David Jones, Non-Playing Captain for the Seniors Team at the European National Team Championships writes about the team's first day at the tournament:
The England Senior team began play yesterday. The field is 23 teams, playing a full round-robin over the next 7 days.
The team is: Alan Mould and Brian Senior, Kay Preddy and Norman Selway, Patrick Shields and Richard Chamberlain with your correspondent as Non-Playing Captain.
We began against Poland and Italy two of the favourites scoring a small win against the former and a narrow loss against the latter. Our third match yesterday was against Scotland and resulted in a win by 9 imps. So a steady first day.
Two hands from the Poland match featuring balanced hand bidding
K6
JT9
AKQ98
AQ2
A842
AK87
52
K73
This is a good 6NT which is cold with 5 diamond tricks and if that suit only provides 4 tricks one needs 3 heart tricks. The contract is approaching 70% and was bid at 19/22 tables but failed with diamonds 4-2 and the heart finesse losing. 6D will make as you can generate 5 diamond tricks taking two spade ruffs in the long trump hand.
Then later in the same match
Axxx
Kxx
Ax
JT8x
Kxx
Ax
KQT98
AKx
Here the values are not quite there for a slam (but the minor suit intermediates are excellent and the diamond hand might well upgrade to a 2NT opener if dealer) and around half the field in the Seniors bid a slam. If you can secure 5 diamonds tricks it is cold since 3 club tricks are available. If you only have 4 diamond tricks one needs 4 club tricks so perhaps a 50/50 slam but making on the lay out. Neither table attempted this in our match with Poland.
We begin the second day with matches against France and Sweden, two of the main contenders.