Poznan Mixed Championships
A very tough competition
Here MKB! I played the first week of the 11th European Transnational Championships with Luc, my usual partner in Mixed events. The team included Colin (also in the French U31 team alongside Luc), who was playing with his mother Véronique Ventos, and Vanessa Reess (French Mixed team), Stéphane Messika’s partner.
Poznan is one of the oldest and liveliest cities in Poland. With its picturesque old town and bustling market squares, it promises an unforgettable experience away from the bridge table.
The city’s central location in Poland and Europe makes it an accessible and attractive destination for all travellers.
We travelled here by train via Brussels, Cologne and Berlin.
It took us a whole day, but we arrived fully motivated to qualify among the 32 best teams to reach the KO phase!
94 teams took part, more than at the last Transnational in Strasbourg.
Take-out or penalties?
The qualifications went very well, Luc and I were pretty happy with ourselves. The last time I played with him I was very ill, so I was very happy to play well. 😁
We generally understand each other well when it comes to card play and bidding, as on this deal for example.
After wanting to show a limit raise, I found myself in the balancing position over 3♣.
In this situation, I usually play Luc’s pass as non-forcing, with a minimum balanced hand. Another argument for doubling for penalties!
And indeed, after this 2NT bid which already describes my hand, the double cannot be take-out, it is inevitably penalties.
Luc calmly passed and the opponent went down by 3, i.e. 500 points for us, even though no contract was making on our side!
Slight misunderstanding towards the slam
Luc decided to open 1NT as South. I wanted to play in slam, probably with clubs as trumps.
I started by saying 2♠, then over maximum 3♣ I had a doubt: between 4♣ and 4♦, which bid shows a strong balanced hand and which one shows a hand that is too strong for 3NT (slammy diamond shortage)?
I bet on 4♣, but Luc having asked himself the same question, we never managed to find the diamond trump again… And we played in 6♣+1 with the clubs 3-3, whereas 7♦ made.
A difficult 3NT contract… but I missed the +1
I played in 3NT as South, after 3♣ X Pass 3NT. As expected, I received the lead of the king of clubs, ducked and followed by another club to my ace, crossing my fingers that West had seven cards in clubs. This way, I could lose to the RHO.
To make my nine tricks, I would need spades. So I started by playing a spade to West’s king and dummy’s ace. As West could very well put the king from king-jack-third to dupe me, I preferred to return to hand to play the suit again.
I therefore played a heart to my jack (the queen was more likely to be with East and I preferred to ensure heart tricks as I didn’t know what was happening in the other suits yet) before playing another spade. Seeing the discard on the left, I opted for a low one. East was on lead and chose to return a heart.
What I did: I won with the ace before playing spades twice. East was on lead again and he had to either play a heart or a diamond. I gave away one trick at the end.
What I should have done: run to the 10 of hearts, then play a heart to the ace, spade to the queen and spade again. East was obliged to return a diamond and I claimed without giving away a heart trick!
I must say that I was already very happy to win my contract when 4♠ went down (one club, one diamond and two spades for East-West), but it is also important to collect overtrick IMPs when you can!
Qualified for the round of 32
We finished 20th in this round robin and were automatically up against a team of five, made up of three Swedes, a Portuguese and an American.
In the team was Andrea Nilsson, the Swede from Team Funbridge (pictured with me).
The format slightly changed as instead of 10-deal matches, four 14-deal sets would decide between us.
Among the other French competitors, Joanna and Pierre (French Mixed team) came second, followed by Paula Nataf’s team. Slightly behind us were Emmanuelle Monod and her team, who were leading at the end of the first day.
Luc and I had planned to play sets 1, 2 and 4. For the first two, I was sitting next to Margie, the American member of their team, who turned out to be absolutely adorable. 🥰
After we got off to a good start, she congratulated us warmly and offered us our burgers and chips! It was beyond fair play to be so nice to us! 🤍
A hard 4♥ contract: counting the distributions right
I found myself playing in 4♥ as South after a slightly pushed trial bid. Spade lead won by East’s ace and king of clubs.
At that point, I had the impression that I would have to establish my diamonds or I would miss tricks. So I had to hope for a good distribution in the suit, especially as I had no idea what was going on in clubs.
After the pass, 2♠ suggests that East only holds four cards, especially since West led the 7. In general, the player who overcalls has a side suit, but here I knew that East was quite aggressive, so I didn’t expect to find five clubs.
As my diamond finesse will be directed to East anyway, I won the king with the ace. There was no point in ducking, and if they had played the king from king-second or -third, I would have gone down straight away.
Now I played a diamond to West’s 10, dummy’s queen and East’s king. East returned a club. West’s queen made the trick, and on the third round of clubs I didn’t get my jack ruffed. Great news!
I played another diamond to the ace (9 in West and 3 in East) and counted the distributions: East had four spades, probably three clubs for having played the king. I still needed to determine their number of hearts to know if they had three or four diamonds.
So I played my three rounds of hearts, only to see them discard on the third round. I could then play the 5 of diamonds to East’s 4 and discard from my hand!
I then had one trump left to ruff the diamond and the dummy was high!
The game went down on the other side, so we won 10 IMPs on this deal. After the ace of spades, playing a club really wasn’t the best return. I would have gone down on the spade defence.
17 IMPs and a hand well played by both sides
Here was the sequence at our table (North-South): 2NT shows 6 hearts and 4 cards in an undisclosed minor, and a hand of at least 16 points. 3♣ is a relay, 3♠ describes 4 clubs and 18+ points.
When Luc bid Blackwood, I decided to go straight for the grand slam. Luc received the lead of the queen of hearts and won thanks to the diamond ruffing finesse.
At the other table, 7♣ went down as our teammate Stéphane found the spade lead, which cut the communications between both hands!
For the last set, this time I was sitting next to Andrea, whom I tried to buy off with a few kinders. 🙃 We won this round of 32 by 23 IMPs. We were happy with our performance!
Eliminated in the round of 16
In the next round, we met a Polish team and lost after playing badly overall, without much success. Well done to Team Akinom!
We were happy with our journey and hope to do even better next time, in such a cool atmosphere!
What did you think of my article?
Feel free to leave me a comment, I answer every time. And see you soon for a new article! ♥
Always interesting to see how other people bid and play!