In division I/A only 3 matches were played on Tuesday and two were played upfront, you can see the results of these in our Vugraph. Collecting 15.63 VPs on their last match, team VISOFT took the 1st place but their lead is less than 1 VP.

László Harangozó had only one shot to make enough tricks in this board after the club lead. He realized he had to get rid of his club loser as soon as possible, so after taking the first trick he immediately made the spade finesse. He earned 12 IMPs with his bravery, because the opponents in the other room tried to draw trumps first and had to lose a club trick.

Róbert Zoller (Elastron) played 5♦from South in this board and he was the only one in the field who could score points as NS. Double dummy, to defeat the contract West should have attack the long suit of the declarer, clubs, and later East should have helped continuing the suit and promote the trump 7. Obviously this has not happened. After drawing the trumps from the opponents Zoller ruffed a spade with his last diamond and with this move, he nicely squeezed East between hearts and clubs.

Péter Marjai played this board well, he tried to catch South with Hx in hearts. This wasn’t the case but he still managed to put Ödön Dienes in a difficult situation. Dienes saw that if he let him alone, declarer will have nine tricks: three spades, three hearts, the Ace of diamonds and two clubs. So after taking the trick with his ace of clubs he envisioned the ten of diamonds into his partner’s hand and dully played the king and queen of diamonds. Declarer had no chance to make enough tricks in time.

Here you can see a watchful declarer play from Csaba Konkoly. Holding the last three cards he knew that West was left with a diamond and a heart, so playing his club must be safe but gives him some extra chance. If West had the king he was going to surrender a trick to dummy, but had East the king, he had to lead a spade giving an always valuable overtrick to the declarer.

It is probably a once-in-a-lifetime event that opponents bid four spades and you find yourself with the AKQJT9 of trumps. János Gellér doubled the contract easy heartedly which went down 5 times. In the other room Mihály Kovács was holding the strong spades and with no spade support from his partner he played 3NT. Csaba Konkoly led the ace and king of diamonds but did not continue the suit to prevent declarer getting an extra trick there. He continued with the king of hearts and declarer didn’t guess right which finesse works, the double heart or the “simple” club, so 3NT went down as well.

György Kuttner had better luck in the same contract: after the ace and king of diamonds South played his third diamond and now declarer not only could make the contract, but he managed to squeeze South for the overtrick.

In this board Gábor Winkler chose an unusual bid; he opened with 3♣. West bid 3NT and after North’s pass István Varga found himself in an uncomfortable situation. He couldn’t find an optimal bid to describe his hand, but if his partner has a gambling hand, they might even make 3NT or they only go down once and playing any major could end up in a catastrophe (imagine a double from South). Varga passed and lost 7 imps. Though his partner had two club tricks, he went down 5 times in 3NT but the opponents on the other table only twice in 4♠ after an uncontested auction.

Here you can see a nice defense from Gábor Macskásy. With the last five cards in his hand, he had to guess right who has the jack of diamonds. In the end he made the right decision and with this crocodile coup the contract went down three times.

This time, the board of the week is about bidding. András Budinszky and András Talyigás reached the grand slam on this board using 17 bids, which is quite a lot, considering there are only 35 possible bids in the bidding box. Opening with a precision 1♣ East started a relay sequence and he had enough space to learn almost every card West held. First, he discovered the 4-5-3-1 distribution, the 11+ points and the 0 aces (4♦). Later West showed the queen of hearts and the king of spades and denied the king of diamonds. East still wanted to know West’s remaining honors to see if there are 13 easy tricks in 7NT or should they play the safer 7♥. West promised the queen of spades, the jack of hearts and denied the queen of diamonds and the jack of spades so he had to have the king of clubs to have 11 points. Knowing all this, East decided to bid 7♥ and claimed right after drawing the trumps.

Here is another interesting situation, after the seven of diamonds lead, how do you plan to make 3NT, which card would you play from dummy?

E-W can make 12 tricks in hearts, spades or NT, but only 3 pairs reached the slam. At the table above Balázs Kotányi played 3NT and managed to get all the tricks by squeezing North. However, László Marcin could have avoided his fate, if he had led a diamond honor instead of a small diamond. After leading a small one his partner had to play the jack in the first round, and he was stuck with the sole guard of both minors.

At first glance you wouldn’t even think that board 4 in I/B can be interesting. The contract was 2spades on several tables but whatever the declarers tried, the defenders had an answer. For example on the diagram above, you can see Ádám Magyar and Tamás Hoffmann squeezing dummy for the -2. It turned out to be a push board at the end, but still their play worth to look at.

The final rankings in group A:

1. GREISNOR: – Christian Bakke, Ioannis Oikonomopoulos, Amir Ezion, Tomer Loonstein
2. ITALIA U26: – Giovanni Donati, Roberto Sau, Giacomo Percario, Sebastiano Scata, Francesco Chiarandini, Alvaro Gaiotti
3. SXNEBULA: – Jaihao Yang, Hanyang Dai, Tianyao Yan, Penghao Wang, Hao Xu, Yingqi Wang

Gábor Szőts in this board got the opportunity to make 9 tricks but he had to be careful to have enough communication between his hand and the dummy. Making the second overtrick in 1Nt resulted in 88,5%.

Here Gábor Macskásy realized that playing 5C in a pairs tournament will most likely be a bad board for them. This way going down in 6C couldn’t be much worse, so he risked bidding six in hope for a better result.

This week’s boards were filled with the most interesting hands giving great bidding challenges to the players. The Hand of the Week was chosen out of them, the very last board:

East-West can easily make 13 tricks in hearts or clubs but they can’t really bid it since it depends on the heart finesse. North-South can try to save it in diamonds or spades but they should consider that they might as well push East-West into the grand slam. On the diagram above you can see László Honti’s save over 6 hearts. Not surprisingly there were many interesting solutions from both sides in this board and we are eager to hear what would you have done with these hands?

In this board after the diamond lead declarer wanted to get to the dummy somehow to lead clubs. After leading the queen of spades south took the trick with the king and led the king of hearts to reduce the chance of a club ruff. With the next spade lead declarer finally got to dummy and led a club to the jack after South playing small and played the ace of spades which was ruffed by North. At this point, North continued with the jack of hearts: sacrificing his trump trick and completely cutting declarer from dummy to earn 3 club tricks for his side. With this nice defense NS took away all the overtricks from declarer and scored almost 90%.

Fischer is a member of the Hungarian U26 women team. They recently participated at the European Youth Teams championship, and they finished at the second place. Huge congratulations for the girls to the great result! We are very happy that they regularly play at our tournaments, raising the standards of the events.

They started very well and lead the field after 7 rounds, but from there they started to fall. The key move for finally winning happened in this board, when they played against their biggest rivals, Gábor Macskásy and László Honti. When Marcell Surányi opened the bidding with one heart, Fischer evaluated her cards right and didn’t force to game like some other Easts did. After her partner bid two hearts, she had to keep her temper once again and passed. Being the only pair stopping at two hearts they scored 90% and took the first place back.

Winning the first trick with the ace was a good move from Brigitta Fischer then she took a round of spades and started to work on her diamonds. South won the trick with the ace and returned a heart. Declarer now played the eight of hearts, and at this point North realized if he takes the trick and returns a heart preparing a ruff for his partner, declarer can prevent it by taking the trick on the dummy and discarding a diamond on clubs. This way North could never win the trick with his diamond to lead a heart again, so he rather played a low card instead of taking the trick. Now they lost the chance to ruff, but got two heart tricks in the end. With this very hard to see move he took away declarer’s overtrick.

These little gems are the ones you would never know about without our vugraph where you can follow the table of anyone in the field.

This week, the president of the Hungarian Bridge Federation, Géza Homonnay visited us as well. Playing with his son, Bálint Homonnay, they had some interesting boards including this one here. After an unusual bid, East landed in two spades and he had to find a way to make it. He started to play and with only five tricks left, he figured out South’s remaining cards and endplayed him. Could South have seen into the future, he surely would have played his ace of clubs earlier, to avoid his uncomfortable faith.

On the last week of June we held the first Tuesday tournament of the Summer Series ‘19. Sixteen pairs have played 26 boards, you can see the final results here.

Zsófia Bekő and Laura Érsek started well in the first round and were amongst the top pairs all the way through the tournament. Before the last round the top 3 pairs’ results were really close so Érsek and Bekő scored 100% on their last two boards to secure their first place.

Here you can see a nice declarer play from Laura Érsek making 3NT.

On the 17-18th of June 2019 was the first BAM competition played on tablets. On Monday there was a qualifier round robin with 13 teams and on the next day the best four teams played the in finals while the rest of the field played on the consolation event. The finalists played semifinal (15 boards) first and the winners played in the final (15 boards), KO style. It was a big surprise for everyone when the result of the final was a tie but according to the rules the team with the most total points got the first place.

The final result of the finals:

1. Bárány: György Bárány, Gábor Demeter, Gergely Fazakas, László Harangozó, László Bíró
2. Palatinus: Katalin Mezei, László Honti, Gábor Szőts, Dániel Tubak
3. Budaörs 17: György Kuttner, Ferenc Zöld, Miklós Fris, Gergely Kovács
4. Honyek: András Honyek, Balázs Mérei, Péter Hodosi, Csaba Szabó

Fortune favors the brave. This phrase is sometimes true in bridge as well. Here you can see a brave declarer play by Péter Hodosi.

In 2019’s spring the first division of the IMP championship in Budapest was played on tablets. The eight weeks long event started in April and 32 pairs have participated. The Gábor Winkler – Miklós Dumbovich pair (on the pictures) was unstoppable during the championship. After the last week they won with 293 IMPs, which is more than twice as much, as the second pair László Szilágyi and Péter Talyigás finished with, who beat the third pair János Gellér and Dániel Tubak with 17 IMPs.

In this board not many pairs have reached 6D but Miklós Dumbovich was the only one making it after squeezing East in spades and clubs.

On the 5^th of May 2019, we held an exhibition in a bridge club in Munich. The main reason for the event was to introduce the system to the German Bridge Federation, from where two vice-pesidents were present, the leader of the sport department, Ulf Schäfer and the leader of the public relations department, Kareen Schroeder. Schroeder has been a member of the national women’s team for more than 10 years, and later she started to coach and to be the npc of various German national teams.

Few tried LoveBridge in Munich, but Oleksander Friedmann with György Weisz turned out to be the best. József Harsányi and Peter Klein finished on the second place just a little bit behind the first pair and Kareen Schroeder with Petra von Malchus finished on the 3^rd place.

Everybody knows and loves the Pula Bridge Festival in September, but some people might be unaware that there is another, smaller bridge festival in Pula in spring. Thanks to the organizers, LoveBridge had the opportunity to introduce itself in Croatia. Here you can see an interview with the winners of the experimental game at the 2019 spring Pula festival.

Usually, when you look at the results of a board and you see that only one pair found the successful 5H save over a 5C, you will never know the story behind it.

In this board only half of the field found the 5C contract and Csaba Czímer with Tamás Szalka (players of the multiple times Hungarian champion team Galim) were the only pair bidding 5H over it. Although Géza Homonnay and Bálint Homonnay (the president of the Hungarian bridge federation and his son) played well, the doubled five hearts double went down only once, their result scored even less matchpoints in the board than the east-west pairs who didn’t reach the game and played in a part-score.