Dear team mates,
Last Wednesday’s match was a memorable one. Unfortunately, not for the best, at least not for our team. Calgary deployed a straightforward 2/1 system and the 1st board was actually a lucky one for us: they managed to miss a 5 H contract when we had erroneously bid slam that went down, of course. Then, they went on with a good sacrifice bid and bid an obvious 3NT contract, while we missed both games. A couple of boards later on, they just knew when to stop while we overbid and lost more IMPs.
Perhaps the most interesting board was the 11th, when we missed a grand slam, bid game in D and they made a slam contract. Next board, they bid game in NT once more, while we bid a mere 4D and lost valuable IMPs, of course. Then, on board 16, a doomed doubled 1NT bid from E, was never exited in C , as it could’ve been and the result was, again, bad for our team.
Boards 17 to 20 were perhaps our best in this match, as we managed to gain 34 IMPs. However, it was not enough, and we lost by a margin of 26 IMPs 40-66 to Calgary. It was a clear win for them. I am sure that if you check and recheck the played boards, you’ll be able to see that while they had a good day, their team was not as good as was the result in their favor. It were our mistakes that made it happen. I will not point a finger at anyone in particular. I believe that we are all capable of evaluating our own performance.
I would like to thank you all for you participation, especially in the last match that was a bit strenuous. While you may find it bitter that we only lost one match and it was in the KO phase, I think that our participation was an exquisite experience for all of us and good bridge was played. After all, it is a friendly tournament and it is more important to be nice than it is nice to be important!
The results of the KO phase of 32 are displayed below :
You may download the boards of our match here https://bit.ly/3evY9Al .
Best regards to all!
The Kampala Team's School of Bridge 