The Varsity Match is an annual teams-of-eight match between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Traditionally, the teams have been quite strong with some famous names having misspent their university lives at one of these two establishments. But, students being students, there can be a lot of poor bridge too. Here we have Cambridge's Toby Kenney with three hands which amused him and which hopefully will amuse you all too.

I know you must all be thinking "But the Varsity match is competed between the finest players on offer in Cambridge and Oxford, surely they wouldn't do anything stupid!" Take a look at this board and think again:

1NT was 9-12, and we'd agreed double by a passed hand was for majors, but neither of us remembered this at the table — we both thought it showed a maximum pass with some sort of two suiter. The redouble showed a "good 5 card suit". I clearly didn't want to defend 1NTXX, so I bid 2, hoping this would be taken as pass or correct. When it was doubled and passed back to me, I was concerned it might have been taken for a genuine suit, and I figured that there was a good chance that even if clubs was one of Daniel's suits, his other suit would be better, so I tried 2. This indicates that I have no clear place to run, so Daniel realised that it would be better to play in a major, so he bid 2 to give me the choice of majors. Alas, it seemed to me that hearts must be his suit, so I had no reason to correct to spades — Daniel could well have five hearts and only two spades! So there you are: we tried out our second best fit, then tried our third best fit, then eventually our finely honed bidding methods located our worst fit, and allowed us to play there doubled.

The real problem was the 2 bid — I can't read this as being "pick a major", as Daniel would certainly bid it with a lot of hands with a genuine heart suit. To show a "pick a major" type hand he should redouble 2. As a passed hand opposite a potentially quite weak hand, this can't be for blood, so I must take it as pick a major, when I will bid spades. I could also try an SOS redouble of 2, saying I'd like to play anywhere but clubs, but I think this is a less clear choice as it probably suggests better hearts than I have.

Here's a board on which we gained some IMPs through some decent slam bidding (and some rather less decent bidding in the other room).

2 was checkback asking for unshown length in the majors — in this case asking if Daniel has a four card major. After 2 denies a four card major, I want to show slam interest and diamonds. I think 3 would be forcing, but we hadn't thoroughly discussed this, and anyway, it looks like I'm trying to decide between 3NT and 5, not looking for a slam, so I think 4 is the right bid anyway. Daniel now has the best hand imaginable for slam — three aces and the king of trumps, so he just bids it.

The bidding in the other room was less good:

South decided to rebid 2NT and took North's 3 (intended as checkback) as natural and weak, and passed it. Even if it were natural and weak, I think the South hand should clearly raise clubs with such great "support". Anyway, 3 didn't play too well, and drifted 2 off for 17 IMPs to Cambridge.

Here's some less decent slam bidding from our side. This is from the penultimate set (the last one before we conceeded). We were about 80 IMPs down with two stanzas to play, so we were looking to swing IMPs.

The auction started reasonably enough, with Daniel opening and rebiding his spades, and me bidding my suits. Daniel's next bid is slightly interesting — he would like to both confirm his sixth spade and show his diamond guard, but could only do one. His choice to do the latter is clearly correct. He has already suggested six spades. I'm not finished yet — Daniel would bid the same way with A x x x x x x K x x K J 10, when 6 is cold, so I feel I'm worth another try and bid 4. The meaning of Daniel's 4 bid is unclear. He has already tried NT, suggesting that we probably don't want to play in spades, and my 4 bid suggests slam interest, so there is some argument for playing it as a cue-bid, which is how I took it after some consideration.

Even if 4 is natural, I would expect a better suit for it — he is surely expecting two or three trump losers in spades, so we must be better in hearts or NT. I think he should just grit his teeth and bid either 4 or 4NT, both of which strongly suggest that slam is not a good idea. 4 makes easily as the cards lie, while 4NT is difficult on a spade lead (there's no entry to the K, so you have to cash the A and play on clubs) but also makes. On the other hand, 4 (which I would have passed if I had interpreted it as natural) goes off, possibly more than one off.

I couldn't see any sensible way of investigating slam if 4 is a cue-bid, but figured that if partner could cue-bid, then slam was probably a reasonable bet. Needless to say, 6 didn't play very well with three certain trump losers. At least the result on this board was completely academic — we lost 58 IMPs in total on the set, and only 13 of them on this board.