Spingold Final - Part 2

Let's now look at the last three boards of the first half. On board 30, everybody was bidding in the closed room, although the hand with just a ten was bidding to escape:



Helness redoubled at his second turn to bid to await developments. The nice development was a two club bid, and he doubled. Now it was North's turn to redouble - this was SOS: pick another suit partner. South was well placed to bid 2D - with the AQT96 of diamonds over the opening diamond bidder. Having established a penalty auction, Helness passed this for Sontag to decide. With a flat hand Sontag opted to defend but the defense would need to see the complete layout to lock declarer in hand enough times to score down 3 and 2 IMPs. Instead down 2 was another 4 IMPs away when East-West in the Open Room reached 4S - East passed, then 1D-1S-P-2D;-2H-4S, making five.

On the penultimate board of the first half, there was a disaster by the new partnership of Helness-Sontag.



North opened 2H to show 10-15, 5+Hs, 4+Cs. Sontag overcalled this with 4D, showing Ds and Ss, in a Leaping Michaels approach as over weak twos. Helness took this as just diamonds, and raised to five, and even after this got doubled there was no retreat to spades. He told the vugraph operator after the board that their agreement was 3C over 2H was Ds and Ss, since the opening bid promised Cs. In the open room it was 2H-4D-4H-4S, making five. 4D was Ds and Ss, but Rubin knew what it meant over a weak two. That was 13 IMPs.

On the last board of the first half, Verhees passed the 1H overcall, and then passed his partner's takeout double.



This went for 800 on the line declarer picked. In the Open Room, Meltzer bid 1NT over 1H, and played there for +120, losing 12 IMPs. The 58-0 result over seven boards produced a halftime score of 87-23, and a final score of 138-65 for the Jansma team, the 2009 Spingold champions.