I've got to admit...

Things are looking up, at least as far as my bridge playing goes. I actually played at the Manhattan last Sunday, with Agent 99. And I have more dates set up with both Agent 99 and Elwood, and Rose left me a message the other day - I need to call her back. I'm well on the way to getting a two- or three-times-a-week playing schedule arranged. I'm not close to being at my best, of course, which makes blogging a dubious affair. But it looks like I should be getting up to speed by the end of the month.

Which is what it's all about. The week after Christmas is the Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional in New York. Both Agent 99 and Elwood are interested in playing with me, so I have to do my best to get back in training, fast. I don't think there's any particular training regimen that works better than just playing as much as possible, so we'll see how many games I can fit in before Christmas. Hopefully, this year there won't be any blizzards around to screw things up.

Here's the flyer:
http://web2.acbl.org/tournaments/Ads/2011/12/1112015.pdf

Italy's out

So much for my predictions - Italy have lost their semi-final match against the Netherlands. It was nip and tuck till towards the end, when the Netherlands opened a lead by bidding two slams that the Italians missed (and got a few smaller swings too). With only half a dozen boards left, the Italians were suddenly 36 IMPs down, and there was no real chance presented in those last few boards to get it back. The Dutch team comprises three well-established pairs, and they've played very well so far (obviously). In the past, I've been (on occasion) disappointed by the Dutch, but they seem to have peaked at just the right time, and the final against USA2 should be a cracker.

Another team that has sprung a surprise is Indonesia, in the Venice Cup. I was thinking that England were heading for the final, and the next thing you know, Indonesia stormed back and beat them.

World Championships

I'm still not up to snuff as regards being physically able to go to the bridge club and either working or playing. But the computer in the corner is within reach, and the world championships are here again. So I will be visiting the BBO Vugraph and trying to follow the action.

It will be a tough competition once again, with so many closely-matched teams participating. I chose Italy in the BBO Bermuda Bowl "guess the winner" competition, but that was as much sentiment as anything else. They are extremely good, of course, but so are the US teams, China, and so many of the others. I remember being surprised by Bulgaria last time around, and they're in the running again. So who do you fancy?

still alive

I'm afraid my return home proved to be somewhat premature, and I spent most of June and July back in the hospital. Maybe just a few weeks more before I can blog coherently.

hiatus

I apologise to my faithful readers (both of you). I'm afraid I spent most of May in hospital, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Hopefully, a few more weeks will see me back in the swing of things.

Blackwood with a void

I forget sometimes (OK, most of the time) just how little competitive experience Agent 99 has. Not that I'm so terrifically well-seasoned, but I have been playing a long time, and I've lost to some internationally renowned players. And I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet making myself feel closer to famous players, too. So there's actually a fair amount of stuff that is familiar to me that is probably a complete blank to her.

One of the more basic blind-spots cropped up the other day. What do you say when partner wheels out Blackwood, and you have a void?

Apparently, Agent 99 had never met this little conundrum before. Her improvised response was to treat the void as a key-card, which rapidly generated a zero as I put her in seven, and the defence found their ace. We were having a bad game anyway, and just to rub it in, some other pair bid and made seven on the wrong opening lead.

But there is an accepted way to respond. I suppose I thought Agent 99 must know it, but there's no reason why anybody would, unless they've been shown it. The basic scheme is to answer 5NT holding 0 or 2 keycards and a void, or bid 6 of the void holding 1 or 3 keycards and a void. There are some caveats and wrinkles, of course (there always are).

First of all, showing a void when you hold 0 keycards is hardly ever done. The only time Eddie Kantar (the RKC authority these days) would countenance it is when partner already knows you have a terrible hand, and is bidding RKC anyway. The sort of example Kantar gives might involve a 2C opening and relatively weak responding sequence, or something.

Second, only show useful voids. A void in partner's first-bid suit when you have agreed his second suit as trumps is almost certainly not an asset, and not something to brag about.

Third, if your void is in spades and hearts are trumps, and you have an odd number of keycards, you can't jump to 6S because that takes you past 6H. Jump to 6H instead.

This takes care of hearts and spades as trumps, when 4NT is the RKC asking bid. For us, it gets a bit more confusing when a minor suit is trumps, and we use Redwood, but it works just as well. Instead of 5NT to start showing voids, if you count the steps you see you get to 5D when the asking bid was 4D, or 5H when the asking bid was 4H.

Let's say clubs are agreed, and 4D is bid as 1430. Now,
4H = 1 or 4
4S = 0 or 3
4NT = 2 without the QC
5C = 2 with the QC
5D = 2 with a void
5H = 1 or 3 with a void H
5S = 1 or 3 with a void S
5NT = 1 or 3 with a void D
6C = I can't remember all this crap

Similarly, when diamonds are trumps and 4H is 1430:
4S = 1 or 4
4NT = 0 or 3
5C = 2 without the QD
5D = 2 with the QD
5H = 2 with a void
5S = 1 or 3 with a void S
5NT = 1 or 3 with a void H
6C = 1 or 3 with a void C
6D = I can't remember all this crap

As you can see, 5NT has become a “spare” bid, and can be used to show a void in the suit immediately higher-ranking than trumps. All the other voids can be named explicitly when you have an odd number of keycards.

Misadventures In Manhattan

Elwood resurfaced for his first game at the club since mid-January. Of course, I celebrated by playing eleven hands and only being dummy twice, but he didn't seem to mind. And it was a decent field for a club game, with at least half a dozen pretty good pairs in nine tables. The weak notrump seemed to be working well.



South's strategy of passing over 1NT and then doubling for takeout is standard practice. But on this hand, she is at the top limit for the initial pass – some might say over it – and the final result is below average.



North-South seem to have been paralysed by the bidding. To me, a bid of 2H from North over the transfer seems clear-cut. Even if you haven't discussed it with your partner (and even in a club duplicate I would expect that most pairs have), it should be pretty obviously for takeout, and North has the perfect shape for it. According to the computer, neither 2H nor 4S should make. To add insult to injury, half the field bid and made 4S, while I somehow scrambled 8 tricks the other way.

That last opening was a bit ugly. This one was even worse, and even more effective.



The opening was enough to keep out South, and the transfer bid shut out North. So we played quietly in clubs, and again I made a contract that should have failed. But this time, the North-South game was real, even though difficult to bid. A couple of pairs even made it doubled.

An odd occurrence was that board 24 of the set in use was mis-labelled. The dealer was shown as East rather than West. That made a big difference to the auction.



Not a very coherent auction, in my opinion. In the end, that worked in our favor, since nobody seemed sure of who could make anything. If the opponents double, they get a top. When they didn't, we got an almost-top.

Anyway, we finished up second on about 64%. Not bad for a come-back game.

Misadventures In Manhattan

A set with Agent 99 produced some interesting deals. At the second table, we sat down to this one.



North's raise seems feeble to me. I'm bidding 5C anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter. But failing to take the save was expensive – 5H should go 3 down, but in practice was often escaping for -2, while 99 wrapped up 5C with little effort.

Then came this little number.



Most people seem to have been a bit perplexed by the East hand. I admit, I was not exactly confident about opening 1S. But then we had a “routine” auction to game, and South decided to lead the AD even though I had bid the suit. That gave me the tempo to establish the diamonds and finish with all 13 tricks and almost all the matchpoints.

Our 2D replacement for 2NT made it's first appearance, and scored a top.



Making 9 tricks in diamonds earned the only plus score for E-W. Everybody else opened 2NT and couldn't find a making contract. Winner!

We also had a run-in with a pair playing something non-standard.
1C! – Pass – 1D – 1H; 1NT
1C was alerted as 13+, any distribution. I asked what 1NT showed, and was told “no agreement”. Frankly I don't believe it. And this was the third board we played against this pair, and they hadn't mentioned at any point that any of their bids were non-standard. And their convention card was pretty much uninformative. I didn't make a big stink about it, but I really think they were over the edge of unethical behavior. I think any time this pair shows up in the future and I'm there, they better be ready for some hard questions.

I've persuaded Agent 99 to play Rubensohl, and another session saw that crop up for the first time.



Not a good result, but not the fault of lebensohl, transfer or otherwise. With clubs agreed (bid first at 2NT and supported with 4C), we play Redwood. Agent 99 could have bid 4D and carried on to 6C: after all, all she really needs to know at that point is how many key cards I have, in order to choose between 5, 6 and 7.

Anyway, the next MIM post may feature the return of Elwood. I look forward to it.

Doubling slams

Let's say you pick up what seems to be my average sort of hand these days:
xx, xxx, JTxx, Qxxx
The opponents bid rapidly and confidently:
1S – 2H; 3S – 4NT; 5D – 7S;
What do you lead?

It's a crapshoot, basically. Assuming the opponents have at least some idea what they're doing, dummy thinks he has a lot of tricks available. Almost certainly, he's counting on at least six spade tricks, and you have no reason to think he's wrong. He did bid hearts, so maybe he has a decent heart suit too. With no clues, you flip a coin and lead a club or a diamond. I'd probably lead a club, myself: if partner can produce the king, we may at least threaten to win a trick later.

Now suppose partner doubles the final contract. What do you lead this time? The classic answer is to lead something unusual. The only unusual lead this time is a heart. It doesn't look very promising from our hand, but maybe dummy is bidding based on a long suit, and declarer has more support than he is expecting. It's just possible that partner is void, and will ruff at trick one. This would be an example of the famous Lightner double. I don't know if it would be a good example, because from this sort of bidding, I would expect there to be a real chance that the opponents can run to 7NT if you double 7S. But perhaps partner feels that the gamble is worthwhile, since they are going to make 7S anyway if he doesn't double.

So far, so not-very-controversial.

What changes if the final bid on the sequence above is 7NT instead of 7S? Now I think the picture of two good suits is a lot clearer. People don't bid grand slams like this unless they can count the tricks, most of the time. I think declarer sees six spades, five hearts, and two aces in his mind's eye, and we're toast. But my original answer stands: flip a coin and lead a club or a diamond, and for me personally, it's probably a club.

Now the tricky one: what if partner doubles 7NT? What do you lead, and why? What does partner have? Is this a Lightner double?

I don't think this can be a traditional Lightner double. All it can mean is that declarer has screwed up at the most basic level, and partner is looking at an ace. If partner has a sure trick in spades or hearts, I don't think it matters what you lead: the contract isn't going to make. If partner has a minor suit ace, though, the lead may be crucial, because declarer may have thirteen tricks if you miss at trick one. So do you flip a coin again? I think so. I don't think a spade or heart lead can be justified, and I don't think there is any clear message from the double.

Partner led a spade, which is always wrong. I was looking at the AD, and mostly doubled just because we were already screwed if the contract made, so the double was “free”. Dummy hit with seven spades, so declarer didn't need a diamond trick. -2490 is a score you don't see too often, thank the gods.

Bridge As A Spectator Sport

There's an interesting discussion going on (in sort of slow motion) at Cathy Chua's blog, The Overtrick. The thrust of it is that Cathy wants to know how to improve Australian bridge, not just the overall standard, but particularly, how to make the top-level Australians fully competitive at World level, and bringing the Bermuda Bowl south and stuff. This is a big question, and I've no doubt a few other countries would be interested in a good answer.

Cathy contends that bridge is not taken seriously, either by the general public or by bridge players themselves, and that “professional” bridge players really aren't very professional. She thinks that if big prize money tournaments were available, so that players could actually make a living playing bridge (as opposed to teaching or writing or playing with sponsors), then the game as a whole would be taken more seriously by everyone. And as a result, the standard of play (at all levels) would improve.

I can see what she means, but I'm not sure I agree 100%. I think she's a bit too dismissive of the current “professional bridge players”. Even in sports that do have big money tournaments and international stars (say, tennis, for example) the majority of “tennis pros” toil away almost all of the time not in Grand Slam tournaments, but giving lessons and doing all the stuff that Cathy doesn't like. But I do think she's right that if there were a big money tournament circuit where top players could earn a living, that would indeed change a lot of people's perception of the game.

But having said that, I think that business model is only properly sustainable for a spectator sport. You only get the continuous infusion of cash if you get lots of people to put in a little each – paying customers, TV deals and the like. Can that ever work for bridge? I don't think so, not at the moment anyway. Even chess has such tournaments (which is a factor driving Cathy's perception, of course), but a key factor there, I think, is that a large percentage of people knows how to play chess. Very badly, it's true, but there is no need for spectators to actually appreciate the details on their own: that's what commentators are for. I mean, thousands, millions, of people watch Tiger Woods play golf. Not all of those people can actually play golf, they just understand enough to know that what he's doing is difficult. Bridge doesn't have the same penetration into the general public in terms of people knowing even just a little bit about the game. And I think the only way to change that is through the schools. I think we need to have high-school bridge clubs the way we have chess clubs. Get bridge onto the menu of after-school activities, recognized as being as brain-twisting as chess (in a different way), while being better in some ways because it is a social game where chess is essentially solitary. And get people playing (rubber) bridge at home, not just in duplicate tournaments. It will take a long time, no doubt, but you have to prepare the ground in terms of making an audience available. Not all the kids will grow up to be bridge players, but they will grow up to know what you are talking about when you mention bidding and ruffing.

Which doesn't solve Cathy's immediate problem. Is there something that can be done in the space of, say, five or ten years, rather than a generational approach?

New Partner

I haven't been blogging much lately, as you may have noticed. At least part of the reason is that I haven't been playing all that often, and when I do play, I play badly. I find I'm not motivated to write about being a putz.

Not playing so often is partly a function of my schedule and partly that of my favorite partners. Both Elwood and Agent 99 have had personal issues that have cut into their playing time (Elwood especially), and I haven't been inclined to seek out new partners. That may be changing. Agent 99 is more or less back in the swing of things, and one of the teachers at the Manhattan has had a couple of games with me. She has been trying new partners because she wants to play more, so if this works out, there is at least the possibility of more games in the future. I will call her Rose.

So far, we are playing a very standard version of 2/1 Game Force. I am trying to let Rose drive the system selection. Going forward, that will probably become 2/1 with a weak notrump using forcing and non-forcing Stayman. She is currently learning that set-up from another partner, and promises to teach it to me when she's a bit more comfortable with it. But for now, we're using 14+ to 17 and four-way transfers.

There are one or two little glosses that have been added.
* Her chosen defence to 1NT is Cappelletti, not my favorite, but reasonably effective most of the time.
* We also play Capp in the sandwich seat after the opponents have started 1minor – 1NT.
* The balancing 1NT overcall is 11-14, as usual, and she likes to play checkback with it, answering as normal with 11-12 and bidding 2NT with 13-14. Responder can then repeat Stayman with 3C, if necessary. (This is the same treatment that Elwood and I were using after our 15-18 1NT rebid.)
* After an auction that starts 1m – 1M; 2M Rose likes to play 2NT as an artificial inquiry, with Ogust-style responses, so that Responder can discover whether Opener has 3- or 4-card support, and whether he is at the 11-13 or the 14-16 end of his putative range.
* Our 1NT rebid is 12-14 at the moment, so Rose has us playing New Minor Forcing by a passed hand, and Two-Way NMF by an un-passed hand.

So far, I have restricted my input to suggesting using Capp at the four level after the opponents open a Gambling 3NT (seems like a no-brainer to me, given that Capp is our NT defence, but I had to argue for it). And I'm also arguing, not yet successfully, for using the Woolsey double against opponents' strong 1NT openings. It fits in perfectly well with Capp, but Rose is unfamiliar with it, and rather suspicious.

Still, let's see what develops – it's very early days yet.

Misadventures In Manhattan

I've been managing to get a few sets in with Agent 99, and our performance has been fairly steady. That's an indicator to me that we are getting back in practice. There really is an awful lot of truth in what Sartaj Hans was going on about the other year: it really isn't your methods that make the difference, it's delivery – performing consistently at (or near) your best. But he never did come up with any great insight as to how to improve your delivery, and the only way I know is to keep playing regularly, at least two or three times a week, so that you can make the effort of playing a routine.

I'm not sure about the bidding on this one. It was the right final contract, but we got there the old-fashioned way.



My 2C response wasn't game-forcing, so jumping to 3NT showed extras. With the powerful club suit and the heart fit, I was feeling slammish, but I wasn't sure how to proceed. Since East didn't open a weak two, I didn't take his 2D overcall very seriously. I decided that the only way South could have extras was with good honors in spades and diamonds, so it should be safe to just raise to slam. Then there was the choice between 6H and 6NT, but that was relatively easy. Only four pairs out of twelve bid 6, and two of them chose 6H.

This one involved some judgement calls at an uncomfortably high level.



I'm not sure I approve of Agent 99's double of 4S. Since West couldn't speak over 1C, East has a fairly free hand to bid 4S on a stronger hand than usual, and to risk bidding 4S at unfavorable colors, “usual” is pretty strong to begin with. But it's matchpoints, and I guess South has enough that she has to make sure that the contract does get doubled. Then there's my hand. With the 6-4 distribution, it looks like there's attacking strength, but not necessarily defence. At the vulnerability, if South is better than minimum, we may be making quite a lot of tricks in either hearts or clubs, while not making much of a dent in 4S. I agonized quite a bit over this call, but in the end pulled the double to 5C. (I might have tried 4NT as “two places to play”, but I wasn't sure Agent 99 would take it that way.) Then West found a double from somewhere. I suppose he was thinking AS, spade ruff, with the AC to follow. When the smoke cleared, we had found the right path. East would have been down only 1 in 4S doubled, while 4H and 5C were both making. Most pairs weren't reaching game, though, and the final double elevated us above the others that did.

This one was a real fluke.



I had a diamond mixed in with my hearts, so I thought I had a six-card suit. Since we aren't playing weak twos, that makes the North hand an opening 1H. If I pass initially, I don't think either of us will keep going over 4S, and that's only going down one.

We witnessed an amazing act of self-immolation the other evening.



That is not a misprint. South had misdefended fairly outrageously on the hand before. North managed to avoid any loud outbursts, but expressed his internal anguish on the next hand by opening that beautiful 25-count with 4S. Thirteen tricks are available in three denominations, but spades isn't one of them. I've seen a few such bids, but I don't recall seeing such a good hand being treated so badly before. (We didn't even get a top for it – one N-S pair managed to go down in something.)