Day 3 from the World Youth Teams Championships in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. Under 26W Coach Claire Robinson has written the below update following the team's progress:
Today was emphatically a good day. We played four matches, we won four matches and three of those by very comfortable margins. I’m going to start by showing you the standings after two-thirds of the round-robin.
We are in a strong position. In the second round-robin we are playing the teams roughly in order from weakest to strongest so our next two days figure to be tough. The team are up for this though and so motivated to continue doing as well as they are now.
In the last match today against USA2, Lily and Dido bid skilfully to this 6H contract. Lily opened a game forcing 2C and they had a Kokish rely followed by 3C by Lily. This showed hearts and club which was indeed what she had. Dido bid 3H to set hearts and Lily bid 4H showing a relative minimum. Dido with 3 trumps, an Ace and a King moved over this by cueing 4S. They then keycarded their way to 6H. In the other room Kim bravely opened 2D as East showing a weak 2 in a major. Mad you might think with such a poor suit but fearless and not so bad in third seat when partner has already passed. This disrupted the USA auction and they only then bid to 3NT.
So now there was the small matter of making the slam. Yes I know that seeing all four hands Lily can cross to dummy, take a heart finesse, drop the King in two rounds and then knock out the club Queen. However, Lily was not double-dummy (this means knowing all four hands) and had to choose a line. She was a little short of convenient entries to dummy and had both clubs and hearts to sort out.
Lily won the spade Jack lead with the Ace and decided to play out hearts from the top. She reasoned that even if the heart finesse succeeded, there were a number of problems with this. First, if it loses she has wasted a vital entry to dummy and would no longer have the option of throwing the fourth round of clubs on the spade King, as over-taking the Queen would have to be used as an entry. Second, they may duck the King off-side and now you really are in trouble using an entry to dummy to finesse again and then finding it loses. And finally, if the King was on-side but to length she’d be wasting entries and unable to pick it up anyway.
Lily was sad to see that the King was doubleton on-side and she could have made the contract easily. However, the sign of a good player is that they don’t get rattled in situations like this. Lily composed herself and continued with her plan. She won the spade return with the Queen and ran her remaining trumps throwing a diamond and the club Jack. Lily then cashed the diamond King and the club Ace and was now down to a small diamond and K10x of clubs. In dummy she had the spade King, A10 of diamonds and a small club.
Lily crossed to the diamond Ace, East playing the Jack. She then cashed the spade King throwing her small club. Now was the crunch moment, Lily needed to read whether West was squeezed and not able to keep both the diamond Queen and the guarded club Queen. At the table, West squirmed and looked very uncomfortable taking some time to throw a club. Lily then backed her judgement playing a club to the King and seeing the beautiful Queen appear on her left. The American player made her wait a few seconds before playing it and I bet these few seconds felt like a lifetime to Lily. Her club 10 scored trick 13 and the slam was made. Great play and really well done for backing your judgement Lily.
Please keep your fingers crossed for us over the next couple of days. We will progress to knock-outs if we finish in the top eight of the round-robin but the higher the position we are in the more advantageous it will be for us in the next stages.