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The 2000 Spring Foursomes

The toughest and most prestigious weekend event in the EBU calendar is the Spring Foursomes. Held in Stratford over the bank holiday weekend at the beginning of May, it attracts a number of strong teams from overseas plus the vast majority of the tope players in England.

The Spring Fours is a dual elimination teams competition. In other words, you play straight knockout matches of 32 boards each and stay in the main event until you have lost twice. This year, there were 48 teams, the perfect number for the format to work perfectly.

Play began on the Friday evening and the semi-finals and final were played on Tuesday - so not an event for the faint-hearted. The last undefeated team get Monday evening off while the six once defeated teams play the quarter-finals.

This year, the undefeated team was MOSSOP (David Mossop, Tom Townsend, Jason and Justin Hackett, Tony Forrester, Geir Helgemo), the previous year's winners. It was just as well for them that they were undefeated because they needed to use up that spare life in the semi-final against the tough Scottish team, SPEARS (B. Spears, S. Kaluderic, M. Dragic, D. Diamond).
SPEARS led by 28 IMPs after the first of the four sets and, though MOSSOP won each of the remaining three sets, they still trailed by 9 IMPs after 32 boards. The regulations gave them the right, as the undefeated team, to claim an extra eight boards, and they duly did so. The score in those extra eight deals was 30-5 in favour of MOSSOP, who had recovered to win by 16 IMPs. This was the biggest swing board of the extra set:

Board 35
E/W Vul
Dealer South

			10 9 8 7
			A 4 3
			A Q 8 7 5
			2
	K Q 6 5	N   W E   S			A J 4 2
	Q 10 6 2				9 5
	6 3 2				10
	K 6				A Q J 10 7 3
			3
			K J 8 7
			K J 9 4
			9 8 5 4

West	North	East	South
Helgemo	Kaluderic	Forrester	Spears
-	-	-	Pass
Pass	2	3	4
Dble	Pass	4	5
Pass	Pass	Dble	All Pass

Kaluderic tried an off-centre natural weak two bid in third seat and Forrester overcalled. Spears made a pre-emptive raise and Helgemo doubled for take-out. When Forrester bid 4, Spears judged well to save and Forrester in turn judged well to settle for the penalty rather than go on to 5, which would have failed by a trick. Forrester led his trump and careful defence held Kaluderic to two spade ruffs in dummy and nine tricks in all; -300.

West	North	East	South
Dragic	Justin H	Diamond	Jason H
-	-	-	Pass
Pass	1	2	Pass
2NT	Pass	3	Pass
3NT	All Pass

The Hackett twins play four-card majors and often open a major ahead of a longer minor on minimum hands. This approach worked very well on the deal. Diamond overcalled and Dragic responded 2NT. Now Diamond could see that if his partner held a spade stopper there could be a spade fit for his side and he bid 3, intending this to be natural.
Alas, Dragic took 3 as just a forcing noise, double-checking that he really did want to play in no trump. The surprise diamond lead allowed the defenders to take the first seven tricks for three down; -300 and 12 IMPs to MOSSOP.

If this last-gasp win suggested that MOSSOP was the team of destiny, their illusions were swiftly shattered in the final. BURN, four of the English team for this year's World Team Olympiad in Maastricht in August (David Burn, Brian Callaghan, Gunnar Hallberg, Colin Simpson), had coasted through their semi-final against DIXON (C. Dixon, K. Stanley, I. Gordon, R. Bennett) by 76-25 IMPs.
They proceeded to win the first set of the final against MOSSOP by 52-0, and there was no coming back from that.