In the close match against the Scottish women`s team Super Mom, a.k.a. Daniela von Arnim, and her partner Sabine Auken got through two difficult deals.

Board 9. Dealer North. E/W Vul.
	ª 9 6 5 © Q 10 ¨ A K Q 9 8 6 4 § 10
ª Q 4 © K 3 ¨ J 7 3 2 § K J 7 4 3		ª A 10 8 7 3 2 © J 7 6 ¨ 5 § 9 5 2
	ª K J © A 9 8 5 4 2 ¨ 10 § A Q 8 6

In the Closed Room Scotland opened the North hand 3NT and everybody passed. After ªA and a small spade to the king, declarer played two rounds of diamonds only to find out that the suit split badly. A couple of tricks later she was down three; Germany: +150.

At the other table Auken - von Arnim reached different game:

West	North	East	South
	Auken		von Arnim
	1¨	Pass	1©
Pass	3¨	Pass	3©
Pass	4§	Pass	4©
All Pass

Here West led ªQ to partner`s ace, who switched to ¨5. There are a lot of inferences to draw from these two tricks and "Super Mom" is not the one to miss a single one of them. First of all, West`s honour lead suggests that she only holds a doubleton spade. East therefore has six cards in spades with probably no further points, otherwise she wouldn´t have passed after the 1¨-opening. Unfortunately this also means that the §K is bound to be offside. Last but not least, the diamond switch clearly marks East with a singleton, so Daniela knew about the 4-1 split in that suit as well.

According to this analysis she played the hand as follows. Club to the ace, club ruff, spade to the king, club ruff and the ¨K. If East discards, Daniela gets rid of her last club. If East ruffs low, Daniela is able to over-ruff and loses only one trump trick and a club. If East ruffs in with ©J - this is what East actually did - South can either over-ruff or simply discard the last club to lose either a heart and a club or two trumps respectively; Germany: +420 and 11 IMPs to cut down the lead of the Scottish ladies at that time in the match.

It was only two boards later - Scotland had scored another 10 IMPs in the meantime - Daniela picked up another decent heart suit:

Board 11. Dealer South. None Vul.
	ª A 8 6 © A 5 3 ¨ Q 2 § K Q 8 7 3
ª J 10 9 4 3 © J 10 4 ¨ A 10 5 4 § J		ª K Q 7 © 7 ¨ K J 9 8 7 6 § 10 6 4
	ª 5 2 © K Q 9 8 6 2 ¨ 3 § A 9 5 2

This hand fitted perfect into Sabine´s and Daniela´s methods, as South was able to open the hand on the one-level and afterwards tell partner virtually everything important about her hand. And Sabine is not the one to miss such an opportunity:

West	North	East	South
	Auken		von Arnim
			1©(1)
Pass	2§(2)	Pass	2¨(3)
Pass	2©(4)	Pass	3©(5)
Pass	3ª(6)	Pass	4¨(7)
Pass	4NT(8)	Pass	5ª(9)
Pass	6©

1) four (+) hearts, canapé possible, 10-15 HCP
2) artificial game force
3) no canapé, no 5-5 distribution
4) asking
5) one-suiter (with a minimum hand 6-4 is treated like that)
6) asking
7) shortness in diamonds
8) Roman keycard
9) 2 keycards and the queen of trumps

West led a small spade and declarer had no problems to collect six hearts, five clubs and ªA to come to twelve tricks; Germany +980 and another 11 IMPs, when in the Closed Room against Rauscheid and Nehmert Scotland stayed in game.

Germany finally closed the gap and won this high-scoring encounter 60-49, 17-13 to stay on top of the leaderboard.