The 18th World Youth Teams Championships is taking place this week in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. The Non-playing captain for the Under 26 women's team, Claire Robinson, has written the below from from the team's first day:
In the words of the Boomtown Rats “I don’t like Mondays”. I think that sums up our day. Today marked the first day of play in the World Championship teams and I think it’s fair to say it was tough going. The England U26W faced a challenging day playing four very good teams straight off. We started with 2 losses against Italy (last year’s European champions) and Denmark. In the third match though we found our first win against China, a team we expected to be in contention in the latter stages. Our final match was a small loss to Poland.
One swing our way came by virtue of a well-thought-through play by one of the two youngest members of the team Lucy Norman. Lucy has fantastic card play skills for one so young and would be far more likely to be able to work out correct suit combinations than I ever can. Watch her in action on this board…
East passed, South passed and Lucy opened 1S as East. North passed and her partner Kim bid 1N. South doubled 1N showing clubs, Lucy bid her second suit 2D and Kim corrected back to 2S. North led the spade 7 thinking that they may need to cut down on any ruffs available in the dummy. However, with 4333 shape, there weren’t going to be any. Lucy inserted the Jack covered by the King and she won the Ace. She followed with a spade to the Queen and then left the master spade 9 outstanding.
Having heard the double of 1N showing clubs, Lucy took advantage of her scarce entry to dummy by playing a club to the King. Unfortunately North won the Ace, cashed her master trump and exited a club. South won the club exit and played another. Lucy ruffed and she was now up to a measly 5 tricks – 4 spades and the heart Ace. She needed somehow to make 3 tricks from the diamond suit. Missing the Ace and the Queen Lucy worked out that a singleton Ace would only give her 2 tricks in the suit. However, if she was lucky enough to find a singleton Queen, she would be able to make 3 tricks. Playing IMPs is all about making your contracts and playing whatever line you can think of to try to achieve this. Lucy duly put the diamond King on the table and was rewarded with the beautiful stiff Queen with South. North won but had no answer, Lucy could now cash the diamond 10, run the 8 (or 7) and then take the Jack. 8 well played tricks.
In the other room, Imogen had made a quite normal opening of 1H with the South cards and this resulted in NS winning the contract in 3H. Imogen played this nicely to make and we had a plus score in both rooms for 7 IMPs.
Everything is still to play for. Today we completed 4 matches from a 22 match double round-robin. The team are feeling positive and will do their best to crush opponents tomorrow when we have 5 matches facing USA2, France, Norway, Thailand and Hungary. Good luck.
By Claire Robinson