Milan Macura’s Exclusive Tournaments – October – #2

Another week is over and we know the winners of the two first Exclusive Tournaments of October, organized by bridge professional player, Milan Macura.

Find the analysis of the tournaments below.

If you have not played these tournaments yet, you can find them under “Get started/Practice > Exclusive tournaments” and search for Milan Macura.

Both the IMP and MP tournaments start on Saturday and end on Thursday every week.

The IMP tournament is played by Milan Macura and broadcast live every Thursday evening on his YouTube channel.

The video of the MP tournament is available on Funbridge’s YouTube channel every Friday.

The second week of October saw the last tournament’s record broken with a total of 1,388 players participating in both events.

Again IMPs were more popular with 797 players. The MP tournament was played by 591 players.

Results

We have a standard winner in both tournaments: Tarun from India with 86.57% and +47 IMPs.

MPs

Second place in MPs goes to Arup, also from India, with 79.50% and the third place stays in France due to Colin with 75.60%. 

I did not make it even to the top 10 in my friend’s list, which would normally mean I have very good players as friends, but with 49.50%, I could not even enter the top 20.

Luc and Benicio, our standard leaders, also scored only around 50% and proved there were tricky boards to play.

IMPs

Five more people scored over 40 IMPs, which is impressive.

The second best was Nikolas from Germany with +45 IMPs, third place goes to Jongki from Indonesia with +43 IMPs.

IMPs were much better for me, I did well in all the boards (you can watch the video on my YouTube channel), except on board no. 7 where I reached a slam in 6♥.

The slam does not look very promising on the first sight, but if you look closer, it can be made if diamonds split 3-3 and opponents cannot lead a spade through.

I got a spade lead which I had to take with the Ace. My only hope was that East leads his singleton.

But, how to play the diamond suit to let East win the diamond trick?

If he really has a singleton spade, he cannot cash the spade winner and I can discard my spade losers on diamond winners.

The best way seems to play low from South, which is dummy, and hope West does not play a card that is high enough so that East has to overtake. Always play towards the hidden hand if you need to steal a trick.

Spade was really a singleton, but diamonds broke 5-1 on this board so I had to lose a diamond and a spade trick for deserved -12 IMPs.

Interesting hand came on board no. 7 in MPs.

You get the following hand and after your 1♦ opening, partner responds 2♣. What do you bid?

You can consider this hand as minimum based on HCP, but it has only 5 losers with a potential finesse in diamonds.

2♣ from partner is GF so you can expect at least 3 top cards. ♥A, ♣A, and ♦K can be enough to make a slam.

You should start counting tricks even during the bidding.

Here, you can have 5 clubs, 5 diamonds, 1 heart, and 2 heart ruffs in partner’s hand if you discard the hearts in his hand on your diamond winners.

So which bid describes the hand the best?

If partner has wasted honors in spades, you might have problems even in 5♣/♦ so 3NT would be a good spot in MPs.

The key is always showing the shortness.

After 1♦-2♣ sequence, 3♠ is a splinter showing a singleton or void in spades, a 4-card fit in clubs, therefore also 5 cards in diamonds, and some extra HCPs.

Even if you raise your partner 4♣ to 5♣, you showed a strong enough hand for partner to raise to 6♣.

The card play is really easy since you already planned it in the bidding.

To make it even easier, partner has only singleton ♥A so you don‘t have to discard hearts on diamonds before ruffing.

Notice that partner has only 12 HCP. Knowing about the club fit and singleton spade, he is sure you must have all the minor key cards for the splinter bid, which makes the slam great from his perspective.

Only 106 out of 591 players reached and made the slam for a score of 90.25%.

The second best contract was 3NT since East has a natural heart lead which leaves NS with 11 tricks in NT.

Here are the most played contracts

Videos of Milan Macura’s tournaments

MPs tournament video

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

Subscribe to be notified directly when my next video is online! Click on the button below:

IMPs tournament video

You can find all the boards of the IMPs tournaments in the video I posted on my YouTube channel. Don’t forget to Subscribe to so you don’t miss my next Exclusive tournaments analysis.

And if you didn’t know it yet, know that I challenge 5 of you at the end of each IMP tournament video!

My previous exclusive tournaments analysis are available here.