Andreas and Nicolai win the Swedish Cup!

A prestigious Swedish competitions

The Swedish Cup is one of the biggest and most prestigious events in Sweden, averaging more than 200 teams per year. It starts in January and runs throughout the year, with seven knockout matches reducing the teams by half until only the top 16 teams remain. In early November, those teams head to Uppsala to battle it out over a final with four days of knockout matches.

Team Cood Life, including myself, Nicolai and Christian as well as Alexander Sandin, Thomas Karlsson, Castor Mann, Johan Upmark and Marion Michielsen, was one of those 16 teams. Due to scheduling issues and illnesses, however, we would be playing most of the final with only four players. Me and Nicolai would be covering one table, with Alex and Thomas at the other. Castor would be joining in for the first day only.

A good atmosphere and good results

Me, Alex and Castor jumped on a train to Uppsala at Wednesday night, with Nico joining us when we stopped at the airport. We quickly started discussing through the system, covering everything from trump setting to doubles and various contested auctions. However, there was one thing we forgot to agree on. When playing the round of 16, Nicolai opened 1C. I alerted and explained it showing at least a two-card suit, the way we used to play in the good old days. After the board, he looked at me and burst out in laughter… ”I thought we were playing better minor”.

Well, well. Even not knowing our opening bids, we managed to win the round of 16 comfortably. This was the only day Castor was playing, so we decided to have him play all sets to give us others some rest before a long a tiring weekend. And how he did it! He left Uppsala with a butler of +2.96 after 48 boards. He played one set with me, and we took an interesting route to a slam, only finding the trump suit first at the six-level. Here is the hand.

I opened 1♥️ in third seat as East. South overcalled 1♠️ and Castor doubled. North raised to 2♠️ and I started with a double, showing some extras. Castor bid 3♣️ and I cuebid 3♠️. Now he made a good bid of 4♥️, realizing even a possible 5-2 fit in hearts would play well. I was not done, however. I placed him with Hx of hearts, meaning slam would have made opposite various different hands. I tried 5NT, asking him to pick a slam. I was intending to pass 6♣️, hoping for something along the lines of QJxxx of clubs and Ax of hearts. This time he introduced his diamonds, and I was more than happy to pass. On a spade lead he can still make, but needs to read the position very well. At the table though, the spade lead was missed, giving him and an easy journey to +1370 and 12 IMPs.

An original blue contract : beware of the lead directing doubles

Practically every table played in 6♠️. The contract is makeable, but no one made it. Neither did we. Because we tried a different contract.

Rule number one playing against Nicolai: never make a light lead directing double. Whilst bulls may see red, little man from Finnsnes in Northern Norway sees blue. And I, holding every ace, a singleton heart and a second club to score a ruff, wanted to turn that blue into an even darker shade. Sadly there is no bid to raise the stakes even further, so I had to pass for an overtrick and +760.

Black out in semis

We survived the quarter finals and moved on to the semis. Although we won the match, the only thing I can remember from this match is my worst blackout of the year. I found a declarer that should have made it into the bulletin, but that I messed up at a stage where it was impossible to do so.

I opened 1♦️ as West. North surprisingly passed, so Nico got to respond 1♠️. Now South, being prepassed, overcalled 1NT explained as 5+♥️ and 4+♣️. I bid 2NT and Nicolai jumped to 6NT. On a heart lead, I realized that I had 11 tricks, counting one in spades. However, due to the auction, it looked like Diamonds weren’t breaking very favorably. I won the lead in hand and played the ten of Spades from hand. If North has the ace of Spades, he falls into a Morton’s Fork. If he wins the ace I have my 12 tricks (two spade tricks), whereas if he plays low, I win the queen and cash out dummy’s winners and the hearts. Now I am left with the bare king of spades in hand and QT of Diamonds. North must hold the spade ace and Jx of diamonds, meaning I can endplay him on the spade, to lead into my diamonds.

North is criss-cross squeezed. If he throws a Diamond, I cash the Diamond king, enter with the Spade king and my Diamonds are good in hand. If he instead throws a Spade, it does not matter that my queen of Diamonds freezes out, since I get two compensating Spade tricks in dummy after cashing the Spade king and playing a Diamond to the king.

I played this way, but when north threw his spade I had a complete blackout and threw one myself. This meant that I was left with a club loser in dummy and a diamond loser in hand. Such a silly way to mess up such a beautiful board, but that is bridge, and I am really happy that this did not mess up my head during the match and that we managed to turn it around. Let’s move on to the very final match of this, the 5×16 board match between Cood Life and Spintop Ventures.

Everything we touched turned into gold

In the first set, everything we touched turned into gold. Let me share a board where I used a combination of table feeling and useful information to get a very unintuitive bidding problem right.

My hand.

I was favorable and my LHO opened 1S. They play precision and will open light at all vulnerabilities. Nico doubled and RHO passed. What do you bid?

To be honest, 2NT seems like the normal bid. But I felt I had many reasons to believe a bid you probably don’t think about would be right. I took a quick look at the opponents’ convention card and saw they played their 2♠️ opening as 8-11 with a six-card Spade suit. Since I’ve got 12 points myself, and my partner made a direct seat take-out double, I thought it would be likely that declarer is somewhat weak. This increases the chance of him only holding a five-card Spade suit, since had he had six he would have opened 2♠️. Continuing the thinking process, I picked up the RHO seemed uncomfortable passing 1Sx. He took maybe 10-15 seconds before delivering the green card. It seemed to me that he wanted to run away from the table. Furthermore, opponents are vulnerable and we are not, and I’m not even sure we are making a game. Lastly, this was at the very beginning of a long final, in fact the third board. In the second board, opponents had a misunderstanding leading them to the wrong slam and they were clearly not happy about it. So I was hoping to be able to play a bit with my opponents’ emotions. By making a somewhat unusual play, it would certainly put them to the test if it turned out right.

So I decided to pass. And for once, Nicolai actually showed up with the right cards for me.

1Sx-2 for +500 with the other table going down in 3NT gave us 12 IMPs. And as I had been hoping for, we turned out to have an amazing set, leading the final by 45 IMPs. We scored another +20 in the second set, followed by two somewhat even. This meant that going into the last set, we were up 65 IMPs and we knew opponents would take every opportunity to swing.

A first victory at the Swedish Cup!

To be completely honest, we really did everything we could to lose. Nothing turned out our way, and we actually started sweating after some time. But the lead was too big, and although 65 turned into 17 IMPs, I can proudly say that we secured the win in the Swedish Cup 2024.

Two pumped guys in the middle of turning the semi around in the last set

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