This year my brother has become too old to play with the juniors. Therefore I found myself a new partner, Freddi Brøndum. Last summer Fred and I sat down to discuss what system to play. 'We can just play the system you played with Lars' said Fred. 'O.K. I replied' and gave him the 60 pages.

Freddi and I live as far apart as you can when you both live in Denmark. This is why we haven't been able to practice a lot. We had many bad results in the beginning due to misunderstandings and Freddi forgetting the system. Soon we began to erase agreements from it whenever such an incident occurred. Our results have improved substantially since then and we have only got about 30 pages left.

Sometimes I force Fred to exercise our system. The following hand from the Danish Junior Pairs Championship is a good example.

Dealer South. Game All ª A 6 © A 8 4 ¨ A Q J 4 § A Q 10 ª 10 8 7 ª K 9 4 2 © 10 9 6 5 2 © Q J 7 3 ¨ 6 2 ¨ 10 9 7 5 3 § J 8 5 3 § — ª Q J 5 3 © K ¨ K 8 § K 9 7 6 4 2 West North East South Madsen Brøndum 1§ Pass 1¨ Pass 1ª Pass 2© (1) Pass 3§ Pass 3© (2) Pass 3NT (3) Pass 4§ (4) Pass 4¨ (5) Pass 4© (5) Pass 4ª (5) Pass 4NT (6) Pass 5§ (7) Pass 5¨ (8) Pass 5© (9) Pass 5ª (10) Pass 6§ (11) Pass 7NT (12) All Pass

1 Forcing
2 Forcing
3 Half a stop
4 Slam try
5 Cue Bids
6 RKCB with reduced responses
7 1 of 5
8 Do you have the §Q?
9 No
10 Do you have third round spade control?
11 No
12 As I knew the contract would be after Fred's Four Diamond cue bid!

There seem to be 13 sure winners but the heart lead presented an entry problem. Fred is a very good card player, but he is not psychic so he took the king and played a club to the ace. After getting the bad news Freddi instantly asked for a small diamond from the dummy. As it was early Sunday morning East played low and Fred played the eight from hand! When that held everything was in order and he could return to hand after playing a club to the ten and cashing the queen to score up his +2220.