In response to an appeal from your webmaster sometime after the event, Andrew Lintott supplied the following notes about the above competition in which a team comprising Dinah Lintott & himself and Helen Lawton-Smith & John Slater finished first.
Memories of this multiple teams event are fading. We were poor for the first half of the qualifying session but had a storming second half and ending first in our group. Three teams from each of the three groups went into the A final, four from each into the B, and the rest (with an appropriate carry-over) joined the Swiss, which had been running simultaneously with the multiple teams.
There were plenty of swingy boards in the Final. We got a good number of marginal or awkward games home; John and Helen got many of them down. The one hand that sticks in my mind illustrates a defect of using an elaborate two-suited defence to a Strong Club. I held ♠Kx, ♥KJx, ♦AKJ9x, ♣A10x at Red and opened 1♣; next hand 2♦ (showing two odd suits, neither same colour nor rank; Dinah X (5-7 points); next oppo 2♥ (where he is prepared to play if his partner has hearts and clubs). It was the wrong vulnerability to double, so I settled for 3NT and got a low diamond lead (great!). Dinah put down ♠Q109x, ♥Qxx, ♦xx, ♣J98x and the lay-out was already pretty clear and encouraging. The opening lead was won by the 9 and I played a low club to the 8. RHO won with K♣ and returned a low club, on which it was obvious to put the 10, LHO discarding a heart (the minors were both breaking 5-1). I then attacked hearts to ensure RHO was out of the act; LHO won the first and exited with a heart to avoid an early end-play. K♠ elicited the A from LHO and a spade return, the nine winning. Finally the Q♥ from dummy squeezed LHO in diamonds and spades and I ended with ten tricks. Our team-mates had no chance to open their mouths in the bidding and found a good heart lead, after which declarer drifted down.
