Day 4 in China

Today we had three matches. The first, against Poland, was very well played on both sides and our teams recorded the lowest Imp swings of all the teams (the same hands are played in the Open, Women's and Senior's) of 10-18.

The match against China was easy and we achieved the full 25 victory points. On record, the match against Guadaloupe should have been our easiest. I watched the vugraph and saw Russia losing to Argentina 51 - 0 with 3 boards to play. I also noticed that all the top teams in our division lost victory points at hand 23, when many good pairs (including our Bowmans) reached 6H from the West side, holding AQJ104 9532 Q AQ8 opposite a dummy of 97 AKQ8 A962 J42. A fine contract that takes both the spade king offside and a 4-1 heart split to go down.

But the brothers had their bidding boots on tonight. Hand 25:



North opened 1H, Billy overcalled 2D, south bid 2S and that was all Johnny needed to hear - he bid 6D. The play was simple.

At the other table, Stephen opened 4H, it went pass, pass 4S to him and he doubled to show one defensive trick. If Jurek had held only 5 spades that contract would have made but he held just enough for a set.

Then on Board 29 Johnny and Billy reached a very nice 6C that was missed at the other table on
A72 K104 A74 KQ106 opposite Q964 A8 K3 AJ953.

So a well earned 19 - 11 victory and we are in a comfortable 3rd place with 4 matches to go.