European Championship for University Students

This week the European Championship for university students took place. It was organized in Bruges, which is very close to where I live. I competed with Gert Vandyck, with teammates Willem De Visschere en Rutger Van Mechelen. We are a decent team, but our results were a bit disappointing. Lots of (stupid?) mistakes were made at both tables, but that didn't mean we couldn't make fun! The atmosphere was great, opponents were friendly most of the time, people were relaxed,...

There were 32 teams. The organisation wanted to play an incomplete round robin, followed by semi finals and finals with the best 4 teams. There wasn't enough time to play against all teams, so we only played against 28 or so. Nevertheless, we got to meet a lot of people this way.

The matches consisted out of 8 boards (tight schedule if you have to play 30 matches in 4 days), with quite an agressive VP scale. Going down in a vulnerable game could easily mean a 19-11 loss! Every mistake was translated in your VP's, even overtricks from time to time...

With so many teams, a round robin was a bad idea in my opinion. Halfway in the tournament, most teams don't stand a chance to get to the semi finals, so they're just playing for fun and let their concentration slip. The organisation has some ideals they want to accomplish, like creating a certain atmosphere between all players. Still we see all people from the same country stick together most of the time. This means the social contacts aren't actually made, so it might be better to try to give all teams something to play for and give the "university spirit" a lower priority.
Imo starting with groups of 4 would've been a lot better. Half of the teams get to play side tournaments, the rest plays a knock out. Every knocked out team joins the side tournaments, every day there are some winners. If you have an off day, no problem, tomorrow you get a new chance to beat your opponents. This way you can also make lots of new friends, and the teams with a real chance for the big title will have to beat their opponents face to face.

The organisation mentioned that they weren't planning on playing a round robin next time, so I guess they already realise it's not the best solution. We'll have to wait and see, but it should be an improvement.

Enough with the rant...

Congratulations to the French team "Paris Sud" who won!


In this week I encountered lots of interesting problems, which I will try to share with all of you. To warm you up, I'll give you one where I really fooled my opponents after an awful bid from Gert:

Dealer: West Vul: Both Scoring: imps	♠ T6543 ♥ Q743 ♦ 54 ♣ 74
♠ 98 ♥ T862 ♦ A862 ♣ J92		♠ AJ7 ♥ AKJ9 ♦ QT ♣ AKQ8
	♠ KQ2 ♥ 5 ♦ KJ973 ♣ T653

The auction started:

pass - pass - 2♦! - Dbl
pass - pass - RDbl - pass
pass - ...

I was sitting North, so I had a problem. 2♦ was any GF, the RDbl was explained as a strong balanced hand. 2♦xx and made is a game score, so I should try to find some contract which will go -2, maybe -3. If I would bid 2♠ and partner had a singleton, it would be problematic. Since I didn't have a RDbl available, I choose to bid 2♥! If partner has a 3 card support he'll pass, with a singleton he'll RDbl. The auction continued:

pass - pass - 2♦! - Dbl
pass - pass - RDbl - pass
pass - 2♥ - Dbl - RDbl
pass - 2♠ - Dbl - pass
pass - pass

My LHO made it clear that I would die in 2♥ with a strangling gesture. I was happy to get a RDbl from partner, because it meant we probably had a ♠ fit!

East started with ♣A and switched to ♦T, really hard for me to read that card. I played the King which was taken with the Ace. The ♣ return was for East's Queen, she took ♦Q, and continued with a small ♣ which I ruffed. Now I played a small ♠ to the King which held, and ruffed another ♣ (West discarding a ♥!). I had a chance now (to go only -2), so I played a small ♠ to East's Ace.
She gave the hand some thought, she thought I had 4♠ and 5♥ (what I was hoping for), so she could give her partner a ruff! ♥AK followed by ♥ went to my Queen (you really had to see the look on my screenmate's face when her partner still followed suit!), a ♠ to dummy and my ♦s were high. Result: 2♠x-2 and 5 imps to the good guys!

The double on 2♦ was awful and plain useless (he was probably on lead anyway, so there's no lead directing purpose), but it got me a nice story and it won us some imps. Luckily Gert realised his mistake and refrained from doing such things again.

The defense wasn't much better than the Double, but I think both my opponents thought I had 4♠ and 5♥ and misjudged the hand completely. They probably tried to shorten me in trumps, which is obviously a reasonable idea, but it didn't work. A ♥ return from West however would've been fatal, but how could they know that I bid my 4 card suit first? In the end, East was endplayed and there was nothing left to do than giving me my 6th trick on a plate.

More stories will come for sure!