I have just returned from the World Youth Championship in Bangkok Thailand where I was NPC for the Norwegian Schools team. We ended in the dreaded fifth place, 3 VPs behind a semi-final place. There was plenty of poorbridge to watch, but I decided to limit this report to poorbridge exclusively from World Champions. These three hands are all from the round-robin encounter between the World Junior Champions from USA and Singapore. USA is actually the only team that has won two consecutive World Junior Championships (four of the players also won a year ago in Sydney).

In some dark corners of the world I have heard of a system where an ace-asking Gerber (4) followed by 4NT means "Partner, please recount your aces."! This system would have worked perfectly on this deal (board 17), but the World Champions adopted a more complex version. Instead of one player rechecking the number of aces they tried the effect of partner checking the asker's number of aces...

The first few rounds of bidding were relatively standard 2/1. I actually discussed the board with Joe Grue, and he explained what happened next: "I believed partner asked for aces (4) and then invited a grand, while John belived I asked for aces (4 cue, 4NT RKCB) and then invited a grand." It's the first misunderstanding I have heard of where the explanations where identical on both sides of the screen! East probably expected the TD to adjust, since there seemed to be at least six aces in the deck. He still decided to double, and that was 300 and 13 IMP's to Singapore.

With bidding like that one would think the World Champions' defence must be razor-sharp. Well, here is another slam from the same match (board 3):

When it comes to the bidding, the slow approach chosen at the other table worked better. The Singapore North opened 1, letting E/W get their club bids off their chest at a low level, eventually selling out to the making 4 when 5 was laydown. In theory Kranyak did well in not bidding 6, but first they had to defeat the doubled slam. Us mere mortals would have led either the A or the 2, and would probably not give the board much thought after scribbling down +200. As a true expert Kranyak instead led the K, keeping his (losing!) options open. Again, a mere mortal in North would have played low (maybe giving count), but as a true expert Grue overtook (making life easy for partner?) and tried to cash another spade. 1540 was worth another 18 IMPs to Singapore.

OK, we have all had our accidents in bidding or defense, usually because that idiot referred to as partner screws things up, but we would expect World Champions to take their tricks (plus some more) as declarers. Joe Grue as North got a chance to impress as declarer in 6 on the last board of the match (board 20):

Grue received the lead of the K after unopposed bidding. An ordinary player would just draw trumps and then establish spades, probably by taking the double finesse, and then claim. World Champion Joe Grue instead chose a line aptly described in the bulletin as "truly grue-some"! He ruffed a heart, drew just two rounds of trumps and then played Ace and another spade. The good news was that this anti-percentage play in the spade suit (with the known trump position his LHO was marked with length, making the double finesse that was the initial favorite even more attractive) still solved the suit. The bad news was that East gave his partner a spade ruff for +100 and 12 IMPs to Singapore instead of 13 IMPs to USA (Singapore had +500 from 3X-2 in the closed room).

USA eventually won the match 21-9 in spite of these disasters, so there must have been some poorbridge also from Singapore. They also reached the semi-finals (and would actually have missed them if it were not for these three boards), and eventually won the bronze medal. These boards should go to show aspiring young players that the gap in skill-level to the World's best juniors may not be as big as they think...