Following the day's success in Veldhoven, Claire Robinson has written an update to her blog following the progress of the U26 Women's team at the European Youth Pairs Championships:
Today was the first of two days in the mixed pairs and the IMP pairs. Both events were open to anyone under 31. We had U26W playing in both events. Lots of interesting hands to discuss, some pairs had good luck, some bad luck.
The highlight of the day was seeing Lucy Norman (16) and Kim Hudson (19) leading the field in the IMP pairs. All day they played fearless bridge making three doubled contracts along the way. The most confidently bid hand of the day was the one pictured above.
North passed, Kim (E) opened 1C, South overcalled 2H (yuk!) and Lucy (W ) made a negative double showing 4+ spades. North raised to 3H and Kim had a difficult call. She opted for 4H hoping this was a sort of unassuming cue bid agreeing Lucy’s spades. As is usually the case in this partnership, Lucy was on the same page and recognised that she had a very good hand opposite partner forcing to game in spades. She chose to bid 5H showing, she hoped, first round heart control (Lucy knew her partner had short hearts so only the Ace could be helpful here). Kim with her Aces and nice-looking hand took a fearless, if slightly optimistic, view and bid 7S. She was confident it wasn’t worse than a finesse and indeed making the contract was easy enough if the club King was on-side and the breaks were not too unkind. The cards were where Kim wanted them to be and courageous bidding was rewarded. Well played, well bid, 15 imps in the bag.
To follow the second half tomorrow go to Eurobridge results, click on running scores and you can see the results coming in as they happen.
Best of luck to all of the English pairs competing.
By Claire Robinson
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