Dear friends,
Rejoice! Last evening’s match was quite thrilling. A bit of a clumsy start, followed by a string of outstanding bid and played hands, followed by a couple of extremely costly, in terms of IMPs, mistakes. Eventually, Kampala made it and won the match by 10 IMPs.
Well done to you, Kate/Greer and Aystein/Inge-Lise, it was a wonderful match. I have uploaded the results (.lin file) and you may download them here The results have not, yet, been updated on the ICl website, once this is done I will, surely, let you know.
A couple of comments on boards #9 and #15:
Forgive me, but I think that the score does not reflect the actual effort of our team, we should’ve beaten them by a much greater margin. I spotted the most ‘expensive’ and important issues yesterday on board #9 and on board #15. In both cases, a slam contract was missed and our opponents were able to capitalize on that; on #9, with a total of 31 hcps and a singleton, EW played it safe and didn’t try for slam, while on #15, instead of playing trumps first, as it was expected in the slam suit contract after having played C, South decided to play D and a makeable 6 Hearts contract went down by 1 trick.
I think that exogenous factors played a role in these two mistakes, and that they may be avoided using very simple tricks. Time is not an issue at these matches. In fact, we are able to call for a short break whenever we think it is fit; in the case that we are in doubt on how to play a slam contract, or we feel distracted, or we are not certain on whether to initiate slam bidding, a short 1-2 minute break and a glass of water, a sip of tea, and/ or a stretch may really help us make the right decision. We are not in a hurry at all (in case that you are, please let me know beforehand, so that we can make alternative arrangements, like subbing and/or change of time) and moreover, in the case that we are hosting, I am even more relaxed.
All the best for now. Once more, congratulations !!!
The Kampala Team's School of Bridge 