The 2019 Genoa Teams tournament saw us finish in the top spot with little by way of technical news to report. However, three hands are noteworthy, two crucial from the final match, where a large victory allowed us to overtake the three teams who’d been ahead of us until then.


But let's proceed in order. Playing the third match against my dear friends Giulia Pozzi and Maurizio Cafiero: at all vul, third in hand, holding ♠ AJ32 ♥AK84 ♦5 ♣ KJ107 I opened 1♣(two or more clubs). After 1♦ on my left, partner bid 2♦ showing both majors (if one suit has five, it’ll be hearts). Your call. Deciding that 3♦ would show a stronger hand than what I was looking at, I jumped to 4♦, to show game values, but not strong enough for 3♦. To start with, I was offering a choice between the two majors, but I had already planned to correct 4♥ to 4♠, to be able to ruff diamonds with low cards. And sure enough when my partner passed after Gulia doubled on my left, suggesting some interest in the slam, I chose to say 4♠, concluding the auction. After the lead of the ace diamonds, dummy offered this view:

West, to my right, showed an odd number of cards, and East continued with a second round, ruffed. Now what?

Essentially, I saw two possible paths: club to the Ace, ruff a diamond and then Ace and Jack of spades, or club to the Ace and ♠9. Considering that this last hypothesis would leave me with more options – this wins immediately against Kx on the right, even with a poorly placed Q 10 x x of hearts- I proceeded like this, but the nine was covered by the king, and when I ruffed the next return to dummy, and tabled the Ace, I discovered that the first manoeuvre would certainly have great merit: the ♠K was dry! Now the Q♥ needed to fall, or... the ten singleton on the left. In fact, I cashed the ♥AK, and felled just the ten on the first round, East discarding on the second, and now a heart to the 8 made West powerless, since the Jack was there to guarantee that sooner or later, the possibility of returning to the dummy and leading a trump.

In the other room North, with my cards, chose hearts as trumps, but had less fluid communication, and the lack of inspiration in spades condemned the contract. 

On the last round, two hands generated 27 IMPs. The first one is instructive, for it exposes one of the limits of purely natural bidding. West, Carlo Mariani was sitting to my right and held: ♠AQ1054 ♥ KQJ7 ♦ A8 ♣ 75. Playing a 17+ club, he opened 1♠ third hand in hand and followed Monica Buratti’s 1NT reply with 2♥. On the correction to 2♠he had to decide what to do. It's easy to see that with a minimum in the East hand, even 2♠ could be excessive, while with 9/10HCP it is more than possible that 3NT has a play. After long suffering Carlo decided to pass, sure enough Monica held ♠J9 ♥A52 ♦KQ6 ♣98632, and with the clubs 3-3 not even the misplaced K♠ could beat 3NT, easily reached in the other room after the opening of 1♣ (16+). 10 IMPs for us. Mariani's was the typical dilemma of the "no man land" situations of a natural method, solvable playing Gazzilli.

Finally, put yourself in the shoes of Leonardo Cima, and play 6♠ as South, after a diamond lead by Damiano Bombardieri (away from Q10xxx) sitting West. 


In the other room I played the contract sitting North, and after a trump lead (East held KJxx in diamonds, making that lead rather difficult) I gave up the ♣Q (I didn't guess) and I quickly collected twelve tricks without raising a sweat.
Leonardo instead needed to set up the typical expert game, allowing his side to win trivially with trumps 2-2, or, in the unfolding of the cards, have a more precise idea of the opponent's distribution and decide where to place the ♣Q. So when he won the lead, he used trumps to re-enter and ruff hearts: if the spades had been 2-2, he would have played diamonds at that point, and the opponents would have had to play clubs, or give a ruff and discard, regardless of who had taken the trick. But the spades were 3-1, with the third spade in East, and since the same East had shown four hearts, and from the count of the lead showed at least four diamonds, so between the two opponents was the player shortest in clubs, with the result that West was the most likely candidate to own the ♣Q. East did indeed only have two clubs, but his figure was Q8! Cima's expert play therefore caused him an undeserved loss of 17 IMPs, and he handed over the trophy to us.