A week in Katowice with MKB

Hi everyone! I’m back for my last international competition of the summer, this time in Katowice, Poland. We are here to play in the Mixed Transnational Teams organised by the European Bridge League. Unlike the European Championships held in Riga, these championships are open to everyone, and teams can be made up of players from different countries.

We decided to play as a four-player team, with Anaïs, my partner on the French Women’s team, Luc, who I usually play mixed with, and Romaric, who has just become European U31 Champion in Riga, partnering Luc.

As usual, we travelled to Poland by train, via Germany!

Two days of qualifying: aiming for the top 32

We play 8 matches of 14 boards in a Swiss Teams format, and our goal is to qualify for the knockout stage. After that, we’ll see how things go depending on the level of our opponents!

A 7♦ bid…

Over 2♥, I chose to double rather than bid 3NT to show two Spades, while also possibly allowing the contract to be played from partner’s hand to protect a doubleton King.

My partner jumps to 6♦ over 3♥! I have to decide whether or not to bid the seventh level… I was a little nervous, but on the other hand I do have the Ace and King of Diamonds, when I could easily have had neither.

So I bid 7♦, and only 4 tables out of 100 in the competition found this contract!

You can see Luc’s unusual hand in North:

… versus a missed 7♦!

With his double, Luc shows me 3♥ in a positive hand, since he is committing us to the four level. I know he is short in Spades, but I don’t know whether he has a singleton or a void.

I want to make a positive Diamond bid, because 4♦ would be non-forcing. I chose 5♦, but when Luc bid 6♦ over it, I was certain seven was there (I don’t think he can bid six without a Spade void, especially as he has neither the King of Diamonds nor the Ace-Queen of Hearts), but I didn’t dare bid it…

So I don’t think 5♦ was a great bid. I would probably have done the same without the Queen of Hearts, or with one fewer Diamond, or with a doubleton Club… I should have bid 4♠ followed by Diamonds to show a slightly stronger hand.

This grand slam was found at only one table: South bid 4♠ with my hand.

North’s XX shows first-round control in Spades, meaning either the Ace or a void. 5♥ is presumably asking for extra help in the suit. I think West’s double of 4♠ made things easier for them.

At least we bid the small slam, which only half of the 100 tables managed to do 🙂

First knockout round: an unlucky 7♥

After finishing roughly in the middle of the teams that qualified for the round of 32, we face Team Ashe, which includes Tuva Nilsmark (you probably know her as Bridgequeen; she makes bridge videos in English) and several other very strong players.

Here is a board from Romaric and Anaïs’s table, told by Anaïs herself 🙂

2♠: normally shows four Hearts and an opening hand, but no bid is really satisfactory with this hand, because 4♥ would describe the distribution we have here, but it isn’t suitable with two defensive tricks. Quite a few tables chose to bid 4♥ anyway, but this actually put us in a fairly good position to find the slam.
⁠With the West hand opposite, I can imagine making a grand slam. We are unlikely to be missing a Diamond control (the only scenario where the Diamond control is missing is if partner has points in Spades, in which case he could have chosen another, less encouraging bid than the cue bid).
After hearing about an Ace, the grand slam is not far away, but I am missing two key pieces of information: the trump Queen and third-round control in Clubs (the Queen or a doubleton).
The problem is that I cannot ask for both pieces of information. Since I am assuming partner has an opening hand, there is a good chance he has the Queen of Hearts if he has no points in Spades. There are also hands where he does not have the Queen but has five Hearts, or where he has the Jack of Hearts and the Queen is short. It isn’t perfect, but it seemed like a reasonable gamble to assume he either has the Queen or that we have ten Hearts between us.
On the other hand, the information about Clubs is crucial, because if partner has three small Clubs, the grand slam is very close to being 0%. I also know that partner did not make a fit-showing jump, so he can have no more than four ♦. I will not be able to get rid of my Clubs even opposite AKQx of Diamonds. Hence my decision to bid 6♣ to ask partner whether he has the Queen of Clubs or a doubleton.
⁠Over 6♣, 6♦ shows this third-round control; otherwise, partner returns to 6♥.
Since that was exactly what I was hoping to hear => 7♥

As you can see from the full diagram, the Hearts were 3-0 in the defenders’ hands, so the grand slam went down even though it is an excellent contract looking at both hands. At least Romaric and Anaïs can take some comfort from knowing that they bid it extremely well, just like only one other table out of 32!

Over the four knockout segments, we made a few mistakes and had a huge amount of bad luck with our slams: of the four slams we played that were at least 50%, every single one went down… We lost the match 140-117 to Team Ashe, but we were happy with the experience: with a little more luck, we could have beaten this very strong team!

Day off: visiting Krakow and Wawel Castle with Luc and Romaric

After being knocked out of the main competition, we had three options: play in the Mixed Pairs, the Swiss Teams, or the Board-A-Match.

We chose the BAM, firstly because it gave us a day off, and also because we wanted to try a different format: the Swiss Teams would be similar to the qualifying stage we had already played during the first two days, and we often get the chance to play pairs during the year, unlike BAM, which is not played very often outside transnational events and the occasional festival.

In the meantime, off to Krakow and its historic city centre!

Three days of Board-A-Match

Here’s a quick reminder of how BAM works: you face one opposing team at a time in a mini-match. Each board is then classified as « won », « tied » or « lost », giving you 2, 1 or 0 points per board. It makes no difference whether you win the board by making one extra trick or by a much larger margin.

Your turn to defend!

Play the deal

At the end of the deal, you’ll be able to see the good defence found by Luc, which was found at slightly fewer than half the tables 😉

One last slam for the road 😉

2♦: pre-emptive, showing six cards in a weak hand. I therefore bid 2♠, invitational or better, with at least five cards.
3♣ denies a Spade fit and shows long Clubs. I bid 3♦ over it, asking for a stopper in the suit.
3♥ denies a Diamond stopper and shows values in Hearts; it is a semi-natural bid.
I bid 4♣, showing slam interest, because I can easily make a slam even opposite a minimum hand: for example KQxxxx in Clubs and the Ace of Hearts if I count two Heart tricks, or the King of Hearts and Queen of Spades.
I make sure we have a Heart control before asking Blackwood. We are missing no key cards, which I tell Luc by bidding 5NT, a grand-slam try: if Luc has the King of Hearts, I can count 13 tricks with six Clubs, two Hearts, one Diamond, three Spades and a ruff in the short hand. He gives me a negative response, so we stop in the small slam, making an overtrick thanks to the successful Heart finesse. This slam was bid at one table in two!

A tiring but really enjoyable week!

It was pretty exhausting to play everything as a team of four, because we started at 10am and finished at 7:30pm every day, with a lunch break that wasn’t particularly long… which meant we had no time to do anything other than play bridge during the day. It was great to play so many boards, but I think I prefer having six players in the team so that we can take a break now and then!!