Day 3 from the World Youth Teams Championships in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. Under 21 Coach Charlie Bucknell has written the below update following the team's progress:
This board from our match against New Zealand shows how courageous our juniors are. Courageous is often a word confused with crazy at the bridge table, but our juniors have fine judgement and it proved to be so on this hand. Simply because East had shown a game forcing hand did not deter Liam Fegarty from mentioning his 6 card club suit (KJ8752!). Jamie knew it was safe to show diamonds since he had 3 card club support and would quite like a diamond lead should Liam find himself on lead against a contract but little did he know he would be putting the dummy down when Liam rebid 3♠ and he raised to 4♠!! East was extremely confused – he held all the points! An understandable double for penalty was made and West led the ♥10. East won and shifted to the ♣A and another which Liam took with the Queen. A trump finesse later and Liam claimed 11 tricks with a sheepish looking East…
At the other table, Andy Cope also opened 2♣ but when the opponents competed to 3♠, he bid 4♥! North then backed in with 4♠ and Andy could not be contained – he bid to 5♥ which proved an excellent sacrifice over the making 4♠ and went down 2 for -100 and win 13 IMPs to England!
At love all, Tom decided that his shape made it worth opening a 2♥ pre-empt with only 5 cards at first in. Opening aggressive pre-empts is certainly popular with Junior players and as we will see here, can prove to be especially effective. West has a tough decision between passing and doubling, but only having 3 Spades just about tips the scales towards passing. Henry had no reason to doubt that Tom had his 2♥ bid and simply raised to the level of the fit by bidding 4♥. East had no business with that and so West found themselves on lead. Without a clear choice, West led a trump and Tom saw that this contract had a glimmer of hope. It *only* needed the heart finesse onside, and the ♠ Queen onside too. Fortunately… both were offside! Tom trickled two down for -100. So how could this be good? Over to the other table we go…
The Polish South clearly hadn’t had their Weetabix for breakfast whereas Liam had – starting by opening a decent looking 11 count. Without the interference, the Fegarty’s smoothly bid their way up to 3NT and managed to bang in 5 clubs, 2 spades, 1 heart and 1 diamond for 9 tricks. Clearly, aggressive bidding pays off! All of this ended in another 7 IMPs to England and a good finish to day 3 as we beat Poland.
Day 4 tomorrow will see us fighting against USA2, India, Hong Kong China and Israel – not an easy day but I’m sure our team is more than up to the task.