Miscellaneous Misadventures

The Eastern States Regional is less than a week away. It is one of the two regionals played within the bounds of New York City, and therefore one of the highlights of my year. This year, Elwood and I will try our luck in the Goldman Pairs. This is the most prestigious pairs event in the New York calendar, taking place over two days with a two-session qualifier and a two-session final. When all is said and done, we remain a flight B pair, and can hardly hope to threaten the top pairs. Of some concern, then, is that for the past two or three weeks we have both been struggling, and in the routine club games where we used to consistently win, place or show, we have been struggling to break average. If we continue to perform like this in the Goldman, we will certainly not need to show up for the second day.

We raised a maximum barrage on this hand, to no avail.

   

Encouraged by the favorable vulnerability, I ventured a minimal weak 2 as dealer, which North managed to double with his 20-point hand. Elwood diagnosed slam and raised to 5 hearts, which I thought was a worthy effort. South, however, rose to the occasion, finding a cue-bid, and North selected his trump suit at the 6 level. Just another flat board, in the end.

A session at Honors produced a couple of interesting hands.



As he put down the dummy, South remarked that he hoped he didn't have too much. This lost the post mortem immediately, as North started to berate him before even playing a card. But I held some sympathy for South. North's opening sally was “You know I have game in my own hand. Of course you should go on.” But, absent an Acol 2 opening, or Namyats, or something, I wouldn't know that – I almost never have game in my own hand when I open at the four level. Apparently nobody had a bidding approach up to the task, as the board was flat at +480. Could you have bid the slam?

Another slam hand.



Student's raise to game struck me as being a tad aggressive, but it's ok according to the Losing Trick Count and actually worked well. Student hasn't learned Roman Key Card yet, and Gail Greenberg (sitting North) commented that if I knew I was missing 2 keycards I probably wouldn't bid the slam.

North-South missed a save here.

 

Again Student wasn't shy in the bidding, but my hand was powerful enough to make up for any shortage of high cards. I had considered opening 2C, which probably wouldn't have been a great success if N-S could get busy. Half the field made 5H, and most of the rest conceded 300 in 5Sx or 6Sx. One pair managed to go down in 5Hx, I don't know how.

HelLo

Elwood has expressed his dissatisfaction with Cappelletti (which we were playing against weak notrumps) several times over the past couple of weeks. I'm no fan of it myself, so I was looking for a replacement gadget that would be acceptable to us both. Elwood isn't too interested in Lionel, which is probably better suited against strong no-trumps anyway. Eventually, I came across HelLo, the improved version of Capp that Jerry Helms has invented. So we're playing that now, against weak no-trumps.

The scheme is:

double = penalty, usually balanced 15+, could be fair strength with a good suit as a source of tricks.

2C = either diamonds or a major-minor 2-suiter. Advancer must accept the transfer by bidding 2D, and Overcaller can pass or raise with diamonds or bid his major holding a 2-suiter. As with Capp, Advancer can then use 2NT to ask for the minor.

2D = hearts

2H = both majors

2S = spades

2NT = clubs

3C = both minors

This arrangement keeps a traditional penalty double, which is pretty much de rigeur against a weak no-trump, allows Overcaller to show all varieties of 2-suiter, and introduces a transfer element that Cappelletti doesn't have. Using 2H to show both majors isn't any better than using 2D as in Capp, but at least with this arrangement you get to show a major single-suiter straight away, and you get the partial transfer style.

I'm not entirely sold on the value of the transfer business. I wonder if keeping 2D as both majors and using both 2H and 2S as natural might not be just as good? Still, we'll keep it as specified for now.

Of course, since making this decision, we haven't encountered a weak no-trump, but there are some around. I'll post any interesting results.

Visiting Honors

A student asked me to play at the Honors club, which (perpetually) vies with the Manhattan for the title of being the best club in New York. Rather like rival football teams in the same city, each has its supporters, and most of the time there is little to choose between them. I prefer the Manhattan, but by a very slim margin, and I have no problem with visiting Honors sometimes. After playing well for a stretch, I have found myself in a slump for a couple of weeks. I found the defence on this hand especially gratifying, therefore.

  

I paused for thought. We have three tricks, but the situation is grim. Declarer probably started with six trumps, and even if he didn't the suit is breaking. There's no hope in hearts – declarer certainly has the ace. It's just possible declarer is false-carding and has a third club, but I don't really believe it. That leaves diamonds, but leading a diamond at this point is not without risk. If declarer has the nine, we're leading into a tenace. Is it right to play passively now, returning a club and waiting for the diamond trick later? No: counting tricks, declarer has five spades, two hearts, two diamonds and a club – that makes ten. Wait a minute. Six spades, two clubs, and three diamonds only leaves room for two hearts. A diamond lead now takes out dummy's entry while the heart suit is blocked.

 

Declarer was too fond of finesses, and Student's passive returns gave him enough rope. Even so, a careless club return at the end would have let him wriggle free. I was pleased to work it out, despite being in poor form.

The good luck that seemed to have deserted me recently returned full force on the next hand.

 

But there was still some of the bad stuff around.

 

I really did hesitate before bidding 6, because the flat distribution and the weak diamonds are ominous even before you see dummy. But in the end, I decided that the field would probably be in 6 and went with it. At least we scored average, because that assessment was correct.

One month in

So, I was thinking that after a month, I would be able to gauge my progress with respect to the master points, and I probably would have at least a few hands to write about. That plan is struggling a little, as none of my March master points have yet shown up at the ACBL. Still, I probably should write up some hands. Maybe this evening.

A quest

I haven't been blogging, as you may have noticed. Part of the reason is that my health hasn't been great for the past couple of years, and part of the reason is my bridge hasn't been that great either. Plus, I have been playing a lot with students, which means that even if I was personally having a good day, the chances of really good stuff coming up were a bit slim.

Well, things are changing, at least a little. Most of my students have fallen by the wayside, one way or another. I am playing with Elwood much more regularly, typically once a week. And Agent 99, flushed with success at finally achieving Life Master rank, has resolved to play more often, which may translate to more than once a week with me.

One thing that hasn't changed is that I'm back in a slump, occasionally having a good session, but more often spoiling the card with two or three idiocies that would upset me if a student perpetrated them. I don't really know of a good way out of a slump except to just play through it, trusting that there are still some good days to come eventually. If anybody has any other suggestions, feel free to comment.

So, anyway, I think I'm going to try and blog again. And to give myself some incentive, I'm setting myself a target. My New Year's resolution was to try and play better against good opposition. I feel like I'm stuck in what we used to call "rabbit bashing" mode - beating up the weaker opponents, but with some fundamental sloppiness that is quickly exposed when the opponents have quality. I want to tighten up my game so that even the good opponents worry when I come to the table. But also, my next master point rank is Silver Life Master, and it's about 230 points away. I want to see how close I can get by the end of the year.

That's an average of about a point a day, which is very steep in my current mode. I can perhaps earn some of the load online (I already have met the color requirements, so just pushing the total to 1,000 is all I need).
But that isn't as easy as you might think. The only real strategy is to play at some regionals, winning the points in bunches. That too isn't so easy, or cheap. I'll try and keep you posted on how it's going.

Striking gold

Things are likely to change now – the client has finally gained enough gold points to achieve the goal of her obsession, life master status. The momentous occasion has been a while coming. She has needed just a couple of gold points for some time, but a couple of regionals went by without our being able to clinch the deal. Perhaps my last chance to come through for her was the Smithtown (Long Island) regional, and saints be praised we featured 5th in the overalls at the gold rush pairs, for 4.86 gold. Actually, 3rd through 8th were all between 57 and 58%, and we finished a tantalising .06% behind 4th (that's 0.2 matchpoints, a difference that probably arises from factoring for different sized sections). But I'm not sour. The relief at finally getting the job done is incredible, for me, and the client is positively bubbly.

In the first session, we finished second in our section, greatly helped by the slam hands. There were two slams our way, and we bid them both, and three slams for the opponents, none of which were bid against us. I don't know that we can claim too much credit, though. Our opponents seemed pretty clueless.

 

 The 3S bid is a bit bizarre, but I don't think East should pass it. The result was down one, while 6C is cold and was bid twice, and 6NT makes if you escape a heart lead (that happened once). With 5 quick tricks and only three losers, I think West should start with 2C. That seems to lead to at least 4H or 5C quite easily, although bidding the 6th is not so easy. On the other hand, the slam does depend on the club break, so maybe stopping at 5C is good.

I was lucky on this hand.

 

 Perhaps I should have bid 6NT, but with a known 9-card fit, I confess the thought never occurred to me. If East leads his AD, I'm down in 6H, but fortunately he led a spade, and I wasted no time drawing trumps. One pair did make 6NT, and one pair was unlucky enough to be the only -100.

This hand featured an unusual auction (although it used to be one of my favorite Acol auctions, you don't see it much in ACBL-land).

 

 The client's choice of 3S is not too bad, I think. She actually only has 7 losers, and the high cards are a bit thin – perhaps 4S would be more appropriate. But 3S isn't far off. My hand started out pretty good, and looks even better opposite a limit raise. So I decided to just bid six – maybe if there were two diamond losers off the top, they wouldn't be able to find them (with the thought that a more scientific approach might tip them off). To some extent, this may have worked. A diamond lead (hard to find) would have removed a dummy entry, and put me under some pressure. The safer-looking JH lead applied no pressure at all. I was the only declarer to make 6S – three went down.

Gadgets

I've been playing with Elwood a lot more regularly, usually once a week. Conversely, our system tinkering and email volume has dwindled, after a couple of big spasms to get some complicated stuff in place. So, I think it's time I put some documentation out there for what we're playing.

The basic set-up of 2/1 with a weak no-trump is still there, of course. A couple of gadgets have been added to the responses. The most complex item is Muppet Stayman.

We had been playing a relatively simple version of Puppet Stayman over the 2NT opening all along. Muppet Stayman involves switching Opener's 3H and 3NT rebids. The purpose of that is to handle Responder hands that include 5 spades and 4 hearts. The other way round, Responder can transfer to hearts and then bid 3S. Playing Muppet, with 5 spades and 4 hearts, Responder can start with 3C, and if Opener bids 3H (denying a 4- or 5-card major) Responder has room to continue with 3S. Of course, that loses the transfer effect if Opener chooses to play in spades, so Elwood suggested a further reversal, swapping 3S and 3NT from Responder in this sequence. Needless to say, when you try to map out the ramifications of all this, not forgetting that, as Responder, you also want to know what to do with a 4-major 5-minor type of hand, you finish up with some sequences that are disasters waiting to happen, and a severe headache from trying to remember it all.

To make the effort worthwhile, we decided to play the exact same thing over 1NT. So while regular Stayman is still in place and handling a lot of stuff, with a game-going hand Responder also has 1NT – 3C available as Muppet. This fits with our revised philosophy for opening 1NT. I started out with the traditional British attitude, that 1NT shouldn't include a 5-card major, except for odd cases. But influenced by results (and by Fantunes, I admit), I have let the pendulum swing towards the opposite extreme. We now explicitly open all 5-3-3-2s and most 5-4-2-2s (especially with 4-major and 5-minor) 1NT if they are in range. As a result, checking for a 5-card major is very much a good idea. For example, if Responder has a game-going hand 4-3 in the majors, the right choice is Muppet rather than regular Stayman. That way, he can find a 5-3 fit as well as a 4-4 or 5-4 fit. The one time we had a memory lapse that should have resulted in disaster, we actually dodged the bullet by both having the same failure. We both forgot the second inversion, and I passed Elwood's 3NT bid that should have shown 5 spades to find that he actually only had 2. If I had remembered, I probably would have corrected to 4S, to play in a 3-2 “fit”.

We are still playing 4-suit transfers over 1NT, and they can handle single-suited and wildly 2-suited hands. To complete the system of responses, we wanted to provide some tools for less extreme hands with both minors and a shortage in a major. Using 3H and 3S as the usual splinter responses, with a 3-suited hand and exactly 4 in the other major, takes care of quite a few. And we have defined the 3D response as showing both minors in a hand with a 3-card major. Then 3H asks, and Responder bids his shortage (3NT with short hearts). Of course, there are follow-up sequences, and the end result is (hopefully) that we can choose between 3NT, 4major and 5minor (or 6minor) on some sensible basis. This 3D response is quite cute (and original, I think), but rare. So far it has only come up once, steering us to 4H somewhat anti-climactically when Elwood showed short spades and I had opened with a 5-card heart suit. The real payoff for that bid will be when we get to a nice Moysian game, or to 5- or 6-minor, when no-trump doesn't make.

The other toy we have adopted is a mini-Roman 2D. This shows a 3-suited hand, 4-4-4-1 or 5-4-4-0. Commonly, this is played without much more definition, with some strength range around 11-15hcp. Some strong club pairs play a version where the the short suit is always diamonds, to handle a variety of hand that is difficult for their system. I started out somewhat skeptical about this bid's worth, feeling that it might be OK as a pre-empt, but would be difficult to use constructively, while if you finished up defending, declarer would have a blueprint for the play. Having run into it a few times, I changed my mind, conceding that it is annoying and sometimes quite awkward to defend against. So I decided to look into adopting it, and I produced some original ideas that have been run through Elwood's brain, and I think the result is quite interesting.

The ACBL's GCC insists on a minimum of 10hcp, so we are playing the opening as 10-14, which (as with Fantunes 2-openings) is weak enough to be quite pre-emptive, but strong enough to have some punch. To provide a constructive framework, I suggested some things to make our approach very major-suit oriented. Making the shortage always a minor is the first change. This does some good things to your response structure, but carries the penalty of reducing the frequency of occurrence. To help with that, and also just why not, Elwood suggested allowing 5-card hearts but not 5-card spades. That includes some “Flannery” hands, without screwing up our relays. Next, the usual set-up is to have 2NT as the strong response, whence Opener shows his shortage. Instead, I have Opener bid the minor suit he holds, and Responder can pass that or place the contract wherever he likes. Next, the 3C and 3D responses are not usually well-defined, as far as I can discover. So I suggested using them as proxies for hearts and spades. Elwood came up with the game-forcing relay sequences to follow, whereby Opener defines his strength and exact distribution. And then we have the 3H/3S responses as natural and invitational, and the 4H/4S responses as natural and to play (either weak or strong, like after a weak two opening). Almost all the time, when we play in a major, Responder is declarer. This is policy, since Opener's hand is well-known from the bidding (so if he becomes declarer, the defence can play double-dummy).

So far, it seems like the mini-Roman is occurring about once every other session. That doesn't sound like a lot, but I think it's comparable to the frequency of the weak two that we have given up – that didn't seem to come up all that often, either. And we've had at least a couple of good results from it.