Frank Morgan

Collegiate Qualifying Bridge Tournament

Guest post by Neeko Gardner, Caroline Atwood, Paul Friedrich, Llewellyn Smith

 On Saturday, February 16^th, the recently formed Williams College bridge team participated in the collegiate qualifying bridge tournament online on bridgebase. Having just come off an intensive month-long winter study class on bridge, we decided to test our newfound skills against other collegiate teams. We were up against Stanford, UPenn, CalTech, Hamilton, UChicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, NYU, and UWashington. Our first round we lost to Dartmouth, then beat NYU, tied against Hamilton, beat Stanford, and lost to UPenn in the final round. With our final loss to Penn who was playing precision and had been partners for over 5 years, we barely lost out qualifying. It was a great showing for Williams, and considering we’d only been playing for a month we did very well. Next year we hope to come back even stronger and qualify. Here’s an interesting hand from our match against Hamilton:

Board 15     2/16/2013

N-S Vulnerable. North is dealer

Bidding:

North is the dealer here and has 13 HCP, and opens 1D. East only has 9 HCP, and no suit to overcall so they pass. South having only 3 HCP has to pass. West has 15 HCP and a strong 5 card spade suit topped with AQ, so they overcall 1S. North not having a strong suit and only 13 points has to pass, especially since North knows his partner has less than 6 points. East having 9 points and a 3 card spade suit responds 2S. South passes, then West having 15 HCP bids 3S inviting to game. East having 9 points, and two high spades then accepts and bids 4S. North, having 3 aces and 4 spades, doubles thinking that he can set them a trick.

The Play:

Since they are the West’s spades, North leads. North doesn’t want to lead from under any of the aces giving West a free trick, so North leads out a low trump. West takes it in his hand. You need to be on the board three times to be able to finesse the clubs twice, and then to take the rest of the clubs, so after drawing three rounds of trump, West leads a club low from the dummy, then plays the 10 from his hand and North takes with his A. North then leads back his final trump which West takes. West now has the HK and DQ entry into the board, so West leads a heart, and North ducks for fear of losing both the Q and K, taking it in the dummy. West then plays a club from the dummy, and finesses again taking the Jack in hand, then taking the King so the Queen of clubs falls. West lead a Diamond to get back to the board, and North now takes the Ace for fear of not taking it, and then North takes his Ace of Hearts. West now has the rest of the tricks, making 4S. This is a very risky bid to make with only 24 total points in the partnership, but in the end it works out. At our table the contract was in 4Sx, and we went down two since West led a club from the dummy, South played low, and West played the King which North took with the Ace of Clubs since he didn’t lead them out, which set the contract, and in the end lost our match to Hamilton.