
Now I took the queen of spades, played another diamond, and again a diamond to Daniel’s ace. Daniel played a club to declarer’s small trump and overtrumped. I took a big spade and Daniel ruffed it with the king of trumps, which declarer overtrumped with the ace. Declarer then played a big diamond and another diamond, which I ruffed with the 8 of hearts. Now I played my last spade and declarer had to concede two heart tricks to me.
3♥-4, +200 for us. My opponent asked why I didn’t double 😂
Right now, we are leading the group, but it is very close. An exciting day is waiting for us tomorrow. Olivia and Nacho are leading the butler, by the way. They did very well today. So, although the day started out very poorly, it ended up okay anyway.
Last day with Nachiketa
The finals went extremely well, with some very scoring boards.
I am the dealer and I open 1♥. Olivia responds 2♥. We play 1♥-2♥ as a good raise, so I know that she has at least 8 HCPs in her hand, as otherwise she would go via forcing 1NT to show a weaker hand. I take the shape of my hand (5-4-4) into account, there is a likely chance of a fit in at least two suits with my partner. Moreover, the diamond void can certainly prevent opponents from gaining any tricks in the suit. Hence, I bid 4♥, which became the final contract.
South led the 6 of clubs. I count 9 top tricks (5 in hearts and 4 in clubs), provided both suits break 3-2 among the opponents. I can’t get a 10th trick by ruffing a spade after conceding two spade tricks to the other side. If I run the 5 of spades, North wins with the jack and returns a club. I played low from hand, after which I noticed that South played the 5 of clubs, which was their last club. Once I play the second spade, North may win it and give their partner a club ruff. The contract will therefore go down as I have no entry back to my hand to ruff two spades if South returns a trump after ruffing the 7 of clubs. I realised this because of South’s suspicious lead of the 6 of clubs when they were playing standard carding; this is almost certainly a high card from a doubleton.
Hence, to make the contract, I won the trick with the ace of clubs and ruffed a diamond with the queen of hearts in my hand. Then I played a small club to the queen and another diamond, which I ruffed with the king of hearts. Next, I played a low heart from hand to the 9, thereby finessing South’s 10 (if I play to the jack, there is no way I can avoid giving opponents a trump trick when I ruff high in my hand to preserve entries to dummy). This was my third entry to dummy. Now I ruffed the last diamond and cleared opponents’ trumps. By playing in this way, I managed to ruff more diamonds in my hand than the number of trumps in the dummy, generating an extra diamond trick. A dummy reversal had certainly saved the day!
First place and a perfect weekend!
We were really pleased to come first in our group in the end. After the last game, there was a prize-giving ceremony where we won a total of 400 Euros.
Overall, the tournament was amazing. The field was really strong throughout all the groups, and it was awesome to see so many juniors attend the event!
The venue was great and the location at the airport was quite convenient for travelling. It was also easy to take a bus or a Uber to the city centre.
I would love to attend this event again next year if possible. I would also recommend it to everyone. There was a great diversity of people, and the atmosphere was amazing. We had such a wonderful time.
After a farewell dinner together at the airport, Daniel and I travelled home to Copenhagen on Monday evening as I was taking my driving test on Tuesday. Nachiketa left the next day and Olivia is staying in Europe for another month or so. Her first stop will be Stockholm, although she didn’t manage to get on her first flight…
Looking back on the tournament, we are really happy and had a great time. Thank you for reading. See you next time!
I am really pleased to be part of Team Funbridge. Although I only joined this year, I can say for sure that these two events I participated in hold a very special place in my heart.
I thoroughly enjoyed bonding with my teammates, travelling far away from home, and most importantly, spending days simply playing bridge together. It was perfect for me!
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So many years of bridge ahead