Léo Second in the Open at Juan!

Hello to everyone, I have been playing in the Open at the Antibes-Juan-les-Pins Festival (France) over the long weekend. I am lucky that I am playing with my good friend Théo Guillemin who is my partner in the France Junior team. So this will serve as good training for the World Championships which will be upon us very soon – in less than a month.

Apart from training for the Championships, this festival enabled spending a super sunny weekend with a host of good friends – a really good time.

A rather good first day

This year, there were 150 pairs signed up for the festival, many of which contained some interesting names!

The tournament takes place over 4 days, with 4 sessions of 30 hands being played each day, meaning a total of 120 hands – not bad for a festival.

The first day went very well, as we ended up with a score of 65.5% putting us in 4th place. If we could average that, we would clearly be the winners at the end of the festival.

Deal 1: a defensive signal misunderstanding

I have this rather exciting hand. After my partner’s initial pass sitting North and the pre-empt from our opponents, I decide to jump straight to 4♠, which I would be very happy to play, and my left-hand opponent continues the pre-empt at 5♥. Now, I’m not going to let them have a free play am I, so I double.

I start with the obvious lead of the ace of clubs, dummy’s singleton follows and partner plays the 9.

Now what should I understand by Théo’s 9 of clubs? In general, when playing in a suit contract, leading with the ace or king in a suit in which dummy has a singleton, partner’s card is preferential. So, given dummy’s 6 diamonds headed by KQJ10, the known 10-card heart fit and two small spades, I’m clearly going to play a spade in 95% of cases. In addition, from the bidding it would seem that Théo has a good holding in clubs – at least five or six cards – and, as I have the 10, his 9 is the highest card he could afford to use for his signal.

His signal, with the opponents clearly holding spades, means he has either the king or a singleton, otherwise he would have provided a low club.

It’s almost certain that he has the king, but unfortunately, I cannot be 100% sure. Now let’s see what happens if we play spades. I can play either the ace or a small card. If partner has two or three cards headed by the king, it is immaterial whether I lead the ace or a small card. On the other hand, if partner’s king is a singleton and I play the ace, taking the king with it, this is no problem because I can give him a ruff and we still have the ace of diamonds. So, ace of spades taking the king, a small spade trumped by partner, a diamond for the ace, and a further spade trumped by dummy’s king. The declarer then does not lose another trump. The real bad case when leading a small spade would be if partner does not have the king but simply a singleton. We would give up a trick really stupidly.

I thought long and hard and, as this was the very first hand of the tournament, and not wanting to have a grotesque zero to start with, I played the ace of spades. You see the really bad news: Theo has the spade king singleton and the queen of hearts doubleton. So I give up a trick and am really frustrated not to have given enough confidence in my play and in the cards played by Théo. I consoled myself when I found out that all pairs arrived at the same result on this board (5♥ -2), but I was very disappointed not to have set the contract by one more trick. However, there was no time to be too despondent as there were plenty of other good things to come. 

Deal 2: a slight misunderstanding

I have this 5-5 in the black suits with 10 honour points. Théo opens 1♦ and I reply 1♠. Nothing unusual and my partner then produces a reverse at 2♥.

With that, I am about to repeat my spades with 2♠, but I am not sure of the precise meaning of this bid for Théo because we have been playing together for 2 years with a somewhat detailed system, and we decided this year to start again from scratch, playing with just a basic system to avoid any misunderstandings, and to concentrate on how to play the hands. Usually for me, 2♠ is game-forcing with a slightly weaker hand and 5 spades. Thus I usually start with a 2NT limit bid but I don’t think that is the case when playing with Théo – I’m just not sure.

He jumps to 3NT over my 2♠. Now I think that he probably does not have 6 diamonds, otherwise he would have bid them. He probably does not have 2 spades either, otherwise also here he would have bid the suit and, therefore, I am thinking there is a fair chance that he has 3 clubs and that a slam is clearly an option. So I bid 4♣ saying to myself that if he replies with a negative 4NT – so be it – but if he gives me a control, I’ll continue with the same. Good news – he bids 4♦. This seems to be an agreement for clubs.

Now I do something silly which causes me some difficulty later on in the auction. I decide not to nominate my control in hearts because it is a singleton in partner’s suit, whereas as it is in his second suit, it should not be a problem. So I don’t bid 4♥ but rather 4♠. Théo bids 4NT Blackwood and I reply 5♣ showing one key card. He asks about the queen of trumps with 5♦, clearly thinking about a grand slam. With the trump queen and the king of spades I should reply 5♠, which means precisely that. But I feared that, if I bid 5♠, Théo would have difficulty understanding my sequence of 1♠, 2♠, 4♠ and then 5♠. I feared he would think that I had just spades and that we would be playing in a ridiculous contract with a good club slam. I also thought that, being a festival tournament, even if we made 7♣, bidding just 6♣ would already be a good score.

I therefore signed off with 6♣, ignoring the trump queen in my hand. In fact, Théo had all the right cards to make all 13 tricks. Nevertheless, we had a very good score of 80% on the hand.

The 2nd day started well as Xavier took us, along with the Girls and the Under 21s, on a boat excursion in the morning and we had a thoroughly good time. But the bridge was much more complicated – maybe we had had too much sun…

Neither of us played very well, which certainly did not help, and we had to be content with a score of 55%, way below our objectives, but which could have been much worse. This put us in 6th place at half-time, with 3 pairs having pulled away with more than 64%. But we needed to get our act together for the final run in. 

Deal 3: I steal a trick

I play 4♥. I receive the lead of the 4 of diamonds and play low from dummy. East lets me take the trick by playing the 10.

There was a clear basic play to take 11 tricks consisting of ruffing a diamond, trying the finesse in spades and hoping to find the king doubleton for 12 tricks.

But I had a feeling that there was possibly a better approach to getting 12 tricks without unnecessarily endangering the 11 tricks I could see at the start.

If, at the 2nd trick, I play the jack of clubs and West covers, I have a winner on which I can discard a spade and now I only need a successful spade finesse for 12 tricks with no need for the king doubleton.

If, however, the jack is taken by East’s queen, I lose the queen of clubs and the ace of diamonds and then, if the opponents play clubs to prevent communications, they will give me a real problem. I may still make 11 tricks, but I risk making only 10.

However, if the queen of clubs is with West and West fails to cover, it’s jackpot time because I now have two discards to get rid of the diamonds and I will only lose one spade.

So I decided to take the risk and play the jack of clubs at the 2nd trick. Bingo! The jack holds, I draw trumps in three rounds and I re-do the club finesse, while holding my breath, because I felt it was impossible for East to have ducked the first time – but if they did, it would be a master stroke to have had me going down in 4♥. As I hoped, the club finesse works a second time so I can ditch my 2 diamonds and make 12 tricks, scoring 85%. 

And the second half rather smiled upon us

Bridge festivals are always fun because the bridge only occupies 4 hours a day, meaning there is plenty of time to do other things, especially when the weather is fine as here in Juan-les-Pins. With the aperitifs, the sea, the swimming pool, padel and yet more aperitifs, we did not want for things to do.

Curiously, plenty of bridge players also play padel. I love it and often play in competitions and today we played with the French, the Italians and a Uruguayan. It was really super but it was also very hot!

We ended the 3rd session with 62% with which we were very pleased because we were very constant compared with our showing in the previous session.  This put us into 3rd place overall with just the final session to come.

After the bridge we enjoyed the cocktails and then settled down to watch the final of the Champions’ League involving the French club, Paris Saint-Germain. Almost everyone here was supporting Paris, except me, as I support their arch rival – Marseille. After the demonstration provided by Paris in their 5-0 victory we all went out to celebrate (even though I had nothing to celebrate, ho! ho!). 

Deal 4: great play by Théo

Théo played a blinder with this hand, just before the end, to ensure we finished 2nd overall. The bidding started with a transfer following the 1♦ overcall, I jump to 3♥, and he asks for my short suit, which I name with 4♦. He sets up the Blackwood, and he sees one key card missing.

Théo now starts to really think, hesitating between 6♥ and 6NT, contemplating probably 5 club tricks (he would often find me with (5431)), 4 in hearts, 2 in spades and just 1 in diamonds. Thus, possibly the required number of tricks if playing in NT. In addition, if trumps are split 4-1 and I don’t have AKQJ, we would lose one ace and a heart in 6♥, whereas in 6NT, it would always be possible to look for the 12th trick if I have the queen of spades or, as a last resort, with a spade finesse.

And, of course, 6NT brings more points than 6♥ so, nothing ventured, nothing gained, Théo closes the bidding with 6NT. I can’t claim to be laying out what the dummy hoped for with just 4 clubs and missing the queen of spades.

Fortunately, despite this terrible deception, a glimmer of hope presents itself – the 10 and the 8 of spades! With a diamond lead, he will make 1 diamond, 4 clubs, just 3 hearts because the hearts are split 4-1. Thus he needed to find 4 tricks in spades. He plays the ace followed by the jack which holds. Bingo! 6NT just made – it was really good to have bid the slam and to have avoided it in hearts with the trumps split 4-1. As the cards are, 6♥ fails just pushing the cards and, in 6NT, correctly locating the queen of spades makes the contract with a score of precisely 100%. Bravo Tété!

A final session with 64% for us was not sufficient to catch the leaders, Philippe Cronier and Emmanuelle Déchelette, who led the tournament from start to finish and really deserved their victory. Congratulations to them! They finished with an average of 62.10%, and we with 61.50%.

So we had to be content with 2nd place, which is not that bad. We were quite satisfied at the end of the tournament because, not only was the end result more than honourable, but we had a really good understanding at the tables, which was an excellent opportunity for revising and discussing our play.

I hope this is a good omen for the World Championships in Italy this summer when we shall be representing France in the Under 26 category.

I am happy to be able to look forward with enthusiasm to this with Théo as well as with the other team members – Maxence, Nao, Margaux and Romaric. By the way, Romaric finished 3rd today, just behind us. Congratulations to him. I hope we can do at least just as well in Italy in a month’s time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Look out for the next instalments!

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