16th European Youth Pairs Championship - President's Cup

After failing to qualify for the A-final, both Scottish U21 pairs (and all three U26 pairs and the U31 pairs) dropped in to the President's Cup. After an excellent second session, Rachel and Niamh finished 38th with a fine score of 49.71%. This put them third out of the six Scottish pairs.

Here is a board where they did well:

After our East opened 1H the opposition got to 3NT. The 6 of Hearts lead was effective, and in the end the defence got six tricks for 3NT-2 and the magic +200 and 91% on the board. 

I liked that in this event everyone played the same boards. There were always two tables visible on the Vugraph and sometimes that meant I got to see my pairs in action. 

I wasn't at the event so don't know about food and stuff; I hope they all had a good time.

 

16th European Youth Pairs Championship - Qualifiers

Four of the Scotland U21 team are now competing in the pairs in Italy. I happened to see Niamh and Rachel on the Vugraph for the last board of the morning session:

After West passed, Niamh sitting North had the balanced 14 count. For us that's an easy 1NT opener. East made a penalty double and the spotlight was on South. 

Last week we did a practice session on what to do when your 1NT is doubled, and I was pleased to see that everyone got it right. Rachel sitting South bid 2S, weak and to play, and Niamh passed.

Against the contract of 2S West lead the Queen of Clubs.

There are not many tricks available for declarer. If you get Spades right you have 5 tricks there, plus one Diamond, and maybe a Club. The first decision is what to do on the opening Club lead. As West's lead of the Queen almost certainly denies the Ace, it's best to play low, which would have worked well here. 

Declarer instinctively played the King of Clubs, losing to the Ace. East returned a Diamond to the Ace. When tackling trumps declarer made the sensible decision to play East for the Queen of Spades, as he'd made the penalty double of 1NT. Unfortunately it didn't work here. In the end declarer got just four Spade tricks and one Diamond for 2S-3.

As ever in Matchpoints, it's hard to work out if this is a good score. It wasn't, just 17%. Getting 2S-2 would be 43%. Although East-West can make 4H, or probably 3NT, they generally didn't. 

At the end of the first session Rachel and Niamh were on 42%, and the other Scottish pair of Iris and Ailsa on 46%.

In the second and third sessions a similar story, and both Scottish pairs are near the bottom with about 40%. They will both be going in to the B-Final.

I think they mostly lost out from bringing in seemingly good scores like 1NT= or 4H=, but getting a bad matchpoint score as there were overtricks available. There were also a few auctions where they could have competed more. But, in general, I was impressed with the play I saw and I think they can be proud of their efforts so far. 

It is a high-quality field. On one board Rachel and Niamh made 6H+1, but it only got them 42%.

Here's a deal from the second session today which impressed me:

Rachel sitting West found herself in 3H. This was not a kind deal for East-West, and getting out for one down would be a good result.

Near the end declarer was left with KQ8 in Diamonds and North had J97. Rather than just playing off the KQ and hoping for the best, Rachel wisely cashed all her trumps and the Ace of Spades, forcing North to decide what to keep. North went wrong and threw a Diamond, and Rachel scored 65%. 

This Scottish pair are only 17 years old and playing in an U21 event - getting a bit craftier will help them a lot!

Live Results

Scottish Schools Minibridge 2025

I took ten pupils on the train to Edinburgh, to the New Melville Bridge Club, joining pupils from Stockbridge, Broughton High and George Heriots. Altogether there were eight tables.

I was impressed by the composure of all the players (age approx 10-12), who were attentive and helped the event run beautifully on time. 

The youngsters I sat with had learned to draw trumps and they counted them accurately. The next stage (for everyone) is to try and keep track of winners. This means master cards (after the Ace and King have gone the Queen is a winner) and length winners (counting to 13).

I saw some good play, but in the pressure of a match situation it's quite common for new players to cash their eight winners and finish in 3NT-1, because they haven't made a plan for the ninth trick, or even counted that they only have eight tricks.

I think this shows how hard bridge is - it takes a lot of practice before good play, or even standard play, becomes automatic. Enough complaining, here are the results:

Well done the top North-South (Raphael & Charlie from Stockbridge) and top East-West (Max & Zach from Broughton High). These pairs bid and made lots of games, so were worthy winners. These results will later be combined with the heat in Aberdeen for our overall winners.

The top HSOG pair were Hanlin and Noah, who finished 3rd East-West. Well done boys!

Scottish Schools Bridge 2025

	CBC locals		+63 IMPs **
1st	High School of Glasgow Seniors (Team Mishap)	Niamh Reid & Rachel Yu Isla Jamieson & Eunice Ooi.	+36 IMPs
3rd	High School of Glasgow Juniors (Team Disaster)	Shiva Viswanathan & Artem Belikov Ashwin Viswanathan + sub	+31 IMPs *
2nd	Hutchesons Seniors		-19 IMPs
	Broughton High		-49 IMPs
	Hutchesons Juniors		-62 IMPs

Our first year at the fantastic new Clyde Bridge Centre. I took seven pupils across on the train. We had five rounds of three boards, with a break for a packed lunch (or a visit to the burger van outside). 

The reason the scores look a bit strange is that teams with adults were ineligible to win.

One highlight was Zac and Lucas (Hutchesons Seniors) bidding 6S from South here:

 

The board below is a good score from HSOG as Niamh & Rachel made 5C from West here. There is only one way to play the trump suit for no losers - lead the Queen. Then if you can draw trumps and set up a Heart trick before the defence take their Spade you've got a chance.

Shiva & Artem and Zac & Lucas made 4S from NS. This needs trump leads from the defence to beat it, else declarer can ruff two Clubs in dummy.

East-West didn’t get very good cards. The best we saw all day was this:

My partner (Ashwin) made 1NT+2 from East. The Clyde Bridge Club locals made 4S here, and 2Dx from North too!

 A few more photos:

The new premises were very spacious and it was great to have Angus MacDonald to help us with the scoring - as we had to fix a few scores when alert players noticed some boards were duplicated wrongly.