U.S.-Polish Showdown at Bali Tournament Following on from Saturday's column, we move to the diagramed deal, the penultimate board in one quarterfinal of the Transnational Teams world championship last month in Bali, Indonesia. The eventual winners, Mark Gordon, Pratap Rajadhyaksha, David Berkowitz, Alan Sontag, Jacek Pszczola (known as Pepsi) and Michael Seamon from the United States, were locked in a tense battle against Polish Students (Stanislaw Golebiowski, Piotr Tuczynski, Pawel Jassem, Jakub Wojcieszek, Michal Klukowski and Piotr Zatorski). With the two boards of 48 to be played, the Poles led by 10 international match points. At the first table, after Berkowitz (South) opened one spade, Klukowski (West) passed, and Sontag (North) responded one no-trump, Zatorski (East) overcalled two hearts. Two passes followed, then North competed with two spades, which ended the auction. West led his heart. South won with his ace and led the diamond jack. West won with his queen and shifted to a trump, East correctly covering dummy's ten with his queen. South won, played a spade to dummy's jack and called for a diamond. To hold declarer to nine tricks, East had to win with his ace and return a high heart. When East played low, West won with his ten and continued with the diamond king. But South ruffed, cashed the spade king and led the club ten, covered by the queen and ace. Now declarer had ten tricks: five spades, two hearts and three clubs. In the given auction, Wojcieszek (South) was still upset with himself for conceding 1,100 on Board 45, which was described in Saturday's column. He saw a chance to regain points when he made a penalty double of Pepsi's three-heart weak jump overcall. This contract would probably have gone down three, but his partnership agreement (and that of most expert pairs) defined the double as for takeout. Jassem (North), liking his hand, jumped to four spades. Seamon (West) also led his singleton. Declarer won with his ace, played the club five to dummy's ace and called for the spade jack. Now Pepsi made a great play: He covered with his queen. South won and led his club ten to dummy's king. East ruffed and returned his remaining trump. South won in the dummy, ruffed a club, drew West's last trump and conceded down two. Declarer lost two hearts, two diamonds and the ruff. Plus 170 and plus 200 gave the Gordon team 9 imps, leaving it down by 1 imp with one board to play. Note that if Pepsi had not covered the spade jack at Trick 3, the finesse would have worked. South would then have drawn trumps and could have taken the club finesse to win ten tricks and gain 10 imps. The final board will be in Thursday's column.