Silver medal at the Norwegian Women’s Team Championship

Those who remember my articles about the Norwegian Division might remember that there was some drama about who would play due to illness. I did not escape that this time either. There was some back and forth in the week leading up to the tournament and the final line-up was decided late the evening before, but we were ready to play.

The tournament was held in Oslo, so I was able to stay at home, which was nice. The tournament had 22 teams participating. However we also had 14 teams in a separate tournament for less experienced players, which is good for the future.

Our team had good hopes for the tournament. We started off with a bit of a swingy match, where we and our team-mates bid a nice slam each, giving us 26 IMPs on the first two deals. Unfortunately, we made wrong decisions twice at the 5-level, but we ended up with a small victory.

The second match was a very nice win, again with a good slam bid by my team-mates, and we had a nice start before lunch. We came back from a very nice lunch ready to crush. We started with some flat deals, but about halfway through the match, we got an interesting deal. I was sitting North and the bidding went:

I knew that I had bid very aggressively, but I also knew that my partner is not the most aggressive bidder, so she probably had her bid, and hopefully that was not too much wasted in diamonds.

I received the lead of the 10 of clubs (3^rd/5^th), so it was either 10x or 109x(x). It could also be from Q109(x).

Partner put down the dummy and I saw that I was right. She did have her bid, but unfortunately she had some of her points in diamonds, which wasn’t too surprising. But I’m a junior full of hope. Well, I must admit that I had some work to do.

I decided that I didn’t think that she had led from the queen of clubs, so I played low in dummy to my ace. My next card was a spade towards dummy to establish the king, and East won the trick and played a low club.

Now I was even more convinced that she didn’t have the queen of clubs, so I played low again, winning in my hand. And I returned a spade to the king and ruffed a low diamond. I knew that I needed to get a couple of ruffs here to make my contract, so I couldn’t draw the trumps.

The only problem was that I had quite small hearts, so it was a risky project, but I had to try. I played a club to the jack and queen, with East discarding a diamond, and West played the last round of clubs, which East decided to ruff low with the 3. So I could over-ruff with the 5 and play a diamond to ruff low.

Now I had to start ruffing spades, but I knew that West was also out of spades. So if I ruffed low, I would be over-ruffed. I therefore ruffed with the king of hearts and played a third diamond, which held the trick, to ruff low.

This was the 3-card position:

I still had a spade and a heart losers unless I could take a finesse and that worked. Since I had already lost two tricks, I couldn’t afford to lose more than one. I didn’t have an entry to the dummy, but there was still a chance. I knew that East had two spades and a heart left, while West only had hearts left.

Since East had ruffed with a low heart, I didn’t think that she had the queen of hearts, so cashing my ace was not an option. What I did instead was to play a spade to ruff in dummy and let West over-ruff. Since she only had hearts left, she was endplayed and had to play a heart from her queen, giving me the finesse. That meant 10 tricks to me and 10 IMPs to us as the others had played in 3H just made. A fun deal. Here are the four hands:

It seemed strange that East ruffed her partner’s trick with a low heart when she knew that I could over-ruff with my lowest heart, but there was nothing that she could do. If she discarded her diamond instead, things would look much scarier for me, but she only had two very small hearts. So I would still be able to ruff low. The opponents had to be able to switch to a heart earlier, but that was not so easy as West was hoping that East just had slighly higher hearts and would be able to push out the king of hearts, giving her at least one heart trick.

After this, I knew that we had a good deal. It was very agressive (crazy?) to be in game and not an easy one to make, so I was feeling good and then this very next deal appeared:

Our team name was Bloody Mary because we love to double, and this was the nicest deal we had this weekend with our doubles.

My partner in South decided to open her 11-count, and then there was no mercy for our opponent. She opened 1♣ and I answered 1♠, and East had 14 points and wanted to let her partner know about her nice diamond suit. It went 2♦-Pass-Pass to me and I made a take-out double. My partner didn’t look back and easily passed that.

She led the 10 of clubs, which I let go to the queen, declarer tried the king of hearts to my partner’s ace and a new club came through. I cashed my two club tricks and partner signalled for a spade, so I switched to a small spade to the jack and a spade back to my ace and queen, and a fourth spade to try to get a promotion. Now declarer tried a low diamond, so my partner could play a club that I ruffed high and a promotion was established. When the smoke cleared, we had scored 800. That was 12 IMPs for us when the other table played in 2NT+2 for 180.

We won the match comfortably and were now second, just behind the leaders. Since this was a Swiss, we were going to play against each other. The leaders were two of the pairs from the Norwegian national women’s team that won the European Championships last summer and the team that has won every year since Covid struck, so we were in for a tough match.

The whole Norwegian national team represents a local club based in the Southern part of Norway although they live a bit around the country, and that club also participated with two teams in the other tournament, including a Junior team.

I have to say that I think that they should have won a prize for the best teamoutfit, as they had team sweaters, but also cool stickers on their cheeks.

We collect overtricks

In a teams tournament, making the contract is the most important thing, but the philosophy in our team was that we would also focus on overtricks when possible. This gave us several 1 and 2-IMP deals. And in a 10-deal match, getting an extra trick on every deal is worth a full game swing, so it is not useless. The first deal was against the leading team, I was playing in 3NT from North without a bid from the opponents.

I got the lead of the jack of clubs and knew that no matter where the king was, I had at least 9 tricks now: 2 in clubs, 1 in spades and 6 in diamonds. First, I was very happy that I didn’t receive a spade lead, which would be scary if the king was on the wrong side. So, I let the club run to my queen, played a heart to the jack and queen and got a spade switch to my queen. I had already secured 1 overtrick, but I could get even more if I could establish my heart trick. Since we also collected overtricks, I played another heart, which I was allowed to keep, and this was the position now:

Now I cashed my ace of spades and started playing my diamonds from the top. East could easily discard one spade and two clubs in addition to the two diamonds she had.

But when she was down to three cards and I played my last diamond, she had to either discard her ace of hearts or her club stopper. When she chose the clubs, I discarded the last heart in dummy and played a club to the ace.

The 7 of clubs made the last trick, for 12 tricks. I was, of course, a bit disappointed that I hadn’t switched the minor suits and won the last trick on the 7 of diamonds instead, as that would mean that my partner owed me a beer. Something that will be important for a later deal.

Unfortunately, a couple of overtricks were not enough when a misunderstanding on our team gave us a very bad deal and we lost the match by about 14-6 VPs. In the next match, my partner and I bid a good slam, but they found a ruff on the lead as the only way to beat the contract, so we lost 13 IMPs on the deal instead of winning 13. That was expensive in VPs because we ended up losing the match by 8 instead of winning by 18, and the VPs change quicker in a close match. Two losses in a row were not something we liked at all, even if it was an unlucky slam going down, so we had to improve for the last two matches of the day. And that’s what we did with two nice victories, ending the day in second place, but quite far up. However, nothing was impossible.

On the second day, my partner had a deal worth an IMP.

We played in 4♥ in South after a 1NT opening. The lead was the ace of clubs followed by a diamond switch. Now my partner played the 10 of hearts to the ace and saw the queen drop. With the principle of restricted choice, it was now correct to finesse the next round, so she played a spade to the ace, took a heart finesse and pulled the last heart. She no longer had the communications to hope for the diamonds to be breaking 4-3, so she started playing hearts. Her reasoning for this is that she thinks that she is a world champion at pseudo squeezes, which means that the opponents don’t know which card to hold on to, so they discard the wrong one and you get a trick you were not entitled to. However, by playing all the hearts, East was actually squeezed this time since she had both the spade honours and five diamonds. East decided to discard her diamonds, so my partner could play a spade to the king and the king of diamonds, and get the last trick on the 7 of diamonds. I must say that it was unfair that her squeeze gave her the beer card while I only got the boring 7 of clubs.

However, I’m never complaining about my partner getting tricks, which she did a lot on the second day. We also had good team-mates, which is always fun, so we won all four matches with a good margin.

A day with an average of over 15 was not enough, the reigning champions had no intention of letting anyone close.

And going into the last match they were 20.9 VPs ahead of us in second place, so we just had to try to secure our silver medal.

We also had a decent lead of 11 VPs over third place, so if we won our last match, we would secure it. When we won with 17 IMPs, there was no question and we could celebrate.