The pendulum – Summer National Pairs – Session 2

Hand rotated 180 

The overcall and lead of ♥ 2 tells you that hearts are 3-6. RHO wins HA and returns the Q.

I played ♠ A and another, lho played jack and dummy won the king, RHO following. I now cashed diamonds, and found that RHO had Jxx. So after 4 rounds, I exited a spade to LHO, who had to break the clubs. Small to Ten and King, and I played another round to 9 ,secure in the knowledge that even if I misguess and lose to J, RHO will be endplayed as he’s now known to be 2632. He’ll have to play a heart and give me a ruff discard.

Another thorny decision was not long in coming

Its tempting to bid 4♠  over partner’s 3♦ . However, I decided to temporize with 3♠  A slam is not impossible when pd has ♣ Short with say Ax♠ . It was time to decide when pd bid 4♥  . Its quite possible that your hand is worth 6 tricks in spades and useless in hearts. However what swung me was the absence of ♠ T. I might have 2 trump losers in 4♠ while partner has good 65 of his own.. I passed 4♥ . That turned out to be a good decision as 4♠ can be beaten on ♥ ruff, while 4♥ is cold

In penultimate round of the session Basak and Avi bid a good 6♣ against us.

And in the last round playing against Rajeev and Himani I made a huge error when I did not convert 2♥  dbl, looking at A98xx hearts and a side Ace. 2Hx goes down 3, and 110 in 3♣ was hardly any compensation.

However, on the last hand Himani took a passive view and that resulted in them missing a game. That was a shared top for us.

It had been a good session overall. We had got the better of most of the exchanges.

We were now upto 2nd position, trailing only by 5 match points to our teammates Tewari and Keyzad.

Manna and Datta were breathing down our necks, only 1 MP away. Good news was that the huge lead that they had at the end of 1st set had been overcome.

Last set sure promised to be exciting, and a definite test of nerves.

Stay tuned.