Blog Archives - Page 6 of 12

Budapest MP Championship – Week 5

by LB Admin | Jan 14, 2020 | Blog

On the 14^th of January the fifth round of the Budapest MP championship was played and in both divisions, the daily winners were expected to perform better in the earlier rounds. The winner of this Tuesday in the I/A division is the László Szilágyi – Péter Talyigás pair and with this victory they overtook 11 pairs on the overall leaderboard closing the gap between them and the leaders. In the I/B division, the first place went to Zsuzsanna Kerekes and Sándor Varga, they are now on a qualifying place to the I/A division with their great result (best six succeeds).

It rarely happens in bridge that each player plays the best card possible (according to double dummy analysis) through a whole board. Still, this board was played “perfectly” for a while. Gábor Macskásy opened with a club, small from dummy, Brigitta Fischer followed with the ten and declarer won with the king. Orsolya Hegedüs played the ace of diamonds and discarded a club from dummy. She continued with a diamond ruff then returned a spade to her queen which South took with the king. Macskásy led another club and Fischer won the trick with the jack after the eight from West. She played the ace of clubs, declarer and South both discarding spades. Then she led her last spade and Hegedüs took it with a small heart. She ruffed a diamond on dummy and ruffed a spade in her hand while Fischer discarded her jack of diamonds. So far so good. Declarer now “put a diamond on the table*” and South found himself in an interesting position:

Holding the J432 of trumps in his hand the contract would have only gone down if he had ruffed with the jack (a highly counter intuitive move), then Hegedüs has to lose one more heart. Unfortunately, he chose a small heart letting dummy’s nine take a trick and now declarer could crossruff with the high trumps. *: remember, they were playing on tablets 😊

Budapest MP Championship – Week 4

by LB Admin | Jan 7, 2020 | Blog

After a couple weeks of holiday, the Budapest MP Championship continues. The fourth round was played this week, so we are exactly halfway through the championship. Miklós Fris and Gergely Kovács won this week’s session in the I/B division with 68% and with this outstanding result they took the first place on the leaderboard. The 6 best pairs from the I/B division will qualify to I/A for next year. The winners of this week in the I/A division are Csaba Czímer and Tamás Szalka. They didn’t have good results at the first weeks of the championship, maybe their luck has turned now and they still have enough time to climb higher on the leaderboard.

Gábor Macskásy played 3N in this board. He took the spade lead with the jack and played the king of diamonds. When his opponents ducked this, he switched to hearts and East won with the king. After taking the jack of clubs return in his hand with the ace, he led a diamond to the queen and played another small heart.

East won and insisted on clubs. Declarer played the king and cashed the queen of hearts, and now double dummy it seemed he will only have 3 heart tricks and has to lose 3 clubs at the end, having no entry to the high spades. But on the queen of hearts his opponent didn’t see Macskásy’s sad fate yet, and he made the mistake of not unblocking his ten of hearts, so declarer endplayed him leading his nine of hearts.

Ádám Magyar has fought hard to get 10 tricks in this 3♥. East led a diamond, and after a low card from dummy his opponent won the first trick with the 10. He returned his singleton spade and declarer played his ace. Magyar cashed his two high trumps and led a club to dummy’s king. West took the trick with the ace and played a diamond. He didn’t realize that with this play he gives a chance to make an overtrick and that is exactly what happened. Declarer ruffed the diamond, crossed to dummy with the queen of clubs, ruffed another diamond and now he just had to lose the queen of hearts to East, who had only spades left. This way Magyar got his tenth trick with the jack of spades.

Budapest MP Championship – Week 3

by LB Admin | Dec 17, 2019 | Blog

The last round before Christmas was played in the Budapest MP Championship on Tuesday. The winners of this week’s session are currently in the first place on the overall leaderboard in both divisions. In the I/A division Miklós Dumbovich and Gábor Winkler have the best result so far, the second pair is János Gellér with Dániel Tubak and László Honti and Katalin Mezei are on the third place. Balázs Kovács and Péter Scharnitzky are leading the I/B division followed by István Nagy and Csaba Papp, István Balásy and Katalin Tihanyi are third.

You can see a very nice defense at the end of this board. In the four card ending declarer played a heart and South realized the only way to take all the remaining tricks if he doesn’t let his partner win the trick with the king. So, he played his ace executing the crocodile coup to avoid the blocking in hearts.

Budapest MP Championship – Week 2

by LB Admin | Dec 10, 2019 | Blog

After the second round of the Budapest MP Championship every pair played against every other in their division. In the I/A division Péter Hodosi achieved the highest percent with his substitute partner Csaba Konkoly, in the I/B division Botond and László Kelen had the strongest result. Currently the top 3 pairs in the divisions are:

I/A division:

János Gellér – Dániel Tubak
Imre András – Béla Benedek
Miklós Dumbovich – Gábor Winkler

I/B division:

István Balásy – Katalin Tihanyi
Zsolt Dörnyei – András Riesz
Péter Fehér – Dániel Vikor

East-West can take 12 tricks in hearts in this board, but only 5 declarers out of the 16 managed to score 480. At two tables they played 3N, at one table they played 6♠ and the rest of the field took only 11 tricks in hearts. Here is an example how to take 12 tricks. After the spade lead declarer played the hearts, South took the second round, and returned a spade. Tamás Szalka played a small spade from his hand, and ruffed it on dummy, then took the last trump from the defenders. On the queen of clubs South played the king and declarer won with the ace. He played his high spades and discarded two small clubs from dummy. He then returned to dummy with the club and playing his last two trumps and squeezed South for the 12^th trick. In the defense of declarers who took only 11 tricks: On several tables South returned a diamond after winning the ace of hearts giving declarers an immediate decision about the minor suit kings.)

Budapest MP Championship – Week 1

by LB Admin | Dec 3, 2019 | Blog

As the teams championship finished, the Budapest MP Pairs Championship has started. This is the one-year anniversary for the Hungarian federation using LoveBridge, the very same championship last year was the first one ever played on tablets. The I/A and the I/B divisions are both broadcasted on our vugraph site. 16 tables will compete in both divisions for eight weeks and you can follow all of them each Tuesday from 18:00 (except for the Holidays). In the first week of the championship everyone played 2 boards against half of their field. In the I/A division the first three pairs are (in order) Imre András – Béla Benedek, Péter Gál – György Kemény and János Gellér-Dániel Tubak. In the I/B division Péter Antal – Géza Reichardt, Zsolt Dörnyei – Riesz András and István Balási – Katalin Tihanyi are on the top of the leaderboard.

Andrea Sinkovicz played 3N in this board. The ♥Q was a good lead, but after taking the second trick with the ♦K East had little chance to know, that the small club return would be the only one to defeat the contract. He led a spade and now Sinkovicz found a pretty line to make 9 tricks. She won with the ace and started to play diamonds. West took the second round and returned a heart. Declarer took it with the ace and played her last diamond. Now North could find a winning play on East’s any discard. Eventually East decided to get rid of his small club, so declarer discarded a small club from dummy as well. She then took her high spades, the ace of clubs and finally endplayed East with the spade.

Budapest Teams Championship – Week 10

by LB Admin | Nov 19, 2019 | Blog

Almost all matches are finished in the Budapest Teams Championship, there is only one week left for the teams to decide the final rankings. In the I/A division team VISOFT is on the first place and their last match will be against the currently second team, GALIM. With 15 VP difference between them GALIM needs a big victory to become the champions this year. If fortune is on team GAMAX’s side, they can also get to the first place, but besides a huge win, they also need a favorable result on the other match. In the I/B division the leader, team ECOSOFT will play against the 3^rd placed CSILLAGVIRÁG and they can ensure their position with a small victory. The first two from this group will qualify to the I/A division for the next year and the 3^rd team from the major group will play a decider match against the 10th team from I/A for the top division position. In the minor group the first four team will stay in their division and the fifth team will have a chance to fight for their place against the fourth team from the II. Division while the last three drops out.

After South didn’t find the optimal diamond lead and opened with a small club Mária Bekő had a chance to make her contract, but she had to play carefully. North took the first trick with the ace and returned the king of hearts and declarer took it with the ace. With the finesse working in spades, she has two spade tricks, a diamond and a club, so she needs to take four more tricks with her remaining trumps. Bekő finessed in spades, discarded a diamond on the ace, played a club to her king and ruffed a club on dummy. She ruffed a small spade then returned to dummy with the ace of diamonds and discarded a loser from her hand on the last spade that South had to take with the king. He was now endplayed and had to play hearts, so declarer could take the last two tricks she needed. Of course she could have ruffed the last spade as well, but it’s always more fun to endplay your opponent.