Can those Italians defend or what?

2008 Bridge Olympiad Beijing
Italy vs Brazil

Doggon it, we were right! Italy demolishes Brazil in the 2008 Olympiad

With apologies to Ms Palin. I’m darned if I can stop speaking like her. It’s so much fun.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this hand from the qualifying rounds of the 2008 Beijing Olympiad.

Round 9
Bd 11
Dlr South
Nil vul

	NORTH Chagas S J52 H A10543 D AK1074 C—
WEST Duboin S AKQ7 H KJ7 D J93 C AK4		EAST Sementa S 96 H Q8 D 82 C QJ98732
	SOUTH Villasboas S 10843 H 962 D Q65 C 1065

You see, in a BBO match last year this hand came up. Maybe we were playing Australia and maybe another Australian team was playing China:

	NORTH S KQxx H AJ10 D AKx C AKJ
	SOUTH S xx H xx D 109xxxxx C Qx

Our auction looked automatic to me:

2C 2D
2N 5D
6D

The Oz one crew, as it then was, didn’t like this at all. They thought it was wrong both to bid 5C and to raise that to six. At the time I was prepared to stand corrected, but when I checked out the Oz one internet site I found little to change my mind.

The methodology by which these assessments were made was that they gave their opinions on a chat site. With all due respect for their opinions, I spent a few hours generating hands and looked at the results. It was clear cut to bid on. I might add a caveat: I don’t know that I looked at enough hands – maybe 100 or so – further data would be welcome.

So, back to the hand given at the start of this post. I guess it’ll be obvious by now that the Brazilians bid 2NT 3NT – off on the obvious diamond lead and continuation while the Italians bid 2N 5C – but isn’t that down too? Well, it was in Pakistan vs France because a transfer sequences meant the strong hand played 5C. But in this match South began with a spade…and that was the end of that.

Memo: if Semanta is ever in Melbourne, cook him my very best lasagne. A lasagne that would make a hockey mom proud.

This was not the only hand of the match where I feel I have a personal involvement. More tomorrow.