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Michael and Pam celebrating success.

Kiwis “leading” the way in the VCC.

A week ago, the Victorian Festival of Bridge took place in Melbourne. This attracts several Kiwi players each year. The main event is the Victor Champion Cup (VCC). The winners came from both sides of the Tasman, Sydneysiders Warren Lazer and Pauline Gumby and our own Pam Livingston and Michael Ware.

The event consists of 10 x 14 board matches, Swiss style. The Lazer team timed their run perfectly hitting the lead in round 9 and staying there at the finish. The winning margin was 3.91 vps.

In Round 9, Lazer played Lasocki who had led for several of the earlier rounds and who were keen to regain top spot. This was a very important moment in that match and hence in the whole competition. You are in Pam Livingston’s shoes and are on lead to a hastily bid slam.

 

What do you lead? 4 was Michael’s style with both majors.

Pam described her opponents as “ an aggressive young pair” (their bidding, of course!), Jeremy Reid and Seb Wright. During the auction, she had been asked the meaning of Michael Ware's double.

She said that  “double had not specifically been discussed in this situation, but in other situations, if the opponents made a cue of our suit (i.e. they bid the suit we have bid - very often when they are looking for a hold for no trumps or showing a good raise) then double is negative and would deny having the AK or Q of that suit.  So the flipside of that is a pass shows one of those cards.  It was unclear to me whether that applied here.”

Have you made up your mind of what to lead? This is how Pam came to her decision. “So, I assumed Michael did not have K. South had jumped to 6 after getting my explanation and thus was not scared of the diamond lead. I picked declarer had the K with some length. 

 If I led the A, I could be setting up a trick and highly unlikely I could give partner a ruff.  Also leading my singleton didn't really enter the picture. Partner was so unlikely to have the A and if he did not,  then I was just helping declarer.  So, I hoped that leading the fourth suit, clubs, might be productive for our side.  None of this comes with a guarantee of course but  Bingo!”

 

On the lead of any other suit, declarer could draw trumps, take a losing spade finesse, discard 2 and a diamond on dummy’s established spades and ruff three diamonds in dummy to make 12 tricks. It would be even easier had Pam started with A.

However, with the club lead, there was nowhere for South’s losing club to go. There was one loser in each black suit, + 100 and 13 imps to Lazer when Lazer-Gumby played a quiet 4 at the other table making 12 tricks on West’s singleton spade lead. The lead situation against game is of course very different.

Lazer won this match by 31 imps. Had Pam made any other lead, the victory margin would have been just 5 imps.

Warren and Pauline are regular visitors to our National Congress (and past winners of the New Zealand Teams) and will be at Palmerston North this coming November. Before that, Pam and Michael will be representing New Zealand in the Mixed Teams at the World National Teams event in Denmark in August this year. Pam also does on-line bridge tutoring as you will see from the advert at the bottom of this feature.

Tomorrow, we feature a little piece of “Ware ingenuity” from the VCC.

Richard Solomon

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