Our team (including Sean Gannon, Richard and Andrew Jeng) performance in the GNT’s was less than stellar. Each pair had one horrific round and 2 bad losses were just enough to keep us from making it to the semi-finals. That may well be the last non-open event I ever play in. For years, I’ve thought I should be able to win flight B but have yet to make it through the qualifying stage. Narrowing the field from 20 to 4 is a pretty big cut and the teams were divided into two groups to play a round robin Swiss with 10 teams and 7 rounds.

There was an interesting dilemma in the other group. Go here for my article about that.

So, the sectional running concurrently had 188 tables and Sean and I played 3 out of 7 sessions of that, winning the Friday night pairs with 69.57% and the Sunday Swiss with 80% of the possible VP’s. Those 2 wins were enough to put us at the top of the masterpoint race for the sectional.

We had numerous interesting hands over the 2 days. Here was an auction from perhaps our worst result of the tournament. 1NT-X-P-2D; P-2H-3D. 1NT was 15-17, X was penalty, 2D was a transfer to hearts. You have agreed that all systems are on over the X but that’s about all. Without any other discussion, what is 3D? Does it matter that it’s vulnerable at imps?

Now you can discuss and reach some general understanding. It’s surely diamonds but is it forcing or not? Would Lebensohl apply here? Is it even possible for responder to have a forcing hand? I think this is one thing Sean and I still disagree upon. I think that unless you are playing a runout system (which we definitely do not do), responder has to do something over the double if he has a game-forcing hand. And even a game forcing hand is likely not worth a game-force once rho announces he has lots of stuff behind opener. I, the responder, had a modest 7-count with 5 diamonds, kind of typical of what I think this bidding shows. Lebensohl here just doesn’t make sense and even if it does make sense to use it, it should be to distinguish between invitational and less than invitational hands.

More hands to come when I get time. For now, I have a busy week to include lots of tennis, and reviewing and applying my knowledge of electrical circuits.