Knocked out in the best way possible

Yesterday was a good day to lose. Playing against the team from Michigan, we came out strong with a 25 IMP lead at half-time. However, our food comas got the better of us and we ended up losing by 22 after 56 boards.

There were several interesting hands and a few wild swings. We played good part-score defense, bid to lots of good games, and gave up a couple big ones. We gave up a game here and there, missed a slam, and went for 500 once, but our opponents played decent bridge and we felt we'd played pretty well.

This was a memorable. Bidding from Jon's perspective, lefty opens 1NT and Lovey overalls 2C showing clubs and another suit, 5-4/4-5 or better. Righty doubled for stayman, and Jon is looking at:

AQ98x Jxxx Axx T

Jon bid 2D, on the off chance that Lovey held the other major. Lefty bid 2H and Lovey bid 2S - jackpot! Righty bid 3H, and vul-against not, Jon bid 4S. Do you agree? Jon knew that Lovey would probably have a stiff heart and probably a doubleton diamond, so on a cross-ruff the losers could be as few as a diamond, a heart, and a club or spade. 4S went all check. Lovey played it holding:

KJTx x xx QJ9xxx

A heart was led, and then the defense switched to a diamond. Lovey played the ace, lost a club, and they took their diamond winner. They led a spade back, but Lovey was able to set up clubs by ruffing high on the board and drawing trump from his hand (banking on a 2-2 spade break and a 4-3 club break) for plus 620. Unfortunately, at the other table the result was 3Sx=, so we lost 3 IMPS, but making it did save many IMPS!

The good part about losing when we did is that we lost just in time to enter the FISU trials to represent the US in Poland. The FISU is something in French meaning something like "Federation International Sports University" - um, just translate that into French. It's an international college event, and we're playing on a team with our friends from the MIT club and a pair that was on the Harvard collegiate team. They were nice enough to let us join their existing team at the last minut. We just made it past the round robin, which reduced 6 teams to 4, despite going for 1700 due to a suction gaffe. It won't happen again!

We're now in a four-team double elimination tournament, with the top two teams going to Poland. We're the 4-seed, and decidedly not favored to win, even though our a-priori chance of qualifying is now 50%. Our first match, which is in the works as we write, is against Eric and Victor's team. It rates to be pretty tough. However, even if we lose the match tonight, we can win both matches tomorrow for the right to go to Poland as the second team.

We'll be playing with screens, and on vugraph - we think - tomorrow, so log in around 1pm local (4pm EST) to watch us embarass ourselves (or hopefully not). :)