Analysis of the first IMP 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 Funbridge private tournament of Milan Macura (IMP)

I would like to know which scoring you like better if MPs or IMPs.

Maybe this way, we will figure it out with no need for a poll. I believe most people will play both tournaments, but some played obviously only IMPs since there were 397 players and 143 made it their favorite.

What is the most impressive is that Tarun from India has won both events, this one with 2 IMPs ahead of „Crawling from Australia.

I have made a couple of mistakes which resulted in 0 IMPs in total.

Here is the top 5 leaderboard:

There were 2 declarer problems which could have brought me 27 IMPs if I do both right.

How would you do?

You are declaring 4♥ when you overcall 1♥ after East opening of 1♣. Partner bid 2♣ and you jumped straight to game.

What is your plan after ♣J lead?

You have 2 diamonds, 1 club and 1 potential heart loser.

What is the best way not to lose one of those losers?

You can discard two diamonds on two spade winners, but for that, you don‘t have a quick entry. You can finesse ♥K and hope the ♥10 drops doubleton.

The best way is by combining both chances.

For that, you must make sure opponents don’t switch to diamonds. If you cover the lead with ♣Q, East wins and seeing the weakness in the dummy, he will switch to diamonds. The key is to duck the first club completely. Now, it will be very hard for West to switch to diamonds if he holds only small cards.

West returns a second club which you win with the Ace. You unblock the ♠K and ruff the club. Now, you play 2 rounds of spades to discard 2 diamonds and you play the ♥Q. If the finesse is on and the ♥10 drops, you will have even 11 tricks and score +12 IMPs.

Another declarer play seems much easier, still, most people misplayed, including me.

Do you misplay 4♠ too or do you win 7 IMPs instead of losing 6?

You have 2 spade losers and you have to manage to get rid of 2 hearts and 2 clubs. There are plenty of options:

• ruff one heart and discard the second one on the ♦K, try to draw trumps and then just give away the ♣K.
• establish the clubs and discard the hearts on them
• or finesse the ♣K, discard the ♣6 on the ♦K and then crossruff.

Which of these options is the best?

The answer is the defender‘s signals and also the quality of your trump suit. You have to sacrifice ♠Q and ♠J to the A and K. Still you are missing the 9 and 8 and there is a huge danger that there will be an overruff or that opponents will shorten you before you can manage to draw the last trump and establish the ♣ trick.

Therefore the best way is to play on spades immediately and wait for what will be the defense. You can still change the plan if you feel like it. If you play the ♠Q, West wins with the K and plays the ♥7. Do you stick with your plan or do you change for discard and crossruff? The lead was ♦2 which should indicate 5 cards in diamonds. The ♥7 is the highest spot card so it looks very much as a doubleton. That is why you should stick with the plan of drawing trumps and establishing ♣ for ♥ discards. You should win the trick with the ♥K to keep the entry to dummy.

This is the actual standing:

East wins and returns the ♣10 since he knows the Heart is not helping. You can win with the ♣A to prevent a ♣ ruff. Draw the last trump and exit with the ♣J and discard your losing hearts. If East plays a second heart, you can play the club to the Jack. If it holds, you try to ruff the heart and if West ruffs high, you can discard the ♣ loser on ♦K and ruff the last heart with remaining trump in dummy.

In the real board, the club finesse loses and you will have the club communication and entries to draw the trumps and make all the discards.

Unfortunately, I have experienced technical issues which I have solved for the future, but the video of IMP tournament is lost.

Instead of that, you can follow the challenges against the players which followed the live stream. Here is the link to my youtube channel.

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And to read my analysis of the MP tournament, click the following button: