Bucharest Seniors won BBO Intercity League

The team Bucharest Seniors defeated Mumbai in the final of the 2019’s spring edition of BBO Intercity League (ICL), the international team championship founded in 2004 by the beloved Croatian professor Tonci Radelja.

Bucharest Seniors (left to right): Constantin Stancescu, Dan Urseanu, Daniel Savin, Vlad Savin, Radu Gliga, Serban Draghicescu, Eugen Chelu, Lucian Breaban, Cornel Matei (missing in the photo).

Mumbai: Cristian Guidea, Krzysztof Nowak, Aparna Sain (photo), Anbazhagan Rajagopalan, Anirudh Prakash, Prakash Easwaran.

To this edition, the 32th, participated forty-eight teams from twenty-two countries.

ICL can well be styled “The friendship’s tourney”. Several years ago, little before to leave, Tonci Radelja wrote: “Think of this as a night in your local club: be friendly and enjoy meeting old/new friends at the table”.

The 33th edition, fall 2019, will start on Wednesday 9th October and will end Wednesday 15th January 2020. The registrations are already open.

The finest hand of the match was played by Serban Draghicescu, of the winner team.

N-S in game.

 

At the other table, the same contract was defeated by the lead hearth. Here, instead, North led the spade three. The Declarer felt already lucky enough and didn’t dare ducking; he won by ace and played club to the queen; North won and played little hearth for partner’s ace, who returned heart, for the ten and the jack, following with another hearth for the dummy’s king. The Declarer discarded two clubs.

What now? The expert player has already seen the so called “Strip Squeeze”; we, less expert, need some time more to think about the matter.

A squeeze usually starts from the situation “all winners but one”, and with the squeezing card opposite to the communicating menace. Here, instead, we are still at the point all winners but two, and the communicating menace, whatever it would be, is beside the squeezing card. But let’s think to the picture at the moment when we’ll play the last diamond, that is the squeezing card; it will be at the ninth trick. In the last four cards, the defenders must hold against the spade and club menace, that is Qx and Jx (or 10x) and one hearth to communicate with the partner. If one defender is burden of both the wardens (diagram), he can’t keep the communicating card as well, as actually happened to North:

 

 

Draghicescu played the diamond 3, discarding the idle card from dummy, here a club, and North was forced to throw his hearth; Draghicescu then played ace and low club, endplaying him.

***

Paolo Enrico Garrisi

 

(Visited 726 times, 1 visits today)
Content Protected Using Blog Protector By: PcDrome.