Tim Verbeek, Bridgevaria.com's young guest author, gladdens us with an extensive report on his latest international bridge adventures. Recently he participated in the World Bridge Series Championship in Philadelphia. This is a combination of various World Championships for pairs and teams. The pairs championships are: Open (in this case meaning: men and women), women, seniors and mixed. The teams championships are the Open World Championships for teams (in this case 'open' stands for 'unrestricted participation', unlike the better known biennial World Championships for teams contesting the Bermuda Bowl/Venice Cup, where only qualified national teams, one per country, participate) and the open (unrestricted participation) World Championship Youth teams.
Verbeek has a lot to tell about these World Championships. We publish his report in three parts, this being the first one. Enjoy and don't miss any of it!

Early October the quadrennial Open World Championship (contesting the Rosenblum Cup) was played in Philadelphia. 12 years ago I participated in this tournament for the first time. As a consequence I was invited to join the under 16 training group: the beginning of a long and enjoyable career as a youth international.
Now, 12 years later, the Rosenblum and the World Championship for Youth Teams take place at the same time. The latter was, unlike most of the tournaments in Philadelphia, not open: only national youth teams that had qualified in their zone could participate. We had done so last year, by finishing fourth at the European Youth Championships.

But before the start of the World Championship for Youth Teams, I participated in the Rosenblum with Bob Drijver (younger brother of Bas Drijver, the partner of one of our other columnists, Sjoert Brink, -Ed. Bridgevaria.com). Starting from the round of 16, both tournaments were to overlap each other, so it was decided I would leave the Rosenblum, in order to play the Youth Championship.
Alas, the necessity of leaving the Rosenblum voluntarily turned out to be unnecessary. We teamed up with the Swedish pair Cullin-Upmark and Ferguson-Hollman. Hollman was the sponsor and with Canadian Ferguson the team consisted of a nice choice of nationalities.

We did succeed in winning the first match (20-10), but the next good win didn't come before the last round. Bob and I played reasonably, without playing well. And so did the rest of the team. Unfortunately our group was a strong one, so in order to qualify we would all have had to play well. As it was, in the end we were over 20 VPs short.
This deal can serve as a sad example:

N/EW		♠	Q 8 4
		♥	A
		♦	J
		♣	A K J 9 8 5 4 2
♠	J 6 5			♠	10 9 7
♥	K 10 7 2			♥	Q J 9 8 5 4
♦	Q 10 8 4			♦	7 2
♣	Q 10			♣	6 3
		♠	A K 3 2
		♥	6 3
		♦	A K 9 6 5 3
		♣	7

¹ Transfer to diamonds
² Establishes diamonds as trumps (with club support South would simply bid 4♣)
³ NS didn't agree upon the meaning of this bid, see text below
⁴ Blackwood
⁵ Two aces, no trump queen

The problem developed after 3NT. I (South) relied too much upon partner having a doubleton in diamonds, therefore I set that suit. I did not do so by bidding 4♦, since, if he had the (singly) guarded ♥K, the wrong hand would play the contract (because of his 3NT bid I knew he had either the ♥K or the ♥A). By bidding 4♥, I might still have had the possibility of steering the contract into the right hand — but that didn't happen; furthermore it didn't matter since partner not only had the ♥A, he even had it bare...
Partner's 5♣ bid was unclear: he thought it to be natural, I thought it was Last Train (Verbeek means that, assuming diamonds was the agreed trump suit, a 5♦ bid now would be weaker than 5♣. The latter bid shows willingness to play in 6♦. A bid like this is called Last Train, since it is the last available bid below game, 5♦. After all North could neither bid 4♠ (shows spade control) nor 4NT. In such cases the bid below game in the agreed suit is Last Train; it neither shows nor denies a control in the bid suit, -Ed. Bridgevaria.com).

None of our bids were really weird but Bob and I both should have done better. 3NT was somewhat clumsy with eight clubs and over 4♥ Bob perhaps should have bid 6♣, in order to prevent any misunderstandings.
On the other hand, as South I should have taken into account the possibility of partner having a long club suit. Over 5♣ I should therefore have bid 5NT: 'Choose from 6♣ (if your club suit is very long, I have, however, little or no club support for you) and 6♦ (I have a long and good diamond suit, but it is not solid)'. This is called Choice of Slams or Pick a slam.

6♦ went down one, following the loss of two inevitable trump tricks. That is not a pleasant experience, with 7♣ and 7NT on ice (15 tricks from the top...). Bidding either of these grand slams would have been too optimistic, by the way: both depend on the ♣Q coming down on the first or second round. But 6♣ was an excellent contract, which we should have bid.
The deal was flat (!), but it does clearly show how the tournament went for us: our generally competent play was regularly interrupted with severe mistakes like this one. All in all a sad result.