Analysis of the first MP Exclusive Tournament of Milan Macura

Funbridge is offering a wide variety of tournaments in both matchpoint and IMP scoring. Being able to play series tournaments and the team championship offers a lot of comparison with other players, but that is not all. Anyone can make his/her own tournament and compete with friends or against professionals and learn from their play and from everyone’s mistakes.

That is the main reason why I am cooperating with Funbridge – delivering high-level content in form of videos with board analysis from our joined play, offering another way of competition, making new friends and providing fun and education to every single player with no need for further expense.

So, starting from September, you can join every week the “Funbridge: Milan Macura MP and IMP” tournaments. You can find them under “Get started/Practice > Exclusive tournaments” and search for the name.

They both are on 8 deals and start on Saturday, lasting for 6 days till Thursday evening.

I will be playing those tournaments and make videos with comments so you can see how I played and hear the reasoning in real time. The first tournament is over and we have the winners.

Milan

Deal analysis from the exclusive tournament of Milan Macura (MP)

There were 249 players joining the first tournament and already 113 made this tournament their favorite.

3 players managed to get over 80%, which is very impressive on 8 boards.

Here is the top 5 leaderboard:

I was not as successful as these players, but still, I was able to be in the top half with 52.34%.

My poor score was mainly due to board number 7.

How would you deal with it?

You have a very nice hand with 64 Majors, 11 HCP, but only 6 losers. The most important feature of this hand is the Heart suit. Having the 10 and the 9 improves the hand significantly and if the ♥Q is onside, you have only 5 losers and if partner has ♥ Axxx and only doubleton or singleton spade, you can make 4♥ on 15 HCP combined.

I have opened 1♠ and my partner jumped to 3♦ which has really surprised me. The description says 18+ HCP and 6♦. I offered my heart suit and partner raised to 4♥.

What would you do now?

I decided to continue further, even I expected only a 7 card fit. The singleton ♣ should be good and partner has maximum doubleton spade so I have that loser covered. So I bid 4NT, which Argine understood as BW for diamonds. 5♣ showed 3 key cards so I asked for the ♦Q to play in 6♦. But, partner doesn‘t have it. That means he should have Major honors so I have decided to bid 6♥.

Here is the full bidding:

After the ♣K lead, defenders continued with another round of clubs to shorten your hand. Here is the dummy:

What are your options?

If hearts split 3-3, you are making the contract if you can run either spade or diamond suit.

Can you see an additional chance?

If you play 3 rounds of spades and West started only with a doubleton, he will be put under pressure and he may ruff the top spade from a 4 card. If he ruffs from 3 cards, you don‘t mind because you can overruff and draw the trumps. But, if West fails to ruff, you can discard a ♦ and steal an extra trick. If you will have ♥8 in the dummy, you can cash 2 rounds of ♦ and make 3♠, 2♦ and 7♥ tricks while crossruffing.

This is how important are the spot cards.

In this board West followed the third round of spades so I had to ruff and play on hearts 3-3 which didn‘t work so I went down. There were only 3 players in 6♥ and I was the only one to go only 2 down to secure at least some percentage, 3.18% was not enough though.

At most tables, Argine bid 2♦, which makes the bidding much easier. This is the proper way how to find the best contract which is 6♠.

3♣ is a 4th suit GF and after partner raising to 4♠ showing doubleton, you can ask for key cards – 2+♠Q can be enough[MM1] . Partner should have either good diamonds or ♥Q because he didn‘t go into NT so it seems we have no wasted values in clubs.

Here are the most played contracts and the rewards:

There was one more very interesting bidding decision.

You are holding this hand and you reach a decision of what to do after 3♦. What are your thoughts?

Partner shows 6♥ and a minimum hand for an overcall, but still some HCp since he didn‘t preempt with 2♥. East passed first and bid 3♦ in the second round. That should indicate he is weak on HCP and have a long diamond suit, most like 5♦, maybe even 6♦. Having 4 diamonds yourself, partner is maximum singleton so he might have 3613, 2614 or 3604 distribution.

If you decide to bid 3♥, you might have an issue to get rid of all the ♣ if partner has 4. For drawing trumps and establishing spades you probably won’t have enough values and entries.

Doubling 3♦ seems very risky because you don‘t have Aces and you cannot play many rounds of trumps so opponents will have cross ruffs options leaving you with only 1 diamond trick and maybe 1 spade trick. For having a good score, you would have to beat 3♦ twice.

After further analyses, 3♠ seems to be the best bid.

Partner has minimum 2♠ and West is on the lead so you are guarding your ♦K as declarer. Since you have good spades, you should be able to draw trumps and dump the losers on hearts. In the tournament, I bid 3♥ which I played and made 10 tricks for 86.63%. but, when I replayed the board and bid 3♠, partner raised to 4♠ and making 10 tricks is much easier and you have a bonus for a game. Argine made a defensive error so I even made 11 tricks for a full 100% score.

Here is the full deal:

You can find all the boards in the video which is posted on the Funbridge youtube channel.

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You can also find my deal analysis of the first IMP exclusive tournament by clicking on the button below: