Palm Beach Gardens - Part 2

Palm Beach was somewhat small for the morning sessions, and in fact 3 of the 5 morning sessions were cancelled. I played every session I could, in addition to playing some on BBO throughout the week. We won 1 Knockout and made it to the Semi-Finals of two others, then on Saturday, played a Bracketed Swiss Teams, where we played top bracket in the B flight. We had won our first 3 rounds by 13, 29 and 23 IMPs, and were playing the top team in the bracket, when this hand came up:

♠ KQJT9x ♥ J ♦ ♣ JT98xx

Much to my surprise, RHO opened 2C! We were Vul. and they were not, so this hand became quite a problem for me. I was kind of glad I was given 10 seconds to think after RHO's skip bid, but I really wanted more time. After some thought, I decided that 4S rated to put the Maximum amount of pressure on the 2C opener, who probably had tons of red cards. It also didn't look like it was going to go down more than 1 or 2, and at IMPs this is another major deciding factor. Over 4S, LHO doubled showing a negative hand, and everyone passed (also much to my surprise). I hate to sound easily startled, but it really shocked me when I saw both hands:

♠ 876 ♥ xxx ♦ KTxxx ♣ Ax

♠ KQJT9x ♥ J ♦ ♣ JT98xx

I received the King of Club lead, and unfortunately RHO ruffed, so I finished -1, which appeared to be an decent score, since the full deal was:

(Important Spot Cards Noted)

	♠ 876 ♥ xxx ♦ KT7xx ♣ Ax
♠ xx ♥ xxx ♦ 8xx ♣ KQxxx		♠ Ax ♥ AKQT98 ♦ AQJ9x ♣
	♠ KQJT9x ♥ J ♦ ♣ JT98xx

This layout is actually quite interesting, since East has absolutely no entry to West's hand. West's 8 of Diamonds holds the key to the hand... The solution to make 4H is to play the Ace of Diamonds and Queen of diamonds, then play a Diamond to the eight, now you only lose 2D and 1S, whereas if you do not lead up to the eight, North's seven becomes promoted... Sadly, our teammate was not watching the spots, and promoted the 7 of Diamonds for North at the other table, for a 6 IMP loss, however this is a perfect example of why even the littlest of cards are important! We lost this round by 3 IMPs, as a result of this board, however we went on to win the event handily after blitzing all the remaining matches. I finished the tournament 19th in Overall Masterpoint winners... With 52.95 points. My partner was Steve Wallis for the week, and we had a blast experimenting with precision stuff!