Day 5: The Junior pairs have begun | Team Funbridge in Bodø
New challenge for Team Funbridge after its first tournament of the year in Alpe d’Huez: the Marit Sveaas tournament in Bodø, Norway. Follow their adventures on this page which will be regularly updated!
Summary:
Day 3: Top 4 required to stay in the main tournament
Day 5: The Junior pairs have begun
Day 1: Let’s go!
News of 23 May 2024
Team Funbridge has now arrived in Bodø for the Marit Sveaas tournament. We are starting with an invitational Junior Teams tournament. There are ten teams, and Team Funbridge includes Andreas Abragi, Christian Lahrmann, Sofie Græsholt Sjødal, and two Swedish friends, Alexander Sandin and Castor Mann.
To begin with, the format is a double Round Robin with 10-board matches. So, we played 6 matches today and we will play 6 others tomorrow and Wednesday. On Thursday there will be some kind of final. Everyone will keep their scores, but the top 4 is locked. It is not possible for the fifth place to catch up. Then all teams in the top 4 will play against each other once, and the teams will be locked into 1st-2nd and 3rd-4th. Lastly, it will be one match between the teams that are locked, and as previously, the teams behind can not catch up, but the scores are kept. However, there is still a long way to go until the last day. So, we are currently focusing on the Round Robin.
It has been a tough day for the team. It started well, but apparently we could not handle the break, and we did not get many VPs after lunch. We are currently 5th out of 10 teams.
We are only done with 1/3 of the matches in the Round Robin, and are planning on coming back strong tomorrow.
Here are a couple of boards from today. First, you are second hand, vul against not, and your opponent starts thinking for a long time. You have this hand.
You are starting to plan what to do over the different bids when the opponent surprisingly opens 3D. What do you do?
Castor decided to pass and was hoping for a double from Partner. It was his lucky day as that is what happened, this would have to go for a number. He was correct, opponents went for 1100. Unfortunately, East-West make 6NT or 6C, and opponents managed to bid it, so we lost 6 IMPs.
This was the entire hand:
Luckily, +1100 was not always a losing board. We got a lot of IMPs back in the next match. Opponents bid to 4H doubled after 1NT (15-17) 4H X all pass
Sofie led the 4 of Spades to the 10 and Jack. Castor switched to the 2 of Clubs to tell Sofie that he had three, so she would know if she had to duck or not. She played another spade to the 8 and 9. Castor now played another spade to give Sofie a promotion. Declarer decided to ruff with the 9 and Sofie overruffed and played a heart. Now we still had to get three diamonds and a heart trick. If Declarer decided to discard her diamonds on Spades, Sofie would just discard her clubs and Castor could cash his diamond trick and play a club. So there was nothing to do for the declarer. At the other table, Funbridge made 7 tricks in 4H doubled, for 500. So we got 12 IMPs.
Léo and Jérôme Rombaut are also here, playing the WBT Teams tournament at the same place. They are currently ranked 8th out of 12, just below average.
Day 2: It’s not over yet…
News of 24 May 2024
We had a lot of work to do today after the disastrous day yesterday. Before lunch we did well, but the food killed us again and we had a bad second half of the day. We are now ranked third, but the chances of winning are slim since the Polish U26 are leading with a huge score. We have one more day of qualification, after which the top 4 play another round robin against each other. Here is a board played today:
AKxx 98xxxx A Ax
xx KJTx Kxx QJTx
P (3♦) X (P)
4♥ (P) 6♥ AP
A club lead and the beginning was pretty much forced. ♣A, ♦A, ♠AK and spade ruff and ♦K discarding a club. Opener signalled for 7♦ 3♠. Now I need to decide. If I play in Clubs and Opener has ♥x, he can ruff and give his partner a diamond ruff. If RHO has both heart honours however, I need to ruff a club and play a heart. After some time, I played the ♥K from hand and Opener’s stiff queen popped up for 980 as the only player in the field.
Tomorrow we will need lots of points to catch up with Poland, but we will try our best!
Day 3: Top 4 required to stay in the main tournament
News of 27 May 2024
Here is the recap of yesterday:
The teams tournament has not been going well for Team Funbridge. To be able to play for a prize, we had to be in the top 4 today. Unfortunately, we ended 5th and are no longer part of the main tournament. Tomorrow we will play a consolation tournament.
Today’s funniest board was this one:
There was something wrong with the hand, so it was turned around. North was dealer and opened 1H. Most people would now probably think of the level at which they will bid Spades. Christian, however, had other plans. He bid 1NT (15-17) and South raised to 2H. Now Andreas realised that something was up and that it must be Christian. From Andreas’ point of view, Christian probably had spades, but how to get to the right contract? Andreas decided to bid 3H, transfer to 3S, and Christian was quite certain that Andreas had forgotten the system. But when he also bid 4S, they both knew what was going on. So, in a not-so-normal way, they got to the very normal contract of 4S+1, which was pushy.
Day 4: Let’s try to rank 5th
News of 28 May 2024
After a very disappointing tournament, we played for the 5th place only today. We had kept our VPs from the first days, so we started with a nice lead. And after a big victory, we were over 20 VPs ahead. Then we had a very close match and a loss. However, we were still in the lead by about 17 VPs, going into the last match. The boards in the last match were swingy and there were many slams both ways. The most notable was this one:
Christian and Sofie bid their way to 6NT, with Christian as declarer in South. He got a club lead to the King and ducked. So, he played another club to knock out the Ace. Christian now started playing hearts and East was squeezed in Spades and Diamonds. He threw a spade away and then Christian took his AK of Spades, and the Jack was good.
At the table we thought that the squeeze would be broken with a diamond lead. However, that was not the case. With a diamond lead, there would be a crisscross squeeze. You win the first trick in hand with the Ace. Then knock out the Ace of Clubs and play all your clubs and hearts, discarding a spade from both hands.
The end position with one heart to go was:
When he now played his last diamond, East was in trouble. If he discarded his spade, Christian would cash his spades and play a diamond to the King and the spade J would be good. If he instead discarded a diamond, he would cross to dummy’s diamond and play a spade back, and his 7 of Diamonds would be good. So, the contract would make on a squeeze either way.
The match ended in a victory for Team Funbridge and we won the consolation tournament. Tomorrow we will start the pairs tournament and a couple more players will arrive. We have two pairs in the Marit Sveaas Junior pairs tournament: Sofie Græsholt Sjødal – Andrea Nilsson and Léo Rombaut – Christian Lahrmann. Nicolai Heiberg-Evenstad and Andreas Abragi are playing with different partners in the open pairs.
After the play yesterday we went on a boat trip to watch the Maelstrom, which was very fun and beautiful and a nice way to recharge our batteries before the pairs tournament.
Day 5: The Junior pairs have begun
News of 29 May 2024
Hi! I’m Léo Rombaut. 👋
We have the chance to play a very nice tournament in Norway. I personally played the first team event in the Open category with my father. We got a decent result, but it was a bit disappointing. We moved down from 3rd to 6th place in the last match.
Then Christian Lahrmann and I started the Junior pairs for 3 days. We had a very good start on Day 1. Despite some misunderstandings, our score was just below 63% and we were leaders after the qualifying stage. 24 pairs qualified for the final. The are some very good pairs playing it. Among them are Israelis, Poles, Dutch, Andrea and Sofie.
The final includes three sessions of 30 deals. We played two yesterday. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well at all for us and we had no luck. But we have one advantage: we are ranked 4th anyway and we still have 30 deals to play tomorrow to try to grab a medal.
Here is a deal from the qualifying stage (Christian is North, I am South):
The system we use with Christian is not very sophisticated as we rarely play together. Also, the French and Danish styles are totally different. We tried to make a mix of both to understand each other.
So, Christian opened 1D. I responded game-forcing 2D with at least 4 diamond cards and no 4-card major. Christian bid 3C, showing the shortage. My hand was not very strong in terms of points, but the club shortage was very good news given my 3 small clubs. The final contract seemed to be heading for Diamonds. The question was at which level. I decided to say 3H to show my strength with AK. Christian said 4D to confirm his ambitions for slam. I responded 4H cue bid, he bid 4NT Blackwood. I decided to respond 5S, showing two key cards and the trump Queen. True, I don’t have it, but I hold five trumps, promised only four and Christian often has five diamonds in this sequence. So, with 10 cards, the Queen is less important and I also have the Jack of Diamonds.
Now Christian felt very embarrassed as he knew that I was not needing much to make grand slam: the Queen of Spades, of Hearts or a doubleton spade. With not much space left to ask for that after much thought, he decided to end the auction by bidding 7D. On my end, seeing him think a lot and having nothing more than what I had already promised, I knew that this grand slam would be given back…
As expected, this grand slam was not exceptional. We had a spade loser. To overcome this, we would need the Queen of Hearts to be third maximum and fall. Or there was another possibility. If the Queen of Hearts was longer, the player holding it should have at least four spades and be at Christian’s right to be able to discard after him and squeeze. Christian realised that quickly and played very fast by ruffing 2C and 1H. The Queen didn’t fall. By drawing all trumps at the end, he was happy to see the Queen of Hearts discarded, his opponent was squeezed. As expected, he had four spades and the Queen-fourth in Hearts.
A deal on which we scored 100%. We have been quite lucky because the grand slam was not very good. It would have been wiser to stop at the 6-level, which was already synonym of a good result, but we are still Juniors and we like to take risks! 😊
The full deal:
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