Rabbit Tracks

I've got to admit...

2011-12-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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

2011-04-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

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

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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

2011-03-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-26T13:12:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.

blah

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.)

Regional

2010-12-31T17:01:00.000-08:00

So the 2010 Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional is done, severely impacted by the weather. I originally planned to play three days, and finished up playing just one, a bracketed round-robin event yesterday. We won the top bracket, winning 6 out of 7 matches, and collecting oodles of gold points, so it was a good day.

But it was a tough day's bridge. I only remember one slam in the 49 boards, and that was the other way from where Elwood and I were sitting. (Our opponents made no attempt in the bidding, so that was a swing in our favor.) There were a few game swings, but we spent most of the day grinding out smallish victories with part-score swings. That's a perfectly good way to win, of course, but it means you know the match is close all the time and you don't dare let your concentration slip for even one board.

One interesting decision came on this hand. I picked up
JTxx
AKTxxx
-
KTx
as dealer, vulnerable against not. Opening 1H is obvious enough, but the auction rapidly escalated.
N E S W
1H 1S 3H 3S
4H 4S P P
?
If you are a point-count junkie, you probably are confused at this point. Elwood's 3H raise is pre-emptive, meaning that he has some hearts and some distribution, but not too much in the way of high cards. You have already opened the bidding and raised to game on your 11 points, knowing that the opponents probably have more points total than our side. So what is there to think about? Of course, points are meaningless for a hand like this. I knew Elwood had at most one spade, and very few high cards in the majors. There was no way to tell until I saw the dummy, but if he produced one or two good cards in clubs, this hand could easily generate eleven tricks and a vulnerable game. Conversely, what have we got in defence? No more than one heart trick. Probably a spade trick. Can we get a couple of tricks in the minors and so beat 4S? Probably, but it's not a sure thing. I think that if you look at this hand the right way, the scale tips very heavily in favor of bidding 5H.

blah

At the other table, the opposing N-S elected to defend 4S, and collected 100. When hearts showed up as 2-1, I was quickly claiming 11 tricks and 11 IMPs.

Here's another high-level auction where I perhaps chose to live dangerously. In second seat, nobody vulnerable, I picked up
x
AT8x
Axxxx
J9x
and saw the auction start
N E S W
P
P 4S Dbl P
?
On the one hand, if Elwood has enough to double, my two bullets guarantee a reasonable plus score, and risking the sure plus by bidding has to be a questionable decision. On the other hand, if he doesn't have the aces, Elwood must have some meaty middle cards, and if he has a really good hand we might well have 11 or 12 tricks. This is the first board of the final match, and the opponents are one of our strongest competitors. I decided to go for it, and was lucky to survive.

blah

4NT indicated that I had two places to play. If I was going to bid, I didn't want to pick one of the red suits unilaterally. The problem with responding to a takeout double of 4S is that you can't assume that the doubler has four hearts. He is bidding under pressure, and you have to allow for that. We settled into our best fit, but the contract is far from cold. I won the spade lead and took a losing trump finesse. Now I could ruff the next spade and draw trumps, but they had to be 2-2. When that passed off successfully, I could eliminate clubs and run the QH, guaranteeing only one heart loser. (As I look at it now, I'm thinking that it would have been smarter to play AD and a diamond, rejecting the finesse. But at the table I “felt” that the KD was onside. So much for table presence!)

So the game came home. Our opponents at the other table took 300, so that was a 3 IMP swing to us. A heavy blow, considering that we won the match by 2 IMPs.

What a mess!

2010-12-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

This blizzard is playing havoc with the city in general and the regional in particular. Elwood played yesterday, and described conditions outside as awful. He was in a bracketed round-robin, and his final-round opponents dropped out, meaning that he got to go home early. He said he was grateful, since otherwise he might not have made it home. Today, I was originally scheduled to play, but that's not happening, and tomorrow is questionable at best. Agent 99 is still trapped in Cincinnati, and won't get back here until Wednesday sometime, so whether I play on a team with Goldie tomorrow depends on whether we can find a fourth. As an alternative, I suppose we could play in a senior pairs or something, depending on how her other partner(s) are doing. It's all a shambles, really.

It's very unfortunate for the GNYBA and New York bridge in general. This is the biggest snowstorm to hit the city in a number of years, but even so I expect everything to be back to more-or-less normal within a day or two. The City is really pretty good about plowing the roads, restoring power where it drops out, and stuff like that. Which means that if the storm had arrived just two or three days earlier, there would likely have been little impact on the regional. As it is, Dr. Evil couldn't have arranged the timing to do more damage. I'm sure that attendance will be way down for Sunday and Monday, and it will probably be low for the other days too. Very disappointing.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everybody. We aren't having a white christmas, but we have a blizzard to look forward to (Sunday night / Monday morning), so everybody take care travelling to the regional.

Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional

2010-12-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

This week, there are only two topics on my mind. First up, Christmas is nearly here, and I'm trying to plan how I'm going to finish my gift shopping (basically done), finish my food shopping (nearly all to happen Thursday/Friday), and produce my usual Christmas dinner masterpiece on Saturday. No worries, as the Aussies say.

The other thing is the Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional in New York, which is next week from the 26th to the 30th. I don't really need any gold points myself, but Agent 99 needs quite a few to get to Life Master. And in addition, there's a client (or potential client) at the Manhattan who needs about 15 gold - I'll call her Goldie. So I've agreed to play with Agent 99 in a Golden Opportunity Pairs, and Goldie is playing with another Life Master in the same event. Then the next day, the four of us team up in a round-robin. That should provide a fast route to a few gold, because the whole team has a total of only about 2000 master points, and we must be in with a good chance to win whatever bracket we finish up in.

No pressure, except Goldie's husband (they both play at the Manhattan, sometimes even together) has promised to stalk me and haunt me if she doesn't get enough gold, on the grounds that he isn't going to be able to sleep until she gets them, so why not share the pain.

I'm also going to play a bracketed Round Robin with Elwood, but that should be a relaxing wind-down compared to the earlier efforts. Tell me again - this is fun, right?

2010 Gold Cup

2010-12-08T22:40:00.000-08:00

OK, finally I see the news. "My" team, the Nick Stevens team, has survived the quarter-finals and will be heading to the finals weekend showdown. Go team!

Concealed Splinters And 4-card Raises

2010-12-03T22:11:00.000-08:00

Splinter bids are bids that (by agreement) show partner a trump fit, a raise to game, and shortness in a side suit. This is terrifically useful information for assessing how well the two hands fit together, and splinters should be used at almost every opportunity.

There are a couple of tweaks that can be made, though. One observation is that usually, a splinter could be either a singleton or a void. Singletons are much more common, of course, but if you do happen to get a void, it would be nice to be able to distinguish it. Another thought is that the “traditional” splinter uses three responses to distinguish shortages in three suits. This is easy to use, but a tad inefficient. If you use one response to indicate that there is a shortage somewhere, a relay can be used to identify exactly where, if partner wants to know. And if he doesn't ask, you can bid game without revealing where the shortage is.

Another leaf on the tree of Niggle is the matter of jump-shift responses to major-suit openings, and using them for different flavors of raise. I don't like Bergen Raises, but the 4-card raises in Shep's 2/1 make sense to me. In addition, it's fair to say that if you don't need or want to use jump-shift responses as natural and strong, you need to find a good use for them, and that's not quite as easy as it sounds. Clearly distinguishing an assortment of 4-card raises seems like a very useful idea.

Putting all this together, you find that everything fits quite neatly. We include 2NT in the pantheon of jump-raises, and we include 3NT in the range of double-jump raises. Now, the cheapest jump raise is a concealed splinter. So 1H-2S and 1S-2NT are raises to game that include 4 trumps and a singleton somewhere. If Opener wants to find out where (ie usually), he bids the next step as a relay, and Responder bids the suit of the shortage, or bids the trump suit for the one suit he can't mention below 3. That is:
1H-2S; 2NT (relay) - 3C/3D/3H with a singleton C/D/S respectively. 1S-2NT; 3C (relay) - 3D/3H/3S with a singleton D/H/C respectively. This all leaves plenty of room for Opener to start q-bidding if slam is starting to look attractive. Note that if Responder q-bids the splinter suit subsequently, he is indicating the singleton ace.

We have only used one response so far, the cheapest jump-shift. There are 4 other single-jump responses, and these are used in reverse order of strength to indicate a 4+card raise (this idea being lifted from Shep's 2/1).
1H-2S 1S-2N Splinter (above)
1H-2N 1S-3C game-forcing raise without shortage (equivalent to Jacoby 2NT)
1H-3C 1S-3D 4-card limit raise
1H-3D 1S-3H 4-card mixed raise (weak but includes a defensive trick, an A or K outside trumps)
1H-3H 1S-3S pre-emptive, no defensive trick

Next we move up to the double-jump raises. The cheapest one is a concealed void splinter, showing a raise to game with 4 trumps and a void somewhere. As with the singleton splinters a level lower, a relay is used to locate the actual void. So,
1H-3S; 3N (relay) -4C/4D/4H shows a void C/D/S respectively.
1S-3N; 4C (relay) -4D/4H/4S shows a void D/H/C respectively.

At this point, we can look back and see that we have an array of raises with 4-card support, and can distinguish singleton and void splinters, which is a lot more than most people have in their bag of tricks. [infomercial voice]But wait, there's more.[/infomercial]

We actually have a few bids spare now. The double-jump raises, that most people use for splinters, are available for some different meaning. There is a type of splinter used by Opener called an Auto-splinter. For example, the sequence 1C – 1S; 4C! would indicate 4-card support for spades and a raise to game that includes 6 solid clubs (and a shortage somewhere else, therefore). This is off the main track of splinters, as the most important part of the message isn't actually the shortage but rather the honking great source of tricks. But it's still a good idea, and I think it makes sense to make that type of raise available to Responder also. So, for example, the sequence 1S – 4C! would show a hand like KJxx/xx/x/AKQT9x. It's true that you could start to bid this hand by bidding clubs, or by showing a diamond splinter. But I don't think either of those routes is really going to convey the combination of a very good suit with 4-card trump support.

Now we're talking. All I have to do is sell Agent 99 and Elwood on the idea.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2010-11-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

While still only playing once or twice a week, I've managed to be busy enough to make blogging seem like a chore. I've been getting some up and down results, too, winning one day and coming in nearly last the next. A session with Agent 99 rang up 64%, which was only good enough for second but had at least one hand worth mentioning.

blah

This auction is certainly not one to be proud of. Agent 99 was not inspired by her collection of queens and jacks, and downgraded it to only a 2S raise. That was questionable, and the failure to bid four when she got another chance is also hard to swallow. On the other hand, she has at least a technical defence in that the computer analysis says that nine tricks is the limit of the hand. But as a practical matter, most of the declarers in spades made ten tricks, and half of them were in game. I wrapped up ten tricks without too much trouble, even though I forced an entry to dummy in diamonds to take the spade finesse, instead of the other way round.

So why was this a notable deal? For the last couple of weeks, I've added the beer card to the list of things to do. This was the first deal where I actually managed to land it.

For the last few weeks, I've sat East-West most of the time I've played. It's been particularly noticeable to me, therefore, that by some quirk of randomness, the computer has been dealing the cards heavily North-South. That previously-mentioned session, Agent 99 and I were each declarer 4 times, while we defended 16 times. The day before, playing with a client, was similar. I know, it's the same for everybody, and should actually favor good defenders (we aren't necessarily demons, but one reason I enjoy playing with Agent 99 is that we are usually on the same wavelength in defence). But honestly, it wears you down when you pick up hand after hand with only a couple of face cards.

With Elwood, I sat North-South, and this came up.

blah

East was an experienced A player and director, while West looked like a client, so I assumed that the 2NT overcall would be decent values and shape. That left both Elwood and myself with some interesting hand evaluation questions. Elwood decided that with further intervention possible, he should show the heart support immediately, rather than rebid his seven-card suit. I then had no idea how good my hand was with a void in partner's suit and strength in his splinter suit. On the other hand, a splinter bid should show at least mild slam interest, and where can Elwood's strength lie? I figured his spades should be very good, in which case I should be able to get the diamond losers away, and so I jumped to 6H.

Then when faced with the actual dummy and the QD opening lead, I decided that the best line of play would be the opposite of what I had envisioned, also. I ruffed the opening lead, and cross-ruffed clubs and diamonds ignoring the spade suit altogether. That seemed to me the plan least likely to be tripped up by the distribution. Twelve tricks rolled in without a problem.

So far, Agent 99 and I haven't had too much at-the-table experience with our 2D and 2NT openings. The 2NT came up once, getting us a good board when the opponents bid 3S just making while the field was in 3H making ten tricks. In the same session, Agent 99 missed a chance to open 2D by miscounting her points and opening 1C instead. Making eight tricks for +90 scored matchpoints for going positive, because 2NT proved to be too much for a few declarers, and if my hand bid, people got way too high. I don't have the hand record, but my hand was something like Jxx/9xxx/QTxxx/J which means that faced with a 2D opening, I might have exercised the option to pass that, also. Declaring 2D would also have been a unique contract.

New system

2010-11-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

OK, it's official. Agent 99 and I played a session using the new system.
1S= 5+cards, 1NT response forcing with Bart, 1S-2H GF
1D, 1H= 4+cards, 1NT response not forcing
1C= 3+cards
1NT= 12-14
2C= strong, 23+ balanced or within about a trick of game unbalanced
2D= 20-22 balanced
2H, 2S= Acol 2, 8 playing tricks in a one- or two-suited hand
2NT= both minors 5+5+cards, 5-10hcp

Wouldn't you know it, the cards ran heavily the other way, and not one interesting opening bid came up (not even 1NT, which is only slightly interesting).

5-cards or 4-cards? Yes

2010-10-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

I had an idea last weekend that is a bit weird. I have a feeling it's either terrifically good or terrifically stupid, and after several days of chewing it over, I can't make up my mind which.

The thing is, basically I like bidding 4-card majors. With a weak no-trump, simple bidding becomes very natural, and if you want to add gadgets to cover specific weaknesses, you can see where you gain and where you lose. Except, opening 1S isn't so clever. The only response you have at the one level is 1NT, so that, perforce, becomes what you say any time you aren't strong enough to answer at the two level. Sensible auctions when Responder is weakish are unlikely to happen. By contrast, if you play 5-card majors with 1NT forcing (and Bart, maybe), you can have a relatively well-defined sequence to a somewhat sensible part-score at the two level, or maybe three level. On the downside, your minor suit bidding becomes quite compromised, with 1C often being 3 cards, and even 1D not immune.

But then I thought, why not play 1S as 5 cards, with 1NT forcing, but keep 1H as 4 cards, with 1NT not forcing? 1C does get compromised a little, but it will only be 3 cards when you are specifically 4=3=3=3 with 15+hcp. That's a lot better than Standard American.

So I looked at the ACBL convention card, and there's no way to express this arrangement. But I don't see how they can object to it, either: it's all known components that are legal, just put together in an unusual way.

Which doesn't answer my original question. Is this idea nifty or nuts?

Mexican 2D

2010-10-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

I have been wrestling with the question of which toys to play at the two level with Agent 99. I know these are less fundamental choices than some of the other decisions I'm putting off, but at least this seems to be an area I can address relatively sensibly. It's not a completely clear choice, however, because there are lots of possibilities. I've settled on the Mexican 2D, Dutch 2H/2S, and having 2NT as weak with both minors. That sounds a little eclectic, and I suppose it is for American club bridge. But these are all well-known devices that are used by many, many pairs around the world. The biggest concern is then whether they are all legal via the ACBL's General Convention Chart, and wouldn't you know it, there's a problem.

For some reason, Dutch 2H and 2S are Mid-Chart conventions. Why? The typical defence against them is the same as what you would use against a Standard weak two-bid, so you can hardly argue that the poor innocent club player wouldn't know how to play against them. Once again, I can't fathom the “logic” the ACBL uses to decide these things. The likeliest explanation really does appear to be “not invented here”.

So 2H and 2S are still up in the air. But I'm settled on the other two.

The Mexican 2D bid shows a big balanced hand. We're going to use it to replace the Standard 2NT opening. How is it better? Well, there are a couple of extra responses available, and more than one scheme to make use of them. What I decided, after much cogitation, was that the best plan was to implement a version of four-suit transfers. In essence, we use the responses we've taken up for 1NT, so the learning curve should be very short.

2D – 20-22 hcp balanced, what we would currently open 2NT.

2D – pass; very weak with 5+ diamonds

2D – 2H; a relay. Opener rebids 2NT, and we carry on more or less as if he had opened 2NT in Standard or Acol: 2D – 2H; 2NT - ?
3C Stayman
3D transfer to hearts
3H transfer to spades
3S Minor Suit Stayman or Baron (depending on your historical perspective), generally 12+hcp balanced. Opener bids 3NT holding a minimum (20hcp), or bids a 4-card minor or a 5-card major, or 4NT when lacking any of the above. Played this way, this bid can replace the 4NT and 5NT quantitative raises.
3NT to play
4C Gerber
4D transfer to hearts
4H transfer to spades
6NT and higher bids to play

The payoff comes with the extra sequences:

2D – 2S; transfer to clubs (6+cards) with acceptance, may be a bust
2D – 2NT; transfer to diamonds (6+cards) with acceptance
2D – 3C; Responder is 5-4-3-1 or 5-5-3-0 with both minors (GF)
2D – 3D; Responder is 5-5-2-1 or 6-5-2-0 or 6-5-1-1 with both minors (GF)
2D – 3H/3S Responder is 4-4-4-1 or 5-4-4-0 and bidding the shortage, with exactly 4 cards in the other major (GF)

These responses are the same as Elwood and I defined for our 1NT opening, except in this context they will mostly be game-forcing.

I think this responding scheme should generally be effective. If you look at it, you get a wealth of specialized bids for minor suit slam hands. Responder can close out the auction at 2D or 2NT or the three-level in any suit if very weak, or develop a good single- or two-suited hand fairly naturally even when the long suit is a minor. One big weakness is that the relay will wrong-side a heart contract. But a huge plus is that the given responding sequences should nearly all be somewhat familiar. In the context of my partnership with Agent 99, memory strain is a big concern.

1D - 2C

2010-09-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

Reviewing Shep's 2/1 at www.bridgementor.com, I see that the opening sequence 1D – 2C is not treated as a game-force. That strikes me as probably a good idea, since the 2/1 GF structure works best with the major suit openings and the forcing 1NT response. When I play with Elwood, 1D – 2C is a game force, and as a consequence 1D – 3C has to be invitational, showing a 6-card suit, and non-forcing. That is playable, but it introduces an asymmetry into the treatment of 1C and 1D openings that I find aesthetically dissatisfying. If 1D – 2C is not a game force, the asymmetry can disappear.

The notes on Shep's 2/1 continue that the 2C response denies a 4-card major. That sort of approach just doesn't sit well with me, even though it has a long 2/1 pedigree. Known as Walsh, it has been a part of “West Coast Scientific” for thirty years or more. Walsh bidders will bypass a 4-, 5-, or even 6-card minor to bid a 4-card major suit. Commonly seen at the one level after a 1C opening, you can also apply the same general idea over 1D, choosing to bid 1H or 1S even when holding a longer club suit. But I don't like it. My preference would be to respond to 1C and 1D as I would in old-fashioned Standard American. Basically, when I am not strong enough to respond at the two level, and may even be making only one bid, I will choose to mention a 4-card major while I can. But if my hand is strong enough to respond at the two level, it is also strong enough to bid twice, and I can afford to bid naturally, long suit first and shorter suit second. I dislike distorting the picture I paint of my distribution when I don't really need to.

Perhaps the answer is that I tend to think within a weak no-trump frame of reference. Consider the sequence 1D – 2C; 2NT - ? If you play 1NT as 15-17, then Opener's minimum NT rebid has to be 12-14 balanced. If the 2C response could be as weak as 10-11 hcp, it is now somewhat dangerous for Responder to go fishing for 4-card majors. It would be very easy (almost inevitable) for you to find yourself in a lot of games with sub-minimum total values when both Opener and Responder are at or near their allowed minimums. In that case, it makes a lot of sense to get your major suit investigations started immediately, so that Responder can comfortably pass that 2NT rebid. And it could be argued that the “natural” approach I prefer is unsound when you play a strong no-trump, unless you play that 1D – 2C is a game force, and Opener can rebid a major suit without it being a reverse (just bidding out shape).

But consider the same story when an opening 1NT shows 12-14 hcp. Now that minimum NT rebid by Opener after 1C or 1D shows at least 15 hcp. So the sequence 1D – 2C; 2NT has become a game force by simple arithmetic – there are at least 25 or so hcp between the two hands. Now Responder doesn't worry about bidding a new suit at the three level, because he knows that the partnership will not be out of its depth in 3NT. My comment slipped in earlier that “if my hand is strong enough to respond at the two level, it is also strong enough to bid twice” is true when you play a weak no-trump, but not necessarily if you play strong.

I enjoy thinking about bidding sequences in this way, and quite often surprise myself when I work through something and discover an underlying connection that isn't readily apparent. I mean, without having thought about sequences carefully, if you read about Walsh, did it occur to you that its utility is connected to the strength of your 1NT opening? I was startled when I suddenly saw it.

The "new" system

2010-09-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

Assuming that Agent 99 and I are going to switch to some version of 2/1 Game Forcing, there's something to be said for trying to get her to play what Elwood and I play. It would make my life easier, no doubt, but that wasn't what I meant. It's just that Elwood is a 2/1 afficionado, and so anything he agreed to play with me is probably somewhat sound. On the other hand, that isn't necessarily at all the best answer. Their personalities are quite different, and Elwood has a much higher tolerance for memory strain. (Agent 99 is willing to try, but she actually has a social life away from the bridge table, which proves to be a very distracting factor.) Add to that the Flint-Pender stuff we used to play, and there's some scope for creativity here.

Now, when I say creativity, I usually mean ripping off good ideas from better players. So I was browsing around, and I found www.bridgementor.com, and the system notes for Shep's 2/1. I'm not thinking to steal the whole thing (Shep doesn't play a weak notrump, for starters), but there are one or two things that are interesting. Using jump-shift responses as 4-card raises in the majors could be a good idea. Making 1D-2C a non-GF 2/1 may be better than "pure" 2/1.

Just to mention, I was enchanted to notice that the system includes criss-cross raises of the minors (1D - 3C and 1C - 2D) to provide a two-tier breakdown of the weak raise to 3minor. I invented that for myself and Agent 99 some time ago, and I've never noticed anyone else mention the idea.

On-line bridge

2010-09-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

The best thing to happen in the world of bridge in recent years is the advent of BBO - BridgeBase Online. This website, masterminded by Fred Gitelman, allows thousands of bridge players all over the world to find a game any time, for free. It has other features, including the terrific Vugraph, which lets you watch as world-class players bid and play hands (with expert commentary to let you know what's going on). If you've never visited (www.bridgebase.com), you're missing out.

Yet I don't particularly like online bridge. It really isn't the same game, to me. I'm not a world-class player; I've never played with screens in use, or more than a couple of kibitzers watching for my mistakes. Perhaps the perspective is different if you do fall into that category, or perhaps not. But for me, the whole atmosphere of being in a room full of bridge players, of having the cards in your hand and feeling the physical presence of the opponents to be overcome, is part of the game. Without that atmosphere, it just isn't the same experience.

And then there's the people you meet. Meet in the internet sense, of course, meaning you don't meet them at all. Some are chatty, some taciturn, and I myself might go either way depending on (to some extent) how much alcohol has flowed my way. But often enough, you don't know for sure whether you are sitting down with an octogenarian life master or a twelve year-old intermediate (or vice versa, etc). The thing about bridge is, after a few hands, you can get a surprisingly clear feel for the character of your partner. Sometimes it might take a few hours to figure someone out, but sometimes the story becomes clear in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, it tends to be the better people who are harder to figure out, and the idiots who are rapidly unmasked. I say unfortunately, because often enough you play for an hour or two and then never see that player again. But the ones who are sympatico enough for an hour or two are the ones that you really want to stick with.

And there's the question of rudeness. Some people (I'm tempted to assume they're kids, but there's no real justification for that assumption) feel that it's OK to be a complete asshole in an on-line forum, when they probably wouldn't dare to behave that way in real life.

A good thing you can say about BBO is that at least there is a facility to mark other players as "friends" or "enemies". If I come across a reasonable player, I mark them as friends, and if someone is too terrible either as a player or a person, I flag them as an enemy. This evening I played a few hands with gm1776, whoever that is. He's a chronic overbidder, and when I pulled a penalty double of his, he suggested I didn't know what I was doing and left the table. A review of the hand (if he could have been bothered) would reveal 3D doubled likely to be made with overtricks. But I guess it's the principle of the thing - he doubled, so I should sit for a terrible score whether I know better or not. Well, at least I won't be playing with him again, unless he changes his name (a sickening thought).

Responding to 1NT

2010-09-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

One change that Agent 99 and I will implement is to use the scheme that Elwood and I have devised for responding to 1NT. It is based on 4-suit transfers, which is arguably not the best responding scheme for a weak no-trump, but it is a framework which is commonly in use locally. Elwood and I took some amusement out of elaborating some sequences and inventing a bid or two. The overall layout is like this.

2C is Stayman but does not necessarily promise a 4-card major. After 1NT – 2C; 2D, Responder’s bid of 2H is weak, and usually shows 5-5, or 5-4 either way in the Majors, but if very weak does not promise more than four cards in each Major. Opener should correct to 2S with a doubleton heart (Crawling Stayman) and also more often than not with 3-3 in the Majors, so the stronger hand declares.

After 1NT – 2C; 2D – 4D/4H are delayed Texas transfers, implying Responder is 6-4.

1N – 2C; 2D – 2S; shows 5 spades and 4 hearts, invitational.
1N – 2C; 2D – 3H; shows 5 hearts and 4 spades, game-forcing
1N – 2C; 2D – 3S; shows 5 spades and 4 hearts, game-forcing
1N – 2C; 2D – 3D; shows 5-5 majors (Weissberger), either invitational or slam-interested. With 3-3 in the majors and non-minimum (accepting an invitation), Opener bids 4C, and Responder transfers to his preferred major.
1NT-2C; 2D-3C, 1NT-2C; 2D-P, or 1NT-2C; 2M-3m indicates a weak sign-off, 6+ in the minor and 4 in one Major. 1NT-2C; 2H-3m; 3S is a special sign-off correction where Opener is 4-4 in the Majors, possibly with only 2 in Responder’s minor.

We play four-suit transfers, 2S transferring to clubs and 2NT transferring to diamonds, with acceptance (bid them if you like them). With a weak minor two-suiter, responder can answer 2NT and pass opener’s rebid. Responder’s follow-up of his m-suit transfer with 3M on the next round shows a game-forcing hand, 4 in the M and 6+ in the m, regardless of whether or not Opener “accepts” the transfer.

After a Jacoby Major suit transfer simple acceptance, a single jump in an unbid suit by Responder is an autosplinter, showing a 6+ self-sufficient Major, a singleton or void in the splinter suit, and slam interest. Examples: 1NT-2D; 2H-3S, 1NT-2H; 2S-4C (not Gerber). The sole exception to this is noted below.

1N – 2D; 2H – 2S; shows 5 hearts and 4 spades, invitational.
1N – 2H; 2S – 4H; shows 5-5 majors, no slam interest. The non-jump sequence 1N – 2H; 2S - 3H; is the auto-splinter with heart shortage.

All 3-level responses show both minors and are either strongly game-invitational or slam-interested. In principle, when Responder is confident of game values, he should most of the time just bid it. The use of these minor-suit oriented bids implies that he is seriously worried that 3NT is likely to fail because of a weak suit, or that he is considering 6m should Opener have a suitable hand.

1N – 3C; shows 5-4-3-1 or 5-5-3-0 with both minors. Then 3D asks, and 3M is the singleton (or void), when 4OM by Opener is to play in the 4-3 fit. 4m from Opener is now a preference and is not forcing and not Minorwood, although Responder will often be in a position to raise or cue-bid.

1N – 3D; shows 5-5-2-1, 6-5-2-0 or 6-5-1-1 with both minors. Then 3H asks, when:
3S shows 2=1=5=5, 1=1=5-6 or 2=0=5-6 without slam interest
3NT shows 1=2=5=5 or 0=2=5-6 without slam interest
4C shows 2=1=5=5 with slam interest
4D shows 1=2=5=5 with slam interest
4H shows 6-5-2-0 with slam interest
4S shows 6-5-1-1 with slam interest

1N – 3M; is a splinter bid, with 4-4-4-1, 5-4-4-0, or 5-4-3-1 distribution and exactly four cards in the other major. Now 4OM by Opener is to play, 4m from Opener is a preference and is not forcing and not Minorwood, although Responder will often be in a position to raise or cue-bid.

3NT is natural, 13-18 balanced.

4C is Gerber.

4D, 4H are Texas transfers.

4S is unused.

4NT is natural, invitational to 6NT. If Opener decides to accept, he may show aces as per Blackwood, and if Responder then bids 5NT Opener must pass. Or Opener may jump to 6minor to show a 5-card suit, offering a choice of slams.

5NT is forcing to 6NT, invitational to 7NT.

6NT and 7NT are natural.

Odds & Ends

2010-09-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

I am still not playing very often, not frequently enough to keep my game up to snuff, truthfully. But I have managed to get a few games with Agent 99, and occasionally I play to complete a table when I'm working. If you're not playing well, it seems to make it harder to identify interesting hands to write about. But here are a couple of slams.

The first hand was a bidding disaster.

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Agent 99 chose to open the West hand 1D and rebid 3D over my 1H response. I envisaged a slightly higher point-count opposite, and the result was I pushed all the way to 7NT, which had no play. Perhaps a Gambling 3NT would be best, and if I insist on getting carried away, I might choose 7D. That isn't really a great contract, but a ruffing finesse brings in the whole heart suit, so at least there is a line to make it.

The next hand was better.

blah

I was playing with one of the many Barbaras of the Manhattan to make up the movement in the 299er game I was directing. This particular Barbara isn't a life master, and preferred if I went and did director stuff while I was the dummy, as otherwise I made her nervous. So I was impressed with the sequence we put together. When I asked for kings, her nerve finally broke, which is why she bid 6NT, but I wanted to play in a suit anyway. The same boards were in play in both the open game and the 299er, and we were the only pair in either game to bid a grand, and only three pairs bid even a small slam. Kudos to Barbara for a couple of useful cue-bids.

The Acol Experiment is coming to an end, at some point in the near future. I enjoy playing with Agent 99, and I think it's time we moved on to (or back to) a more precise system. I'd really like if I could persuade her to play Tangerine Club, but I don't think I'm in with a chance of making that fly. On the other hand, if I can get her drunk or something, maybe a session with the Phantom Club will warm her up...

One convention that both Agent 99 and I still like is Lionel. We haven't yet managed a penalty double of a strong no-trump, but we've given most of the other bids a run, and we almost always get a decent result. I think that one's a keeper, whatever else we play.

Gold Cup

2010-09-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I said that my "hometown" team had a tough match coming up. I wish I could have watched - the result has been posted on Bridge Great Britain. My guys won by the magnificent margin of 1 IMP. Hearty congratulations to the Nick Stevens team.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2010-07-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

A very frustrating session with Agent 99 saw us barely making 50%, but with the feeling that we had made only one or two serious errors. Generally, in a 24-board session, you expect to give up two bottoms through stupidity, and get two tops from the opponents in return. That evens out, so then your final score depends on what you do with the other twenty hands. We felt like we hadn't given away more than the expected two bottoms, but in return, we got more bottoms instead of the compensating tops.

There were at least a couple of hands where we got a bad score because the opponents bid and made a game that couldn't be beaten – but most of the field wasn't getting there. And then there was this sort of thing.

blah

This auction seems fairly ordinary and innocuous. The final contract certainly can't be beaten, and according to the computer analysis it makes ten tricks against best defence. We can make two hearts, but we can't make three, so at the vulnerability there's nowhere for us to go. Why am I whining? Because -130 scored exactly zero matchpoints, that's why. Three other pairs played in clubs, and they all took only nine tricks. Three pairs played in 1NT, which should not make, but they all did, one even made eight tricks. And the final table was allowed to make a heart contract our way. So the “par” result gets absolutely nothing.

This was obviously a tough field, though.

blah

It's almost axiomatic that on any given slam hand, at least one pair will manage to stay in a part-score, and at least a couple more don't get past game. On this hand, everyone was in a slam. A couple of pairs bid 6NT, which would go down on a spade lead, but they both made. One of the pairs in 6D made all thirteen tricks, which is impossible. And so bidding and just making 6D, which is the par result, scored just 2 out of 7.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2010-07-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

I usually find myself directing what we call 299er games, which means, basically, games for non-life masters. These can be, at times, frustrating, but often they are easy on the director because you don't get many difficult calls. And occasionally, things get hilarious.

blah

The auction needs more than a little explanation, and can't be rendered by the handviewer software. With West the dealer, it began 1D – P – 1S – 1D, at which point I was called. (As can be seen, West seems to have had a heart mixed in with her diamonds, or else she would have opened 1H, but that set the scene for the ensuing debacle). I ruled that since making the bid sufficient to 2D would be a cue-bid of the dealer and therefore artificial, South was free to bid what he wanted but North was barred from the auction. South thought about this for a while, and decided to pass. West then bid 1H, and North shotgunned out his forced Pass. “Wait a minute”, says South. “That was insufficient too”. “So it was”, I agreed, but ruled that North had accepted the bid by passing. Now East bid 2C, and I was wondering if that was 4th suit forcing. West didn't alert, so perhaps it wasn't, but West did rapidly jump to 3NT, so it seems like she was expecting a better dummy than she actually got. I don't know if my rulings were correct or not, but I think justice was served when N-S got a near top because E-W are way too high.

I played with Agent 99 the other evening. We did scratch, at 53% or so, but the lack of practice was showing. I was especially disappointed with our last two boards.

blah

I was disgusted with myself at the end of the hand. I should have realized that the singleton king was likely, and making 5H would have been a shared top. One down was below average, with some matchpoints salvaged because people were going down in 4H. And then came

blah

Three rounds of hearts promoted the CQ for down one and a fat zero. I don't see how we are supposed to bid our cold game, but not many people got there. If Agent 99 should chance a double of 3H, we are pretty much guaranteed a reasonable score. Even one down on mediocre defence would be a solid average.

At least we did better than some. One North-South pair posted the smallest score I've ever seen – 18.97%. Amazing.

Gold Cup

2010-06-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm cheering (long distance) for the Nick Stevens team. Well, the results of round 4 are in and the draw for round 5 is out. Nick and his crew won quite handily in round 4, but to get to the quarter-finals, they have a serious hurdle to jump. In round 5 they face the team captained by Patrick Collins (Derek Patterson, Gerald Tredinnick, Stuart Tredinnick). These are the number 2 seeds, and have actually won the Gold Cup previously, and they have been the losing finalists the last two years. So not an easy match ahead, but I know my guys can win if they play up on the day. I think Collins ought to just give it up, to save themselves the agony.

Grand Slam

2010-06-07T23:24:00.001-07:00

I hadn't played for two and a half months, but I broke the drought last night at the Manhattan. It's STAC week again, so I played with Agent 99 to see if we could collect some silver. We overbid like crazy, which seemed to be a winning strategy as we finished up with over 64%, which was good for second place East-West. We only had one real bottom, but there were a few boards distinctly below average. One in particular is driving me crazy.

blah

I played in 6S, claiming all 13 tricks when the opening club lead wasn't ruffed. That was a poor score, 2.5 out of 11 matchpoints, as a number of people found a grand slam or 6NT. I want to bid this to 7S, but I have been struggling to find a convincing sequence when we start 1H – 1S; 1NT (15-16 hcp). Even if we were playing strong jump-shifts and started 1H – 2S; 3S I'm having trouble getting to where I can count thirteen tricks with any degree of certitude. Perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious because we're out of practice, or perhaps I'm expecting too much exactitude. But I do like to be pretty sure for grand slams. I'll punt small slams with the best of them, but not grands.

GNT Flight B

2010-06-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Well, Elwood and I have formally withdrawn from the team to represent NYC in New Orleans. It's a bit sad, all things considered, but we had no choice. My wife has been (and still is) very ill, and Elwood has his own domestic troubles of a different sort. I haven't even been playing bridge for the past couple of months, except for a little time on BBO (and I really don't like online "bridge"). Elwood commented that this year was his fourth attempt to win the thing, and now he finally has the chance, he can't go. C'est la vie, but it still sucks at least a little.

I hope the Feuers get the chance to go with another pair of teammates. They played very well, and really deserve to go.

Maastricht Challenge

2010-05-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working my way through Maastricht Challenge, by Tim Bourke, which consists of 60 single-dummy declarer play problems.

Tim Bourke is amazing. You find hands he has composed or identified all over the place (I see him credited regularly in the ACBL Bridge Bulletin magazine), and they usually don't involve anything exotic for their solution. But at the same time, they aren't easy, and they are usually instructive.

Maastricht Challenge is no different. Almost every hand has me a bit baffled, at least at first glance. And almost every hand looks so obvious once you see his explanation. That's a great achievement for an author: not many manage it. You need to get the problems difficult enough to not get solved at a glance, but easy enough that you are not talking over the head of your potential audience, and you have to explain the solution clearly. Hugh Kelsey, for example, wrote very clearly, but his problems were usually very difficult. Tim Bourke's hands are generally accessible to more players, which makes finding that balance more difficult, in my opinion.

He says in the introduction to the book:
“Many of the problems use this “Likely Count” logic in the recommended solution. In order to feel comfortable with this concept as well as the variety of themes in the problems, I strongly recommend reading and re-reading this book until you know the problems by sight. I have used this approach on all the quiz books I own and have found that the technical reach of my game is the better for this.”
I hadn't thought about it, but this is exactly what I've done with the quiz books I own. And I think Bourke's right – my game is better for having done that. So Maastricht Challenge is going to get the same treatment.

Gold Cup

2010-04-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to keep the blog alive. The 2010 Gold Cup is in mid-stream in England. This is the premier teams contest in the UK, and I carry some fond memories of it from my early years of bridge. This year I'm trying to keep an eye on the Nick Stevens team (Nick Stevens, Paul Bowyer,
Jim Mason, Duncan Happer, Gary Watson, David Jones). Gary Watson and I went to the same grammar school, and taught ourselves bridge there, and were partners for our first few years of duplicate play. When we eventually parted ways (more a case of growing apart, rather than a sudden divorce), Gary formed a partnership with David Jones. I don't know how often they play together, but that means their partnership has been extant, at least off and on, for more than thirty years. I find that slightly amazing, and somewhat admirable. Gary was a great talent, very quick when it came to calculations at the card table, and when combined with his extrovert personality and good sense of humor, that made for some interesting bidding. Probably the ensuing thirty-odd years of experience have calmed him down a bit, but I haven't seen him in all that time, so I'm hoping that the team makes it well into the final weekend and I can watch him on BBO.

Nick Stevens actually went to the same school, a year below us. He didn't play in our card school, though. He learned from his parents, at home and in the clubhouse at the golf course. But the three of us became friends at Hinckley bridge club (the local club, frequented by Nick's parents and several teachers from the school, who were all complicit in making us both more frequent and better players). I have a feeling that Nick first played with Paul Bowyer back at that time too, so that would be another very long-standing partnership.

The team is the 14th seed. I think they are actually capable of winning the event, and I'll be rooting for them (from a distance). For now, I'm just watching for results on BGB
(http://www.bridgegreatbritain.org/goldcup/default.htm).

Pro-Am-Am-Am

2010-04-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the Manhattan Bridge Club Pro-Am-Am-Am. This is a bracketed Swiss teams event, where the teams are composed of 1 "Pro" (defined to be a Life Master) and 3 "Ams" (defined to be non-Life Masters). You play three matches, and the Pro has to play one match partnering each Am. This year, the event was sold out at 34 teams, that got split into four brackets based on the total masterpoints of the Ams. I got approached by a decent pair that I see regularly in the 299er pairs games that I direct, so I roped in Agent 99 as a ringer for the fourth seat. (She's not a LM yet, but she's distinctly better than your average Am). At least two of them have well over 200 masterpoints, so we found ourselves in the top bracket.

Unfortunately, one Pro had managed to find two ringers - he said to me that he was the only Pro that had two Ams better than he was (and he's not bad). So that team won. But I tried to arrange for our weakest line-up to play the first match, and our strongest line-up to play third. According to plan, we narrowly lost our first match, and then won the next two by increasing margins without meeting the strongest teams. As a result, we climbed up to second place. A triumph of strategy, if not of bridge, lol.

The key feature throughout seemed to me to be missed games. We only encountered a couple of slam hands, and nobody bid them. But each match featured a couple of hands where one pair or another failed to bid a making game. If there was a trend, it was that openings or low-level intervention by the opponents was often enough to throw off the hand evaluation of the Ams.

Anyway, that was a fun interlude in what has been (and continues to be) a fairly miserable stretch of life events. Hopefully, more bridge lies in my future.

Bridgevaria

2010-03-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

I feel I should give a shout-out to Bridgevaria.com, an on-line magazine about bridge. When you're looking for something to read or puzzle over, it's worth a look.

brief hiatus

2010-03-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

My non-bridge life has gone crazy just at the moment. Playing bridge seems unlikely for a week or two, never mind posting to this blog. Hopefully, things will calm down in that sort of time-frame, and I can get back into the swing of things before May.

Grand National Teams

2010-03-20T20:16:00.001-07:00

We finally got around to playing the final of the GNT Flight B for our district today. Twenty six boards at IMPs for about 7 gold points and to decide who would qualify to go to New Orleans to represent NYC.

We weren't too intimidated by the opposition, but on the other hand, we didn't expect an easy ride either. Elwood and I sat down against a pair that we felt fairly confident against, while the Feuers tackled what I would consider the opposition's best pair. Having said that, it's fair to add that we got lucky in the first quarter. The very first hand we picked up was a brute.
blah
I showed 5+5+ in the minors, and Elwood chose 5C, making 6. We were not happy with this as a start. When I put the dummy down, I commented that I had no idea whether we should be in 5, 6 or 7, and that was basically true. A few boards later, I picked up something like
blah
Elwood again was shaking his head when he saw the dummy, but on this hand, a 4-1 spade break limited him to 11 tricks. He commented that if I made any sort of encouraging noise (I should really cue-bid 4H, for one thing) he would land in 6S. That said, we could expect a swing in our favor because of the bad break.
We did indeed gain 13 on that hand, and in fact we gained 10 on the first one, also. While agonizing over missing 6C, we had failed to notice that a 4-1 diamond break allowed 6C to be beaten by AD and a ruff. The Feuers didn't miss their chance, and our opponents should feel aggrieved that two good slams cost them 23 IMPs. I was pleased that Elwood and I stayed focussed after these shenanigans, and we earned a couple of game swings in the second quarter. When we scored up at half time, we were ahead 48-12.
The opponents switched partnerships around for the 2nd half (they were a team of 6 anyway, but also broke up the pair who stayed in when they brought in players 5 and 6). That didn't worry us, and Elwood and I stayed buckled down and didn't give anything away. Meanwhile, their other pair decided to press against the Feuers, which turned out to be a losing strategy. We won the second half 49-8, for a 97-20 total. Very satisfying.

The Acol Experiment

2010-03-12T22:49:00.000-08:00

The Experiment proceeds. We've played three or four sessions so far, announcing to our bemused opponents that we're playing 4-card majors and a weak no-trump. There's no requirement to pre-alert them, of course, but we do, because the majority of them hardly ever meet anything except some variation of Standard American.

Our results so far haven't been earth-shattering, but they haven't been bad either. (When all's said and done, the quality of your defence probably has a bigger impact on your results than the quality of your bidding). But that's not the point of the exercise. Agent 99 is getting more comfortable with the feeling that most bids are natural, and her approach to a session is definitely more relaxed. We used to spend fifteen or twenty minutes before each game with her going through a little stack of index cards: her crib notes on various bidding sequences and conventions. Now we spend about two minutes talking about lebensohl (that's one zombie of a convention, you can't talk it to death), and that's about it.

So far I've noticed a couple of poor results from using the natural 2NT and 3NT responses to 1 major in a somewhat undisciplined fashion. We've agreed that they should show less than 3-card support, so that should eliminate the issue of missed 5-3 trump fits. The light opening style has caused problems for the opponents a few times, and the willingness to just jump to a reasonable-sounding final contract has engineered a swing or two. I'd say that, on balance, we're at least breaking even on how effectively we're bidding.

So far, so good.

Silver Points

2010-03-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

Another STAC week has come and gone. Say what you like about masterpoints being meaningless and silly, but if you offer silver points, you meet players you haven't seen for months. The Manhattan (and the other clubs, I'm sure) was jumping this past week. The hands come from the ACBL, and their computer seems to deal even crazier stuff than our computer.

Here are a couple of judgement calls.

blah

Do you say anything? I think I'm passing at any form of scoring. Ralph decided to risk a double. The good news was that both the ace and king of hearts stood up. The bad news was that those were the only two tricks for the defence.

blah

How about here? Partner tries to calculate his pre-empts, but at this vulnerability he'll be aiming for 3 or 4 down. You have some good stuff for spades – nice trumps, good controls. You have potential for tricks in the round suits if partner can help, and whatever you're missing is probably on your right and finessable. But that argues for defence, also, as does the vulnerability. Actually, the only really wrong answer is pass. But if you double, there's some chance of screwing up and only beating the contract one trick (although it's down three double-dummy). If you bid 5S, North will double, expecting his partner to have a good hand (not unreasonably), and partner will wrap up eleven tricks without any difficulty.

blah

When's the last time you had 8-card support? I was sitting waiting for Ralph to open 2H or 3C or something equally useless, and he went and opened 1D. Now what?
I gave up on science and just bid 5D. That was just right, looking at our two hands. Ralph's diamond suit was three small, of course, so the two missing were the ace and queen. We got a 2-0 break – offside, alongside another ace. Down 1.

blah

Playing quietly in 2S making nine tricks was worth 10 out of 11 matchpoints. A number of people played in 3NT, going down, and we out-scored those in clubs. I count this one as a victory for the weak no-trump.

blah

This slam was the opposition's way, and the hand managed to trip up most of them. Only three pairs reached a slam, two making 7S while one pair managed 6NT+1. Everybody else languished in game, with a grand slam available in three denominations. At our table (and probably at others also) the auction started P - 1S - 2NT (Unusual), which I guess makes things more difficult. But for three-quarters of the field to not even reach a small slam seems poor to me.

When is blogging season?

2010-02-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

I am at a loose end this evening because my partner cancelled a play-date because of the weather. It's snowing. It's winter! Well, I suppose I can't blame him. But when I turn to the internet for entertainment, what do I find? My favorite blogs all seem to have gone dormant, for months now.

Paul at The Beer Card still posts, but almost all my other favorites seem to have gone on sabbatical. I need some input - preferably from players who are better than me! Come on, you stars, talk to the internet. Your public awaits.

Grand National Teams

2010-02-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from playing in the GNT (busy weekend!). Last year, I played with Elwood and our usual Regional team, and we crashed out early. This year, our teammates weren't available, so Elwood and I teamed up with the Feuer brothers. They don't go in for fancy bidding, but they aren't bad, and we felt that we made a reasonable foursome.

There were 8 teams in Flight B, apparently, so today was the quarter-final and semi-final. We started out with an easy match against a team that probably should have been in Flight C. It was supposed to be 28 boards, but the director pulled a board from us in each half because of slow play. (It wasn't all our fault, one of the opponents at our table was even slower than Elwood). But even so, we racked up +87 IMPs in the first half and added another good chunk in the second half. So, on to the semi-final. The second match was scheduled for 26 boards, and we knew that our opponents were not push-overs. But we also figured to be in with good chances to win.

In the first half, Elwood and I felt rather unhappy with our performance, figuring that we were responsible for at least a couple of swings against without really bringing anything in. But the Feuers returned a great scorecard, flattening a lot of dangerous-looking boards and giving nothing away. On one hand, I held:
KT9x
xx
Axxxx
xx
and Elwood dealt and opened 1H. I bid 1S, and he jumped to 3D (of all things). Now what? I decided that there wasn't likely to be much play for slam, even if he had 19-20 points, so I jumped to 5D. Of course, things broke etc, and Elwood made all 13 tricks. He was a little upset, feeling that I should have bid 4D (which would have been Minorwood), because 6D was actually not a bad contract. +640 didn't look too good, but the Feuers came back with +200 from beating 3NT, so our bad board actually was +13 IMPs. We were ahead 42-19 at the halfway mark.

The second half was also not that great from us, and this time the Feuers couldn't make up for it. When the smoke cleared, we had lost the second half 16-39. And when you add it up, that means that after 26 boards, we had fought each other to a standstill, 58-58. The remedy was a 6-board playoff. I promised to bear down a bit more.

The first playoff board was something like:
blah
2C was game-forcing. 3H was a probe for 3NT, but 3S suggested something better. 4C was minorwood, 4S showed 2 keycards without the CQ, and 5S was the SK. We probably both pushed a little, but I liked my controls, and Elwood was determined to win the playoff. He played the hand nicely, ruffing two hearts in dummy and choosing the right path back to hand to finish drawing trumps and concede trick 13. The opponents settled for 3NT, and that was enough to win, although there were a couple of other swings and we actually won the playoff 24-0.

So, one more match to see if we represent NYC in New Orleans (Flight B).

Pro-Am

2010-02-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from playing in the Victor Mitchell Pro-Am. The "Pros" are Life Masters, so I was eligible to get press-ganged this time. And the "Ams" have less than 50 master points, so they mostly have not been playing very long at all.
It was kind of cute. My partner was companionable enough, and seemed to enjoy himself. I found myself in four or five impossible contracts and managed to make them all, while my partner only went down a couple of times when he should have made. So I was thinking we had a fair game, but when the scores came out, we were listed at 48% or so. I guess there was some really funny stuff going on at other tables.
Still, a pleasant evening.

The Acol Experiment

2010-02-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

I was half-heartedly watching BBO Vugraph the other day when an acid explosion from a commentator caught my eye. He had made a dismissive (and I thought, quite unjustifiably so) remark about the bidding of a Belgian pair on a particular hand. One of his fellow commentators remarked that it was surprising to hear an Englishman condemn a sequence that would be fairly standard in Acol-land. His reply was (perhaps not quite verbatim, but close) “I may be English, but I hate Acol, and detest the weak no-trump, which I consider to be a device to trap British bidding in the Stone Age”.
I find it difficult to fathom where this intensity is coming from. I'm not the right person to advocate for Acol as a top-notch modern bidding system (I don't think it is). But if you learn and play basic Acol for a while, you will not only have fun, you will get some results, and you will learn some sensible bidding judgement and get a good attitude towards bidding. When you decide to upgrade your bidding after a while, you will have a fairly sound basis for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems and gadgets that present themselves. And the weak no-trump? Well, “why not?” is my question. Even if you are playing 4-card majors, a strong no-trump will force you into 3-card minor-suit (“prepared”) openings, and other indignities. The weak no-trump is a perfectly viable bid that has some distinct advantages as well as some attached dangers.
For example, if you have had Acol 2-bids available, “upgrading” to weak twos may be clearly seen as a trade-off that isn't all benefit and no cost (a 2C opening that isn't game-forcing and opening 1-bids that have an even wider range than before are serious detriments). Or, if you “upgrade” to 5-card majors and a strong no-trump a la Standard American, you can see all those 3-card openings surface, and know that minor-suit openings (and minor-suit bidding in general) is compromised, often quite severely. Or, having seen the difficulties presented by a natural system with wide-range opening 1-bids and 2C as the strong opening, you may better understand the concepts of a Strong Club system where the opening 1-bids are more limited and you have more room to handle strong hands.
Over the past year, I've met (and taught) quite a few beginners whose first (and only) exposure to bridge bidding has been a basic Standard American. Almost none of them understands the idea of a reverse, even after special classes where they spend an hour or two hearing about them and bidding and playing example hands. (I have met pairs who “don't play reverses”, as if it were a convention that they could add to their system or not, like New Minor Forcing.) They rarely think in terms of bidding sequences – it's all one-bid-at-a-time with lots of rules to memorize about what bid is the right next one. To be sure, you can blame a lot of this on the teaching methods, but on the other hand, a lot of it comes from the basic system they're being taught. You have to have a five-card suit to open a major. Why? From the beginner's point of view, it's quite arbitrary. So rule one, five-card major, check. And it goes on from there.
I'm more or less convinced that if we made these people play Acol with a weak no-trump for 6 months, where all the openings really are natural and the preference and reversing sequences are clear, they could go back to Standard American and actually have a much better understanding of how to bid in that system. In fact, I've become so sure of it that I've persuaded Agent 99 to participate in The Acol Experiment.
The only way to “put my money where my mouth is” would be to find a volunteer who knows how to bid Standard American somewhat half-assed, teach them Acol, and see if their SA bidding improves. Enter Agent 99. I think her bidding is better than half-assed, but it is still rather weak compared to her play of the cards. And the type of difficulty she has, the type of mistake she sometimes makes, is telling. My hypothesis is that throwing her into the world of Acol, where there are lots of guidelines and few rules, will be an antidote. It should provide a counter-balance, where the weight of memorization will be eased by understanding some under-lying principles.
So far we've played one Acol session, and as luck would have it, we were sitting East-West while the cards ran North-South. Next time, maybe.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2010-02-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been much good to report in my bridge playing lately. I haven't been inspired to select good hands for blogging, either, so you'll have to put up with a bit of a mixture.

blah

I chose to open 2C, which made Agent 99 hesitate a bit. I don't know how we managed to avoid 7NT – I'm sure that's my likely destination if I was in both seats. But I don't think she believed I had a real 2C opening. I suppose it is a bit thin, but unless you're playing Acol 2s, I don't see what else to do. Also, she ought to know you can't psyche a 2C opener (not that I've ever really psyched with her – maybe stretched the truth a bit here and there). Anyway, the end result was that we washed up in 6S. I was disgusted at this, since the grand looks obvious. Then North showed out on the second spade, and it was looking like genius. Then he had to follow suit as I cashed diamonds and shortened my trumps by ruffing a couple of hearts, and I was able to get 13 tricks anyway with a trump coup. But that was an OK score since nobody bid 7S, and 12 tricks is the limit in NT.

blah

Agent 99 didn't like the prospect of 3NT with me having a known singleton and a spade lead marked for the defence. So she went ahead and bid game in the 4-3 fit. I'm not sure I would have done it myself, but actually it's a very sensible idea, and was rewarded with an above average score. Double-dummy, 3NT always makes 10 tricks also, but in practice, played by West, it's most likely only making 9 tricks.

blah

The jump rebid by Agent 99 is perhaps a bit aggressive, but she has a good hand in support of hearts. If she doesn't bid that way, it's going to be distinctly more difficult to get to a fair slam. But I'm afraid I have to report that I played the hand like a real palooka, and went down with 12 tricks cold. After a spade lead, I ruffed a spade and played a heart to the jack. And then I don't want to talk about it any more. I seem to spend half my life telling beginners to count their tricks, and it's distinctly mortifying to fail to do the same when I'm declarer.

blah

This one is from a Thursday evening game. These days, people stretch to answer a 1C opening on almost zero values. Ralph demonstrated that this isn't necessarily the best plan. Double-dummy, I should go down, while we can make 2H. In practice, I actually finished up with 8 tricks in clubs, and a near-top score. If the auction starts 1C – 1H, there is no way for N-S to stop in a makeable contract.

Serious partnerships

2010-01-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

My last two or three sessions with Agent 99 haven't been stellar. What with one thing and another, it's been difficult to play together any more often than about once a week, and that's taken a toll, I think. I was reading a piece on the internet the other day (about a bidding system or treatment or something, I can't remember what, exactly). A comment the author made in passing rang a bell for me. He said something along the lines of "this is perhaps not for casual play, but for serious partnerships that play at least 100 times a year, it's worth it". My first reaction was "100 times a year? That's twice a week. And he doesn't count a partnership as serious unless you play at least that often... There aren't many serious partnerships around".
Now, maybe I was reading a bit more into that comment than the author intended. But I got to thinking back to periods where I was most successful. And the truth is, I was always playing with one regular partner almost exclusively, I was playing with my favorite partner at least twice a week, and we'd been playing together for at least six months. Whether or not that author intended to say it, I've decided I agree that if you want to be a "serious" partnership in terms of consistent results in serious competition, you need to invest heavily in the partnership in terms of time.
I don't think it's a function of what particular bidding system you use, or what types of competition you play in, or what level of opposition you face. I know Sartaj Hans (The Imp Chimp) was talking about “concept” vs “delivery” one while. It's been my experience that the only consistently effective way to improve delivery is repetition. You have to become familiar with and negotiate out how your partnership handles various situations. When you've coped with (or failed to cope with) enough different situations enough times, then you get a good grasp of what partner will expect/do in a new situation. And that means putting in practice time and playing time. I was hoping Sartaj, or someone, would come up with some other way to do it, but I don't think anyone has, really.
On the other hand, I don't know that my reaction was wrong, either. I see lots of players at the Manhattan that play two, three, four times or more each week. The club is open seven days a week, and there are some people who show up almost every day. But they play with multiple partners – very few are “serious” partnerships.

Anyway, I thought I would wrap this up with a couple of questions.

How serious are you about your bridge?

Do you have a partner that you are willing to invest the time in?

Do you think that you can be serious without putting the time in?

How is that working out for you?

Ethics? What are those?

2010-01-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Just a quick follow-up to the last post.

I was helping run a supervised play session the other day, when I saw the bidding at one table proceed 1C - Pass - 2C - Pass - Pass - Pass. The sweet little old lady who bid 2C had 5-card club support and 11 high-card points, so I asked why she didn't bid 3C. "I couldn't read my partner", she confessed. "I didn't think she had a good opening".

I managed not to scream too loud as I explained that you aren't allowed to bid based on your partner's facial expression.

Ethical considerations

2010-01-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

Playing a session with Agent 99, there was a hand that infuriated me.

blah

Looking at my hand, it is clearly not worth a raise to 4S, at first assessment. I was considering bidding 3D as a trial bid, when the double on my right changed my mind. If most of the missing cards are on my right, I figured that my minor suit honors had grown, and therefore I jumped to game.

Needless to say, this was not a success. In fact, I misplayed the hand because I expected more values on my right, and finished up going three down for a complete zero, when I should have escaped for one or two down for at least some matchpoints (most of the field actually reached 3S or 4S and went down). If the double had been up to strength, 4S would have been a much better contract, but I was misled in both the bidding and the play.

That was infuriating enough, but getting fixed by an idiot is a common enough occurrence that I should be able to get over it. However, a much more troubling aspect sprang to mind. East is sitting looking at 10 hcp and four trumps. West has made a take-out double potentially forcing her to bid at the three level, certainly showing (for almost anybody) something like opening bid values (or better). Why didn't she double 4S? Could it be that she knew her partner was inclined to bid on garbage? I think so, and I think not disclosing that understanding is an ethical violation. You can have your bids mean all sorts of things, but you are required to alert the opponents when the meaning is so far outside the norm.

Discussing this with the director after the game, he was inclined to agree, in principle. But his judgement was that they are both idiots and don't know what they are doing. Therefore, there wasn't really anything he could do. I can understand his point, and he's probably right. But at the same time, I'll be keeping an eye out for that pair in the future. They are just C players, but the doubler plays a lot, and is continually at the top of her section of the Ace Of Clubs race on the ACBL website. How much leeway does she get?

Slams

2010-01-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Playing with Agent 99, I find a lot of my blogging focus rests on slam hands. Our bidding style is usually pretty aggressive with strong hands, so we don't miss many. And often enough there's something interesting in the hand.

The first two hands came on consecutive boards against the same opponents. The first one pleased me greatly, because “proper” strip-squeezes are somewhat less common than mere simple squeezes.

blah

The 2H bid showed 15-16 hcp with better hearts than spades, so the jump to 6NT indicated some confidence in my declarer play.

South led the S6, and I saw eleven tricks, counting one diamond. The twelfth could come from the spade finesse, or from an end-play (presumably after a strip-squeeze), or perhaps from a simple squeeze if the DA was taken immediately. I decided that the spade finesse was probably wrong, although after the explanation of the bidding, South had some indication that a spade lead might be good. So I took the SA, led a diamond to the DK, which held, and then unblocked the HQJ. Now the CK gave entry to finish the hearts, discarding diamonds in preparation for the strip-squeeze and the eventual throw-in of North to lead a spade. In accordance with my theory of the distribution, I next cashed the CQ, expecting the long clubs to be with South. However, South showed out. This left me a trick short, but on the other hand, made the spade finesse much more likely to win. So a spade to the JS and the KS completed the squeeze, and North was thrown in to lead a club. Not exactly the squeeze I'd been working on, but close enough.

The next hand was not so good.

blah

The CQ was led, so I ruffed and led to the JD. My thinking was if the finesse won, I could ruff a club, cash the SA, and then play a heart. If the diamond finesse lost, a heart return would help me pick up the trumps, a club would let me ruff, a spade lets me finesse, and if it's a diamond, maybe they'll be 2-2.

No such luck. The diamond return was ruffed for down one (I guessed to drop the HQ). I still kind of like the line, but I don't really know what the best way to play the hand is. As the cards lie, nothing sensible works anyway.

A hand with voids came up in a different session.

blah

We bid this very simply and directly, and I got a trump lead. I decided that ruffing spades seemed like the best plan, and that I needed thirteen tricks for a decent matchpoint score. So I won the CQ, and risked entering hand twice in hearts to ruff two spades low. Then two diamond ruffs provided the entries to ruff a third spade high and draw trumps – no problem.

We played the hand in the first round, and I figured that it was probably above average (slams usually are). Bidding 7C is difficult, with both players discouraged by a void in partner's first suit. But bidding 6C seemed so natural that I was sure others would get there. In fact only one other pair reached a slam – 6NT down 2. Is the hand really that tricky?

The next hand features a question of bidding theory.

blah

With no particular agreement, Agent 99 and I were playing the old-fashioned style where a raise of the fourth suit is natural, indicating that opener has a three-suited hand. I therefore deduced that diamonds was the right strain, and that all her values would be working, so I simply jumped to the slam. This made in some comfort, eventually losing a trick to a failing club finesse.

When I play with Elwood, he favors a rebid structure where (after a 4th suit bid) Opener has a responsibility to show support if possible, or bid no-trumps if possible, or show extra length or strength in his own suits. The left-over “problem” hands are the ones that raise the 4th suit, and they tend to contain exactly three small cards in that suit.

Now, when Elwood described this, it all seemed well thought-through and sensible. But I'm not buying it 100% just yet. On this hand, for example, he would not raise clubs, he would bid 2NT. I could then show diamond support, and I suppose we might still get to slam. But I have to say, I'm less comfortable with that sequence. For one thing, I fear we might reach 6NT. That will probably make in practice, but it can go down, while 6D is very solid.

So what does a raise of the 4th suit mean to you?

The next hand was another slightly surprising top.

blah

This presented no problems when (eventually) the SJ was led from dummy and got covered by the SQ. But we got a top when nobody else reached a slam. One pair even stopped in 3NT and went down.

It is something of a truism that big two-suited hands can be awkward to handle after a 2C opening. For us, since we use the Kokish Relay, the heart-spade combination is even more problematic. So maybe people were opening 1H, and that would make it very difficult to get to slam.

I don't disagree with the basic thesis, but I felt that anything less than a 2C opening just wouldn't do that hand justice. The result was that when I pulled 3NT to 4H, Agent 99 knew that she had too much to stop. Ten points opposite a 2C opening is a lot, and while the minor suit honors are perhaps of dubious value, the major suit honors have grown. I once had the computer generate a few hundred deals that included a 2C opening bid. My observation was that any time there was a positive response of about 8 hcp or more, you wanted to be in a slam. They don't always make, but looking at the two hands single-dummy, you wouldn't want to stay out of it. Agent 99 knows this, so she raised me to slam.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2010-01-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

My Thursday evening games with Ralph often seem to produce some weird deals and even weirder results.

This one was just amusing.

http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?d=n&v=&w=sj63h985dt873c765&s=skt974hq62dj65c92&n=sa82haj4daq2caqt3&a=2np3hp3sp3nppp&nn=me">blah

East was end-played at trick one! She chose the D4, which I won in dummy with the DJ. Then SA and another spade, and the SQ appeared. So I ducked, of course, and there she was - end-played twice in the first four tricks.

This one was just amazing. Sitting North with West the dealer, I held: SJ HA982 DAKJ83 CAJ5

and the bidding proceeded

W N E S

Pass 1D 1H 1S

2H Dble Pass 4S

Pass Pass Pass

At favorable vulnerability, I was willing to take a swing at 2H. I have aces, I have four trumps and a singleton in partner's suit. Two down is worth more than our game (if we have one). But as good as my hand is, I don't know if I can make a move over 4S. Surely I must have something this good to chance the double? It sounds like partner has a long suit with nothing outside – can I visualize only one loser? Little did I know.

blah

What a hand! I've never seen a ten-card suit before (in a randomly dealt hand). Naturally, 4S plus 3 was not one of our good scores.

Probably the best pair in the room had a horrible disaster against us.

blah

I led the CQ, and declarer decided to cut down on ruffs by playing HA and another heart. Partner ditched a couple of diamonds while I was drawing trumps, so I was quickly able to claim down eight. I call that -800 the hard way. At another table, North liked his hand enough to double 4S. -1270 is another score you don't see too often.

I like being aggressive in the bidding, but sometimes I maybe take things a bit too far.

blah

Just bidding 4S seemed pusillanimous, but 6S looked really ugly when I got a diamond lead. I actually managed to escape for down one, not that it helped the score.

I've tried a two-suited pre-empt before with some success, but this effort collected a big fat zero.

blah

After two passes, I was faced with the question of what to open. Passing can't be right. It certainly appears as if LHO is about to bid spades, and I don't have much defence opposite a passed partner, unless our hands are a real misfit. Opening 2H seems wrong in several ways, so I see my main choices as being 1H and 3H. The three-level bid is unorthodox, but might present South with more of a problem, so I went for it. As you can see, the deal is a bit of a nightmare. Nobody can make anything, and 3H went down three.

Regional

2009-12-30T18:17:00.001-08:00

OK, I still don't have all my stuff from the old machine. Hopefully, that will all be taken care of this weekend. But in the meantime, I wanted to post a quick update about the Edgar Kaplan Regional. That's the regional that happens between Christmas and New Year in New York City.

Still needing 0.10 gold points to become a Life Master (gnash, gnash) I decided to play it cool. On Sunday I played in the Swiss Teams, A/X strat. That's OK as an experience-gathering thing, but not necessarily a good strategy for winning points. We won 3 of our first 4 matches (a definite mis-step in a Swiss) and then lost the rest. So that was a red point or something. The only other entry was for a bracketed round-robin teams today (Wednesday). This was me and Agent 99, teamed with Elwood and one of his other partners (actually, one of the other directors at the Manhattan, and also a team-mate in the regional teams where I partner Elwood). That made for a relatively small master-point total for the team, so we were in bracket 5. This, then, was the one event I was relying on to win that elusive fraction.

After 2 matches we were first in the bracket. After 3, we slipped to a tie for second, but after 4 matches we were back in first. After 5, first. After 6, first. Going into the seventh and last match, we were only 2 VPs ahead of second place, but 9 VPs ahead of third, and about 15 VPs ahead of several other teams that were arguing about 4th, 5th, etc. And we were playing the third place team, so any sort of win would guarantee at least second place. Even losing 14-6 would preserve second, they would have to beat us 15-5 or worse to overtake us. So what happened? Disaster, of course.

After playing really quite well all day, and with her trademark aggressive bidding winning several swings, Agent 99 fell from grace on the last two boards, flooring two game contracts that were actually cold. Punishment was merciless: both games were bid and made at the other table, turning what would have been a 6-14 VP loss into a 0-20 VP blitz, and jeopardizing any gold points by dropping us into third place. We were left biting nails as we waited for the result of the final match. Both teams were within striking distance, if one or the other could manage a heavy win: we were hoping for something close to a tie. The result was finally put up as 14-6 for somebody or other. That left them one VP behind us, so third place was in, and that was 6 gold points - a bit more than I needed, but then, there wasn't anything for fourth.

This hand came up in the fourth match. Bidding the grand was worth 13 IMPs when they stopped at 6S at the other table. We only won the match by 7 IMPs.

blah

I said Agent 99 is aggressive. At the other table, opener only raised to 3S, and responder was happy to settle for the small slam. When I saw the 4S raise, I said to myself that 7S must be on if we had all the keycards, and so it went. I received a trump lead, which made ruffing diamonds unattractive as a plan. So I decided to rely on trumps 3-2 and hearts 4-2, and that passed off smoothly.

edit: Actually, ruffing diamonds looks at least as good a plan, now that I'm not at the table. What can I say? At the time, I took a dislike to it.

2nd edit: And now that I can review the results on the GNYBA site, the team that finished just 1 VP behind us in 4th place was the opposing team for this slam (and all familiar faces from the Manhattan, too!).

New computer!

2009-12-16T21:52:00.000-08:00

Well it seems as if Santa is on the job. My new machine is here and working, but I still have a lot of work to do to sort out retrieving my data from the old machine, and there's a lot of software I had accumulated as well. Still and all, progress.

Still hanging

2009-12-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry to say I still don't have a new machine, so my computer access is still very limited. I have a new desktop on order from Dell, but I seem to be caught up in the Christmas rush - projected delivery is still more than two weeks away, which is frustrating. But there you go.

In the meantime, I'm trying to keep track of some interesting hands and stuff, so I can have an orgy of posting in January. And I will be playing in the winter Regional after Christmas, so there will be (hopefully good) news from there too.

May all your trump breaks be kind.

Technical difficulties

2009-11-24T17:24:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay posting. I am having technical difficulties - my PC turned into a brick. Plus it's been a very busy month, one way and another. So hang in there, and maybe Santa will bring me a new machine a bit early.

A long day

2009-11-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

OK, it's been a long day and I'm hitting the sauce, so this is just going to be a brief note. This afternoon I directed a 17-table game, which is not the biggest thing by any means, but it is the most awkward size for us movement-wise. At 18 tables, we split the thing into two comfortable 9-table sections and play 8 rounds at 3 boards a round, no problem. At 17 tables, you're stuck with 12 rounds at 2 boards a round, and keeping everybody moving at the right pace is like one of the labors of Hercules. In addition, all my house players got used up, and I had to play as well as direct, to avoid a half-table. Not everybody pays when they first arrive, so that means when you are dummy, you are running around collecting money, setting up the game in the computer, and trying to keep an eye on how the movement is going. And every so often there's a director call too, just for variation. Basically, after a couple of hours of this torture, I was feeling like a one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest - really busy, not making much progress, and thoroughly kicked too.

At the end of the game, three-quarters of the tables finished more or less on time, the one I was at included (exactly on time for me). Not bad, especially since my scratch partner and me (who had never played more than a board or two together before and didn't discuss system at all) scored 66% and won East-West. Hoo-yah.

Then this evening, I was still working, this time on supervised play. But somehow Agent 99 managed to forget that I had cancelled our play-date, and showed up expecting to play with me. Instead, she got... Well, let me put it this way. Do you know those cartoons with a funny little old guy who kind of resembles a turtle, often depicted driving in such a way that his hands are higher than his head on the steering wheel, and he is peering through the wheel trying to see where he is going? OK, this guy became her partner since I wasn't available (that'll teach her, I thought). Wouldn't you know it, with one round to go they were almost a top clear East-West. Sad to say, they had a disastrous last round, and finished third. But I was still mightily impressed. I'm going to have to give her a raise.

Hand Evaluation

2009-11-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing more teaching lately, primarily of beginners, but also some intermediates. That has brought the topic of hand evaluation higher into my awareness.

How do you evaluate your hand? Do you use the Work point-count? Do you adjust your point-count for distribution, or maybe use a different count, like Zar Points? Or maybe you follow the Losing Trick Count? Are you a devotee of The Law in competitive situations, or do you keep adjusting whatever measure you started with?

There’s a plethora (love that word) of methods out there. We start the beginners with a simple 4-3-2-1 point-count, but soon enough they start asking about other things. We can’t help but introduce “adjustments” for long suits or short suits almost immediately, because the truth of the matter is that the 4-3-2-1 count just doesn’t work very well. And once that cat’s out of the bag, we’re left wondering what’s the best method to tell people to use.

Part of my problem is that I’m not entirely sure how I evaluate my hands when I play for real. I do count points, and for balanced hands I pretty much let myself be guided by the count. But when distribution starts to be a factor – like, most of the time – I tend to bid pretty much what I feel like. Now, my feelings tend to be pretty good and consistent, based, I suppose, on my past experience and study. But I’m a bit at a loss to explain how I arrive at the bids I make.

Many years ago, I discovered the Losing Trick Count, chiefly through the writings of Harrison-Gray. I immediately became a convert, and I still think it’s the best practical method for evaluating distributional deals. What sold me the most, of course, is that it seems to provide me with a justification for bidding what I wanted to bid anyway, most of the time. How can I not like a method that agrees with me? But also, the factors that the LTC inherently takes into account make logical sense to me. When you look at the cards covering losers, you are automatically weighting controls and whether the high cards are in your long suits. (Other methods, such as Zar Points, take account of some of this stuff, but the calculations aren’t quite so easy to do, and the results aren’t quite so easy to evaluate either). Once you have found a trump fit with partner, you can start adding your losers together and making adjustments for extra trumps, and there is a logical basis for using these calculations to decide how high to bid. Devotees of The Law also have an easy calculation, but as has been pointed out in detail by Lawrence and Wirgren, they have no reason to think that the answer they come up with is any use. Those authors have come up with their own method of evaluation, and I think it is probably very accurate when you can see both hands. But it isn’t clear to me how to apply their methods easily in the practical situation of looking just at your own hand, so I still favor the Losing Trick Count.

I guess my bottom line is that I go with Work point-count for balanced hands, the Losing Trick Count for distributional hands, and a mystical combination of the two when we’re in the usual murky situation. Oh well.

I didn’t want to weigh this entry down with detailed descriptions of the individual methods, but lots of information is available on the net. Here are some references: I’m not endorsing any of these sites or descriptions as being especially good, but if you want to look up a particular method, here are some places to start.

The Losing Trick Count

http://www.bridgehands.com/L/Losing_Trick_Count.htm

Zar Points

http://www.bridgeguys.com/pdf/ZarPoints2003BOOK.pdf

The Law

http://www.pattayabridge.com/conventions/law-total-tricks.htm

Discussing the Law

http://www.newbridgelaw.com/

Misadventures In Manhattan

2009-10-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

I don’t know that this entry is going to be very educational, but here are some of this week’s oddities from my games at the MBC.

On a fairly boring board, I got into an argument with an opponent who is also a director. At some point in the middle of the hand, dummy asked to see a defender’s card (that had just been turned over). “No you can’t”, says the other defender. “You’re the dummy: you can’t interrupt the play at all.” Well, “yes he can”, says I, “he has the right to see the cards played”. And back and forth we went. Anyway, it was all a theoretical barney, not an actual argument argument. But there are conflicting requirements in the Laws. Dummy has the absolute right to follow the play and keep track of tricks won and lost. In order that he be able to do that, the defenders must play their cards in such a way that he can see them, which I think means that he does have the right to ask when a defender turns his card over too quickly. But on the other hand, dummy can’t draw declarer’s attention to a particular card or trick: he really is not allowed to interfere in the play at all. So we were both right, which is a bit confusing. I think the bottom line is that while dummy has that right, he must be very careful about exercising it, in case he gets accused of coaching declarer. Not an issue in this case, but I can see how it could be for some pairs.

The next hand, I picked up
♠5 ♥KT9632 ♦6 ♣KQJ32
and still being a little hot under the collar, I went a bit Australian on him and opened 3♥. Passed out and just made, for close to a top. I don’t remember opening a three-bid on a hand like that before, but with the vulnerability against us (we were, they weren’t) it worked well at stifling the competition. As it happened, even though partner didn’t have much, it was a part-score hand. We can make 3♣ or 3♥, they can make 3♦ or 2NT. But even if they go to 3NT or 4♦, they score better than letting us make 3♥. By contrast, the evening before, I played with Agent 99 and the following hand came up.

blah

I swear to god, a 12-card trump fit and we go two down because they get a ruff. But it was pretty much a top, of course, because they forgot to double or bid on. South thought for a while before passing. Double isn’t totally ridiculous, and would actually have collected a lot of matchpoints (a tad undeservedly) because there were an awful lot of 480s on the traveler. On the other hand, North didn’t think much before passing directly over 5♦: he seems to have very much under-estimated the offensive power of his 6-5 distribution. The combination of his suits and South’s controls makes 6♠ a snap. We left the table as South started in on North’s choice of opening. The commentary was quite sotto voce and calculated, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of it. Agent 99 remarked that they must be married.

When it comes to bidding over the opponent’s 1NT, I’m definitely a convert to the view that a lot of people don’t do it enough. But there has to be some discretion exercised.

blah

Partner minimized the defence, but we still managed to get them down three for a top. I don’t like the 2♦ call (diamonds plus a major), because there are too many HCP in the short suits. 5-4 distribution and 10-11 HCP is OK, but you want the high cards for offence, not defence. On the other hand, the 4♦ call strikes me as just suicidal. If you want partner to overcall on these sorts of deals, you have to not hang him when he does.

Sectional in the clubs

2009-10-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve not been playing much the last few weeks, but on Sunday we reunited our regional team to play in a sectional Swiss Teams – apparently, one of us needed some silver points. We still qualify for the B stratum, so we played at Honors bridge club in the B/C event. It’s a nice venue – Honors and the Manhattan are just about tied for being the best clubs in NYC. (For this sectional, MBC was hosting all the 299er events).

We got off to a rocky start. First, I overslept, and in a mad panic blew my entry fee cash on a cab to get there with less than five minutes to spare. (The alarm clock didn’t go off, or I shut it off in my sleep, or something). Then the tone of the first match was set by the very first board.

blah

The ♥K was led, and this seemed like a very reasonable contract when the dummy came down. If spades are 2-2, the ruffing diamond finesse disposes of the heart loser even when the ♦K is offside. If spades are 3-1, I need the ruffing finesse to win, with enough of even breaks so that I can ruff one club loser while ditching the other two losers on diamonds. Not much to ask - I’d say the chances are somewhere up towards 70%. There are other lines, but I’d say that two trumps and the ruffing finesse must easily be best. Of course, ♠Qxx was offside and the ruffing finesse lost, so I finished up three down.

It turned out our West had opened a weak two on a five-card heart suit, and got caught for 800. If the slam makes, that’s a useful swing to us, but instead of +180 the swing was -950. We bid a couple of close games that went down when critical finesses lost, our teammates mis-defended a game, and when the smoke cleared, we had been blitzed 0-20 VPs – not an auspicious start. But it’s often a good way to start a Swiss, or so I’ve been told, and our next few matches took us to the top of the leader-board (17-3, 18-2, 18-2, 19-1).

The fifth match looked like a win all the way at our table. The opposing pair were snapping at each other when they sat down. Then on the first board, in what seemed like a safe part-score, at trick 12 declarer held the last trump and a winner in hand. He led a loser from dummy, and dropped the side-suit winner on it. Then he showed the last trump, and tried to claim. Elwood pointed out that the 12^th trick wasn’t his, and that was one down. I’ve seen (and committed) pulling the wrong card, of course, but rarely at trick 12. It turned out they were booked for a swing against anyway, since our teammates made game, but naturally dummy was not pleased by this result. The second board looked something like this:

blah

At IMPs, you’re going to push for games, and so you’re going to get into these messes. Legitimately, you only make if spades are 2-2, but the way the cards had been running all afternoon, I would have put money on a 3-1 break. I won the opening diamond lead with the king in dummy, and ran the ♠7 to West. He tried a heart, and I captured the ♥J with the ♥K, and played another spade. East won this one as West discarded. Now East dithered a little before returning – a diamond. So I finessed the ♥9 and ditched both clubs before East could ruff in. East was really venomous by now. “I knew I shouldn’t return your suit, it’s always wrong when I do” was just the start, and by the time the third board started, they basically weren’t speaking to each other any more. The 19-1 result wasn’t a surprise.

The sixth match was against the second place team, only two VPs behind us. There were swings in both directions, roughly canceling out. But in the end, we eked out a 2 IMP victory, 11-9 in VPs. And so in the last match, still only leading by 4 VPs, we needed to win fairly convincingly. Fortunately, the opponents at our table were not having a good match, and our teammates didn’t cut their teammates any slack either. So 30-0 in IMPs translated to a 20-0 VP blitz, and our first place was assured.

Opening 2NT And Responses

2009-10-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

The opening bid of 2NT sits in the twilight zone between ordinary opening bids and forcing strong openings. It has a reputation for being a “slam-killer”, in that it can be difficult to identify slam potential when the optimal contract depends upon fit. Responder knows that opener has a big hand, but 21 hcp or so can have more than one weakness, especially in a balanced hand, so he can’t go hog-wild. And there is very little room for investigation before you find yourself past game and heading into dangerous territory.

An additional complicating factor is that the distributional requirements for the 2NT opening tend to be somewhat lax. These days, the 1NT opening gets used on semi-balanced hands or maybe even with a singleton, and that sort of thing would have been heresy 30 or 40 years ago (and still is frowned upon in some quarters). But even back then, it was routine to bend the “balanced hand” rules for the 2NT opening, because the grey area between opening 1suit and opening 2C needs the help in Standard American and similar systems. (For a while, one of the cornerstone advantages of Acol as a system was its intermediate 2-bids, because they specifically addressed this region of hand-strength. But as people were seduced by weak 2-bids, that advantage was surrendered by many Acol players.) So whatever responding scheme you choose, you have to be aware that both opener and responder may not exactly be balanced.

Nevertheless, the usual responses are similar to those used over the 1NT opening. Stayman, transfers, and think of something to do with the 3S response and some way to handle minor-suit responding hands. Puppet Stayman addresses the possibility that opener has a 5-card major suit, as well as making the stronger hand declarer, so that sees quite a lot of use over 2NT. I play it with Elwood, but not with Agent 99. To be honest, I’m not as thrilled with it as I might be. I just can’t recall any hand I’ve played where we finished up in the wrong contract and I said to myself “if only we’d been playing Puppet…”. The last time I opened 2NT with a 5-card spade suit, playing with Agent 99, she answered 3H (transfer)! I bid 4S, just to make sure we got there, and we played quietly in game like everybody else. There is a memory-burden attached to Puppet, not a large one, but still, it was something that Agent 99 didn’t want to add to her repertoire when we were starting out, so we play just regular 4-card Stayman.

There are other possible approaches. I came across an old scheme of Jeremy Flint the other day. After 2NT – 3C; opener rebids:

3D = no major OR flat major OR 4-4 with diamonds

3H = hearts and clubs

3S = spades and clubs

3NT = 3334 or 3325

4C = majors, minimum

4D = majors, good controls (7+)

4H = majors, maximum points, <7>

Notice that all bids from 3H to 3NT show C, and all bids over 3NT show both majors. 3D is basically natural.

2NT – 3C – 3D – 3H (natural)

3S = 4333, 4243, 4342

3NT = no major

4C = H and D **

4H = 3433

2NT – 3C – 3D – 3S (natural)

4C = S and D **

** Note that the 4C bid shows support and D, allowing partner to bid 4D control ask (4H=5).

2NT – 3C – 3D - 3NT = 54xx.

This is kind of interesting. The opening has limited opener’s high-card strength, and the 3C inquiry seeks elucidation of his distribution. Although it looks a bit intimidating at first glance, a lot of the bidding is actually pretty natural, and the provision of control counts or inquiries for slam investigation is quite economical. The biggest weakness I see straight off is that it doesn’t seem to take account of off-shape openers, not even a 5-card major. So I don’t think anybody will be taking this up these days.

On the other hand, the other part of Flint’s responding scheme uses the 3S response to account for various minor-suit hands. Opener has to make the puppet bid of 3NT, and then responder has

4C/D = invitational

4H = xx45

4S = xx54

4NT = good 5-5 minors.

In the original, 2NT – 3NT showed a moderate hand 5-5 in the minors, so to simply raise to 3NT you would make the 3S response, and then pass the forced 3NT rebid. This multi-purpose 3S response is still used today in some circles. At the Manhattan, the version that is sometimes taught has 2NT – 3NT as natural. The 3S response followed by 4NT shows 5-5 in the minors but is non-forcing, and 3S followed by 5C is 5-5 minors forcing to slam. Depending on who is doing the teaching, the 4C and 4D bids may be natural or may indicate the opposite minor (that is, 4C shows diamonds and 4D shows clubs). The advantage of leaving the bids as natural is that it’s one less thing to remember, and opener may be able to use Redwood or something conveniently. The idea of not bidding your suit is, of course, to allow the strong hand to be declarer. This whole thing isn’t that great, but it provides a relatively simple “one-stop shopping” solution for various hands, so it’s definitely better than nothing.

In his columns written for OKBridge, Marc Smith advocated using 3S as Minor Suit Stayman. In conjunction with this, he suggested 4C/4D as Texas transfers (for H/S, respectively), thus freeing the 4H and 4S responses to show single-suited hands with clubs and diamonds, respectively. I haven’t tried that arrangement, but if he suggests it, it must be somewhat playable.

To be honest, the best solution for the 2NT opening may be to stop using it. In ACBL territory, one of the best uses of the 2D opening may be to replace the 2NT opening. The Mexican 2D is a known convention, originally part of the Romex system. This opening shows a big balanced hand, usually 18-19 hcp, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t make that 20-21 or 21-22, or whatever your usual 2NT range is. The extra couple of bids available to responder may not seem like much gain, at first glance, but if you check out Martin Johnson’s ideas at Bobby Knows Bridge (http://www.freewebs.com/bobbybridge/), you can see how to use (in effect) four-suit transfer responses. You actually gain quite a lot of flexibility, responder being able to stop in lower part-scores when he has a bust, and also able to show more below 3NT when he has some distribution. It seems to me that the 2D opening looks much better than 2NT.

So then what do you do with the 2NT opening? Well, Alder pre-empts look good, but the ACBL would have the vapors. Transfer pre-empts are relatively innocuous, but even they are listed as a mid-chart convention. Or you could just go with 2NT showing a minor two-suiter – that actually made it to the General Convention Chart.

lebensohl over 1NT

2009-09-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe I haven’t yet posted anything about lebensohl. I have a very ambivalent, or at least confused, attitude to this convention. You really have to play it or something equivalent: just relying on natural bidding and common sense doesn’t work well enough in these situations. In principle, the convention is simple and should be easy to use. And yet, when it comes to actually using it at the table, I find that it drives the new user crazy (speaking both as a once-new user myself, and as a teacher who has had the dubious pleasure of trying to teach this thing). Perhaps the real difficulty is that while the problem situations occur often enough for you to need the convention, they don’t occur often enough for you to become comfortable with the different sequences just in at-the-table play. Some dedicated practice with customized deals is in order. Anyway, here is a quick overview.

When the opponents interfere over 1NT, responder may have difficulty describing his hand. Given that he has a suit worth mentioning, there are at least three levels of strength that he may hold: weak, invitational, and strong. And generally, he only has two bids available below 3NT, mentioning his suit at the two-level or jumping to the three-level. The lebensohl convention is a way to give him more flexibility.

The basic idea is that after a 2-level overcall, a natural bid of 2NT is very unlikely to be required. Using lebensohl, a bid of 2NT by responder is a relay, requiring opener to bid 3C. Then if responder passes (showing clubs) or bids a new suit at the 3 level, the bid is competitive or invitational. If the responder could have mentioned his suit at the two level, his three-level bid after the relay is invitational. If responder didn’t have a chance to bid his suit at the two-level, his bid after lebensohl is just competing, and opener is expected to pass. Conversely, if responder doesn’t go through the relay but bids a new suit at the 3 level directly over the overcall, that is strong and forcing. And if responder can get his suit in at the 2-level over the overcall, that is just weak.

So for example, if the bidding goes:

1NT – (2H) – 2S that is natural and weak, just competing

1NT – (2H) – 3S that is natural and strong, responder wants to be in game

1NT – (2H) – 2NT! – (Pass) – 3C! – (Pass) – 3S that is not forcing, invitational

1NT – (2H) – 3D that is forcing with at least invitational strength

1NT – (2H) – 2NT! – (Pass) – 3C! – (Pass) – 3D that is just competing

So far, so good, but there’s more. Another common convention, without a name that I know, is that responder can cue-bid to indicate game-going values and four cards in one or both majors (a way to make up for Stayman being lost). For example:

1NT – (2H) – 3H! means I’m strong enough for game, and have four spades
1NT – (2H) – 3NT means I want to be in game and I don’t have spades

The lebensohl relay can also be used in both these sequences, and the usual meaning attached is related to whether or not responder has a stopper in the enemy suit. The two possible methods are generally referred to as “fast denies” and “slow denies”. If you play “slow denies”, then the above mentioned two sequences also show a stopper in the enemy suit, hearts in the examples above. Going through the relay denies having a stopper in the enemy suit. So

1NT – (2H) – 2NT! – (Pass) – 3C! – (Pass) – 3H game-forcing with four spades, but no heart stopper
1NT – (2H) – 2NT! – (Pass) – 3C! – (Pass) – 3NT game-forcing without either spades or a heart stopper

If you play “fast denies”, the meanings are reversed: jumping to 3NT immediately over intervention actually denies having a stopper in the enemy suit. (Opener therefore has to stay awake and bid something if he too lacks a stopper). There may be an advantage to playing “fast denies” if the opposition wants to keep bidding. The immediate jumps tend to shut out advancer, and the times when responder doesn’t have a stopper are perhaps more likely to be the times you really want to do that. So, while it would seem that “slow denies” has the edge in naturalness (if there is such a word), in practice, almost everyone plays fast denies. Just for the hell of it, with Agent 99 I play “slow denies”, and so far we haven’t had any problem.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2009-09-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

Some random hands from the MBC.

blah

West and East were a teacher and one of her students (not a beginner). My partner was one of my regular partners, but he’s not doing so well these days and this was near the end of the evening. So for multiple reasons (not least of which was I fancied our chances of making), I decided to pull his penalty double.

West was keeping a pretty good poker face and not meeting my eyes when the dummy came down. My assessment was that she thought they were in the running East-West, and she had liked the progress of the auction. Even more, she still expected to beat the contract when I ruffed the opening lead of ♠A.

The bad news is that I have no way to avoid losing the other two aces I’m missing, so I really have to pick up the trumps for just one loser. For a vulnerable jump overcall, I’m inclined to credit East with more than just ♠QJxxxx(x), so give her an ace. I’m sure that means West thinks she has two trump tricks. So, does she have four trumps, or only three? Do you feel lucky?

Like the wuss that I am, I led to the ♦10, and East showed out. If I had run the ♦6, West wasn’t going to be happy. And even worse, she had doubled 5♣ only to panic us into 5♦, and was feeling very pleased with herself that it “worked”! Small details like us preferring to play in the 9-card fit rather than the 7-card fit, and me having a chance to make the contract, seemed to pass her by. Still, the result was dead average, one way or another.

Rats.

blah

A few posts back I said something about big balanced responding hands being difficult to deal with. This one came up for the opponents.

blah

With the friendly diamond lie, 7♦, 7♠ and 7NT all make. But even with average distributions, you want to be in 6♠. With standard American treatments, it’s not as easy as it looks, and only about half the field got past 4♠. The Jacoby 2NT response usually shows 4-card support, and if you can’t use that, then a sensible auction gets much harder. I think there’s a case for using Jacoby with 3-card support when your hand is so strong.

Here’s another slam hand that’s a little awkward, but I applied my usual solution – just punt.

blah

The ♠A got ruffed on the opening lead, and I wondered what to do next. I decided that the best chance was to hope for trumps 2-1, when I could play to get rid of dummy’s spade losers by ruffing two and throwing two away. So I laid down the ♣A, and the ♣K fell on my right. That made it pretty safe to ruff a diamond, and when both opponents followed suit, I was claiming thirteen tricks.

This would have been a good hand for the special negative 2NT response I’ve described before. I would still be punting the slam, but it would be a much better informed punt.

1NT Forcing and Bart

2009-09-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

If you play 5-card majors, it is best to play the response of 1NT as forcing for one round. While this prevents you from playing in that most admirable contract, it provides an extra round of bidding to find an accurate part-score. While most people manage without too much further elaboration, there is a case for an additional layer of artificiality. For one thing, opener’s “natural” rebids of 2C and 2D can only promise a 3-card suit at best. And after 1H – 1NT opener may be forced to bid 2C on a doubleton in a 4=5=2=2 hand that isn’t strong enough to reverse. Also, responder’s hand may be balanced and weak to invitational in strength, or it may be unbalanced, and range from weak to just under the strength needed for a 2 over 1 response (and if you play 2/1 GF, “just under” is really not a bad hand). After 1S – 1NT or 1H – 1NT, opener will make a jump rebid with a maximum opening, generally 18+hcp. There is therefore a potential problem when opener is 15-17hcp and/or responder is near his maximum, say 9-11hcp - game needs to be considered in these cases. And yet another situation arises after 1S – 1NT when responder has a 5-card heart suit and a doubleton spade – it can be difficult or impossible to identify the best part-score (two hearts or two spades).

There is more than one way to address some of these issues. Perhaps one of the simpler ideas is a convention called Bart that addresses sequences after 1S – 1NT; 2C. (The situation after 1H – 1NT isn’t quite so bad, but while a similar treatment can be applied, there are differences, and I’ll stick with the spade opening for this description). There’s more than one version of Bart floating around as well, but this version seems fairly straightforward to me.

First, the agreement can be made that opener’s 2H and 2D rebids promise at least 4 cards. The 2C rebid is then redefined as not meeting the requirements for any other bid, making it alertable as not really natural any more. Second, bidding following opener’s 2C rebid is elaborated by making responder’s 2D at this point an artificial relay (also alertable).

We need to consider how opener will bid, and also what hands responder is trying to show. First, opener’s first rebid:

1S – 1NT;

2S shows 6+cards, 11-16hcp
3S shows 6+cards, 17-18hcp
4S shows 6+cards, 19-20hcp
2NT shows 18-19hcp
3C/3D/3H are natural, 4+cards, 18+hcp, forcing
2D/2H are natural, 4+cards, 11-17hcp
2C catches everything else, generally either clubs or a balanced hand in the 11-17hcp range

Now consider responder’s hand. Generally, the 1NT response is made on hands that are balanced, or that are unbalanced but not strong enough for an immediate 2 over 1 response. The 2D relay will be used for:

Balanced 10-12hcp including 4-card club support
Strong (9-11hcp) with clubs
Strong (9-11hcp) with diamonds
3-card limit raise that includes 4-card club support
hands with 5 hearts and 2 spades

Direct bids (not using the relay) will then show

Balanced 10-12hcp without 4-card club support
Weak (5-8hcp) with clubs
Weak (5-8hcp) with diamonds
3-card limit raise without 4-card club support

(The exclamation is used to indicate a bid that should be alerted).

After 1S – 1NT; 2C! responder bids

Pass – obviously weak, should be 5+clubs and at most 1 spade
2D! – artificial and forcing, generally 9+hcp but can be weak with 5 hearts and 2 spades
2H – natural, weak, 6+cards, opener should not return to spades
2S – natural, weak, usually a doubleton
2NT – natural, invitational 10-12hcp, denies 4 clubs or 3 spades
3C – natural, 5-8hcp, 5+cards, principally a courtesy raise to shut out the opponents
3D – natural, 5-8hcp, to play. Weak diamond hands have to play in 3D rather than 2D, the only serious drawback to the convention.
3S – limit raise with 3-card spade support, denies 4 clubs
3NT – natural, 13-15hcp, denies 4 clubs or 3 spades

After 1S – 1NT; 2C! – 2D! opener defines his hand a little more:

3H – 3-card hearts, 15-17hcp
2NT – natural, 15-17hcp, less than 3 hearts
2S – 11-15hcp, less than 3 hearts
2H – 11-15hcp, 3-card hearts

If opener has bid 2NT or 3H, responder should be able to place the contract. Otherwise, responder completes his description:

After 1S – 1NT; 2C! – 2D!; 2H

Pass – natural, 5-card hearts
2S – usually a doubleton honor with 8-10hcp
2NT – natural 10-12hcp, but with 4-card club support
3C – good club raise, 9-11hcp
3D – invitational with good diamonds, 9-11hcp, 6+cards
3H – invitational, 8-11hcp, 5+cards
3S – limit raise with 3-card spades and 4-card clubs
3NT – natural, 13-15hcp, includes 4-card club support
4H – natural, distributional

and after that, opener should know where to go.

Laid out like this, it all looks rather intimidating. But actually, it’s quite straightforward and pretty natural, just difficult to describe concisely.

Bermuda Bowl

2009-09-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

Well it's all over. Congratulations to USA2, China, and England.

I have to say I was surprised by both the Venice Cup and the Senior Bowl. I really did expect the French and German women to do better, and the English seniors barely squeaked into the competition (they actually were out on a tie-breaker, always a miserable state of affairs, but got in when the Netherlands withdrew). That's not to say that the winners are unworthy, far from it. The Chinese women (and the men in the Bermuda Bowl too, for that matter) were consistently strong and dangerous, and took the final by the scruff of the neck. The English seniors climbed rapidly to the top of the round robin ladder and stayed there, and showed true quality in the final when Poland jumped out to an early lead. Very well done by all.

I read somewhere that Bobby Wolff's assessment of the Bermuda Bowl knock-out was that the best eight teams had qualified, and that there wasn't a weak player to be found anywhere. I often don't agree with him, but in this case I think he was exactly right. It would be easy to glance at the final result and assume that Italy and the USA are just streets better than anybody else. But if you watched some of the competition, you would know that it's much closer than in some prior years. All eight of the teams in the knock-out were very strong indeed, and if Italy and the USA are the strongest, it's not by very much of a margin.

Bermuda Bowl

2009-09-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

OK, time for the finals. My picks for the knock-out stages didn't pan out too well (not a surprise, really). But I did name the Open finalists (Italy - USA2) like most people. I did pick Poland to win the Senior Bowl, although I didn't think they'd be playing against England - go team! And I was kind of close for the women - I picked USA1 and China as the losing semi-finalists, but instead they both made it to the final. Oh well.

Bermuda Bowl

2009-09-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Two matches left in the round robin, and eleven teams are fighting for eight spots in the knock-out phase. Japan is one of my original picks, and they are currently 11th, with a lot of work to do, but I'll be cheering them on. Unfortunately, if they get in, they'll be supplanting some other one of my picks (China or Germany or the Netherlands), so I can't win.

England still way ahead in the Senior Bowl. I watched a little of them the other day, and wasn't greatly impressed. But obviously when I'm not looking, they're doing very well. So I better continue to not look.

Oddments

2009-09-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

The odd and interesting moments in my games seem to happen most often when I’m playing with Elwood, these days. Here are a few samples (nothing very deep).

Nobody vulnerable, the bidding goes
Pass Pass 1H Pass
2H 3S 3NT Pass
Pass Dble Pass Pass
Pass
Sitting in fourth seat, I couldn’t imagine what sort of hand Elwood could have that would pass in second seat and then come to life so violently. Did he find a couple of spades mixed in with his clubs? But I had a couple of spades and AJTxxx of clubs, maybe another Q or something somewhere, so there was nothing to do except sit for it and lead a spade. Declarer wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he managed nine tricks without any real trouble, and Elwood said I was really thin for my double. “You doubled, not me” I said. “No, your takeout double” he said, and the light dawned, at least a little bit. Pass is bright green, and the Double card is bright red, and Elwood is not color-blind. But somehow he hallucinated a takeout double on the first round, and the illusion persisted through the auction, even though I’m pretty neat about how I put my bids out on the table and there were two or three pregnant pauses as almost everyone (three out of four people, anyway) wondered what was going on with these unusual bids. We still have no explanation.

The other week, the Welland team visited the MBC for an evening pairs game (change of pace?). Christal Henner and Uday Ivatury sat N-S, and for the second of our two boards against them, I picked up as dealer:

♠ K
♥ 9 5
♦ 7 6 5
♣ A K Q 10 5 3 2

Both sides were vulnerable. I decided that against that pair, a very sound 3♣ pre-empt was in order. Passed out and down one, slightly above average since several pairs reached game in a major their way (both make). But I wonder how I would have bid the hand against a pair of palookas?

In case you were wondering, Andrew Stark and Franco Baseggio sat E-W, and won quite convincingly with a 72% score. Elwood and I were their nearest competition, second on 65%.

We continue to have a love-hate relationship with the weak no-trump. Both of us like the bid, but the bid seems to hate us: we continually run into penalty situations with it when we play together, although we don’t when we play with other people. But we’re fighting back:

♠ A 5 ♠ Q J 9 8
♥ J 4 3 [ ] ♥ K Q 8
♦ 10 6 3 ♦ J 8 7 2
♣ J 10 9 6 4    ♣ K 5

N E    S    W
1NT Pass Pass
Dble Pass Pass Pass

Elwood could have run to 2♣, but actually that would have been worse. As it was, South led the ♠7 to North’s ♠K, and the ♠3 came back to the ♠A. With three spade tricks visible and two hearts coming, I decided I needed a club and a diamond. So tricks three and four were a club – 4, 3, K, 2 – and a diamond – 2, 4, 6, 9. The full hand:

♠ K 10 4 3
♥ A 9 7 2
♦ A K 9
♣ A 3
♠ A 5 ♠ Q J 9 8
♥ J 4 3    [ ] ♥ K Q 8
♦ 10 6 3    ♦ J 8 7 2
♣ J 10 9 6 4 ♣ K 5
♠ 7 6 2
♥ 10 6 5
♦ Q 5 4
♣ Q 8 7 2

The reason why I’m reporting the hand is that (while I had no idea of it at the time) the two defenders have become completely disconnected by those two tricks. North could still have defeated me by switching to hearts, but she persisted with another spade, and that was seven tricks for me. It’s a classic case, really: the N-S assets would be much easier to handle if they were split more evenly. North is too good.

How about a hand where you push to slam with just two small trumps?

♠ K J 10 5 2 ♠ A 7
♥ A [ ] ♥ K 9 5 3
♦ 2 ♦ A K 8 5 3
♣ K Q J 4 3 2 ♣ 7 5

N    E    S    W
1♦ Pass 2♣
Pass 2♦ Pass 2♠
Pass 2NT Pass 3♠
Pass 4♣ Pass 4NT
Pass 6♣ All pass

The 2♣ response is forcing to game, so the 4♣ bid is Minorwood 1430, and 4NT showed two keycards plus the ♣Q. I was very nervous bidding the slam, though. I liked my controls, and didn’t think it could be right to settle for 3NT. But in clubs the ♥K might be vulnerable, and in no-trumps I might not have enough tricks. In the end, I decided that clubs would probably be safer (a spade ruff might be vital), so 6♣ was the bid.

In fact spades were 3-3 with the Q onside, and clubs broke 3-2, so twelve tricks were easy in three denominations. But we were actually the only pair to bid any slam.

Bermuda Bowl

2009-09-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt much like blogging lately, but I thought I would keep this thing alive by commenting on the World Championships. I don't rub elbows with very exalted company, in bridge circles, so I have no more information or insight than the average Joe Public bridge player. But I have enough experience and a varied enough background to make these international competitions fascinating for me to watch. I'm spending as much time as I can on VuGraph at BBO, and I find myself unable to stick with just one match at a time. I can't resist flitting across the three or four matches that seem the most interesting match-ups.

Before it started, I picked Italy to win over USA2, with the Netherlands and USA1 as the losing semi-finalists, and Germany, Japan, Norway and China losing in the quarter-finals. Those picks aren't looking too great at the moment. We're about two-thirds through the round-robin, and Japan, USA1 and Germany have a lot of work to do to make the quarter-finals. Instead, Bulgaria, Russia and Argentina are currently in the top eight in the standings.

It's amazing to me how good the teams are, generally. I don't get over-awed and fawn like some bloggers I could mention, but I appreciate that some pairs are a class above the average expert. And it seems to me that a lot of the teams are fielding two or three pairs that are genuinely that good. I mean, Chagas and his pals from Brazil are not what anyone would call deadwood in any competition, and they're currently languishing 18th out of 22 teams . I mean, holy shit, 18th? I've been reading the blogs of Sartaj Hans and Cathy Chua and one or two other people who generally are concerned with how Australia and New Zealand don't seem to be able to step up to the winning circle at these very top levels. I have to admit, looking through the results so far, it does indeed look as if the 22 teams are separating into the top 8 or 10, the next 8 or 10, and the bottom 3 or 4. And Australia and New Zealand seem to be firmly planted in the middle, and if you don't get into the knock-out, you're not going to win. But that doesn't mean they're all chumps, either. When you look, they're both ahead of Brazil - in fact, they're both ahead of USA1, which must be rattling some cages in ACBL-land. USA1 cleaned everybody's clock in the US Trials, and comprise some of the best players in America, and realistically they have no chance of making the knock-out at this point. That must hurt.

To look on the brighter side, I'll say that I don't think Fantunes or Meckwell have really turned it on yet, so my Italy-USA2 final still looks very possible to me and still looks like a cracking match. I'll also say that I've been very impressed by Norway. I knew they were good, of course, but they're actually missing a couple of their best pairs for this competition, and they still look capable of kicking pretty much anybody's ass. Boye Brogeland seems to be one of relatively few players in this round-robin who aren't afraid to pull out the red card when the opponents are getting out of line - good for him.

I haven't seen much of the women (Venice Cup) or the seniors (D'Orsi Senior Bowl). I watched a little of Sabine Auken and Daniela von Arnim a couple of days, and was distinctly under-whelmed. They seemed to be playing very much below their best. And I haven't really looked at the seniors at all. But I'll have to take a look now - England are currently at the top of the standings, and it would be distinctly unpatriotic to ignore them. Rule Britannia!

A lucky result

2009-08-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

A session with Elwood highlighted what I consider to be a problem area for our bidding (and for bidding with all my other partners too, for that matter). What do you do with a big balanced hand as responder?

E-W game, dlr E

   ♠ A K 6 3
   ♥ 10 8 6 4 2
   ♦ 9
♣ 6 5 3
♠ J 10 5 ♠ Q 9 4
♥ A Q 5 [ ] ♥ K 7
♦ Q 5 3 ♦ A K 10 6 4 2
♣ A K J 4 ♣ Q 9
♠ 8 7 2
♥ J 9 3
♦ J 8 7
♣ 10 8 7 2

E    S    W    N
1♦ pass 2♣ pass
2♦ pass 2NT pass
3NT all pass

The opening lead was a small heart, and I was quickly able to claim all thirteen tricks. That was a very good score, of course, with no slam making, but nobody at the table was happy. Elwood says I have to do more with my (West) hand, and I agree.

Since 2♣ is game forcing, I can aim for 6♦ and show my good diamond support at the three level, and cue bidding should take us safely to 5♦. That's a case of the operation being successful but the patient dying, because it doesn't score nearly as well as 3NT. The problem I see is that we almost certainly will have trouble identifying that we have a spade stopper, although the cue bids will highlight that we don’t have a control for slam. So finding an alternate resting place (say, 4NT) won’t be likely to happen.

Alternatively, I could push for 6NT, say by raising 3NT to 4NT as an invitation. The problem with that is Elwood’s hand is good for his bidding to that point. So we might well finish in a failing slam.

Maybe this hand is just a brute to deal with. But I think there is a real difficulty with very strong, balanced responding hands that don’t have an immediate fit with opener’s minor. We need to be able to identify stoppers, and fits, and also get into cue bidding when necessary. On some sequences we might be able to do all that, but a lot of the time I don’t think we’ll manage it.

Reverse Flannery Revisited

2009-08-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts ago, I had a fairly incoherent ramble about jump-shift responses, and I said I thought Reverse Flannery sounded like a fair-to-good idea. Well, Agent 99 and I are now playing it, but in a very abbreviated form. Essentially, 1minor - 2H shows 5 spades and 4 hearts, 6-8hcp. 1minor - 2S shows the same but with 9-11hcp. Neither bid is forcing, and opener is more or less expected to set the contract at his second bid. The only forcing rebid from opener would be 2NT, but we haven't yet defined how responder would reply to that, which sounds a bit odd - how can we play like that? - but the truth is, a detailed description of distribution is not entirely necessary, and the 3-point strength ranges are tight enough that narrowing the range seems a bit superfluous. I guess we'll go with something like:

3C - 5=4=1=3 or 5=4=0=4

3D - 5=4=3=1 or 5=4=4=0

3H - 5=5-2-1 or 5=5-3-0

3S - 6=4-2-1 or 6=4-3-0

3NT - 5=4=2=2

That should be easy enough to remember. And if the 2NT bid implies a fit with one or both majors, plus game interest, that should be the most critical information needed for picking the best game.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2009-08-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some random hands from the MBC.

Lionel has only come up a couple of times so far, but we’ve picked up matchpoints both times.

Love all, dlr S

♠ A K J 3
♥ K 8 4
♦ Q 7 4
♣ Q 6 3
♠ 6 ♠ 10 9 2
♥ J 5 3 [ ] ♥ A Q 10 9
♦ A 9 6 3 ♦ 10 2
♣ J 10 9 7 2 ♣ A K 8 5
♠ Q 8 7 5 4
♥ 7 6 2
♦ K J 8 5
♣ 4

S    W    N    E
Pass pass 1NT 2♣
2♠ 3♣ 3♠ pass
pass 4♣ all pass

I took both finesses and finished up with eleven tricks, for a top shared with just one other pair. Only one other pair played in clubs – all the other scores were N-S playing spades. You can argue that this owes more to Agent 99 pushing the bidding, rather than to Lionel, but knowing that I held hearts and clubs let her see that all her meager assets were working. All the chumps playing DONT and Cappelletti were not nearly so well placed.

I finally had a good session with Elwood (69%). There were some interesting hands.

N-S Game, dlr N

♠ A K J 9 4 3 2
♥ Q 7
♦ 6 3
♣ Q 2
♠ 10 6 ♠ 8 7 5
♥ A K 4 [ ]    ♥ 10 9 6 3 2
♦ K Q J 10 ♦ 7 5 4
♣ K J 9 8 ♣ 7 6
♠ Q
♥ J 8 6
♦ A 9 8 2
♣ A 10 5 4 3

N    E    S    W
1♠ pass 1NT Dble
3♠ pass 4♠ all pass

Elwood found the ♣7 opening lead, which declarer passed to my ♣K. I deciphered the club position correctly, and switched to the ♦K to remove dummy’s side entry while the clubs were still blocked, and declarer seemed to me (and to him) to be doomed to one down. That felt good, because if I play Elwood for a singleton, there’s a fair chance the contract will make. But what was more interesting was after the game: the computer analysis says that 4♠ makes against any defence. Eventually, I realized that declarer has to win the ♦A and cash all of the trumps, which crushes the West hand.

♠ -
♥ Q 7
♦ 6
♣ Q
♠ - ♠ -
♥ A K [ ]    ♥ 10 9 6
♦ Q ♦ 7
♣ J 9 ♣ -
♠ -
♥ J
♦ 9
♣ A 10

In the diagram, West still has to find another discard, and he hasn’t got one. If he throws a heart, the ♣Q is cashed, and he becomes a stepping stone to the ♣A – no other discard is any better. Fortunately, declarer wasn’t up to this, and truthfully, I don’t know if I would have found it either. Squeeze play springs to mind when you are one or two tricks away from your contract, but there’s something about having to lose two tricks after the squeeze card that makes this hard for me to see. I just didn’t recognize that the West hand would be in trouble with four or five tricks still to play.

Our one really bad board was me screwing up as declarer.

N-S game, dlr E

♠ A Q 10 6 2 ♠ K J 8 3
♥ A [ ]    ♥ 8 5 2
♦ 9 4 2 ♦ Q J 8 5
♣ A 9 7 5 ♣ 10 2

N E    S    W
Pass pass 1♠
Dble 3♠ pass 4♠
all pass

Elwood’s raise is pre-emptive, so really I should probably pass. But this was our ninth board, and I knew we were running hot – no scores yet below average, and several near-tops. I liked my controls, and I liked the look of the opponents (not too strong). The opening lead was the ♠9, and I saw that I had lucked into a fair dummy (Elwood is not especially shy about his pre-emptive raises).

This hand could be a topic for one of my lectures, because it’s all about planning. If you count your tricks, you can see five spades, one heart, one club. If you ruff two clubs in dummy, that will bring your total to nine – you will still need a diamond trick. North’s double places at least one diamond honor onside, so leading towards dummy will work, although you may need to do it twice. If spades are 2-2, you can probably manage all this, but if spades are 3-1, you are likely to run into trouble because you will have to use a trump or two for entry to your hand during the ruffing process. If you leave the diamond trick until the end, you will probably run out of trumps, and see them cash a side winner when they win the ♦A or ♦K. So you need to start the diamonds earlier, but then they may draw a third round of trumps for you, or they may be able to arrange a diamond ruff for themselves. So you probably are only making if the diamonds are 3-3, when there is no ruff for them and there are two diamond tricks for you if they hold you to one ruff. But in that case, you might as well just draw trumps yourself, and plan to make two diamond tricks if the trumps are 3-1. There are multiple chances for two diamond tricks, even if they break 4-2, because you have the ♦9.

Not difficult if you think about it the right way, but I didn’t. I played too quickly and went down one for a shared bottom. Making the contract, which only three pairs bid, would have been a shared top.

N-S game, dlr E

♠ 9
♥ Q J 9 4
♦ K 7 6
♣ K Q 8 4 3
♠ A Q 10 6 2    ♠ K J 8 3
♥ A    [ ]    ♥ 8 5 2
♦ 9 4 2 ♦ Q J 8 5
♣ A 9 7 5 ♣ 10 2
♠ 7 5 4
♥ K 10 7 6 3
♦ A 10 3
♣ J 6

N E    S    W
Pass pass 1♠
Dble 3♠ pass 4♠
all pass

Jump-shift responses

2009-07-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm at a bit of a down-spike at the moment. Real life is interfering with Agent 99's availability for playing bridge, and Elwood actually has a real job, so his availability is always limited. I don't care to fill my days with meaningless games as a house player or whatever, so the end result is I'm not playing so often myself. Bummer.

My usual pastime in this sort of situation is to trawl the internet for interesting bridge ideas. Sartaj Hans (The Imp Chimp) is looking for best practices to do with training, and related stuff. Having no great ideas myself, I'm waiting to see what everybody else comes up with, so I can steal it. Cathy Chua seems to be taking a few days off. So I'm reduced to either working on class notes to give to beginners, finding material for lectures to give near-beginners (which is way too much like work), or digging for the odd bidding convention that I might be able to persuade Agent 99 or Elwood to play.

An area that has some scope for Agent 99 and myself is the jump-shift response. We don't play 2/1 responses as game-forcing, so there is an argument for using strong jump-shift responses to identify certain strong hand types immediately and facilitate slam investigation. (I don't believe that the old-fashioned approach of using a jump-shift on any hand past a certain point-count is productive. If you are going to use them at all, restrict them to one of two sorts of hands: either a self-sufficient suit or a sort of fit-jump with good support for opener's suit. Which of the two it is gets clarified very quickly and you can proceed with the slam investigation without feeling the effects of the lost round of bidding.) But the truth is, neither of us is greatly enamored of strong jump-shifts, and so mostly we play pre-emptive.

After minor suit openings, we play inverted raises, where the simple raise is 10+hcp and the jump raise is 4-6hcp with 4+ (probably 5+) card support. The criss-cross raises (1D-3C and 1C-2D) are used for pre-emptive raises in the 7-9hcp range. This seems to be a slightly unusual use of the criss-cross raises - I made it up one day when I became dissatisfied with the wide (possibly) range of the pre-emptive raise. Since we play a weak no-trump, opener may be looking at a decent balanced hand (a strong no-trump opening), and he really would like to know if a pre-emptive raise is on the kamikaze edge or is maybe close to a forcing raise.

At the moment, all other jump-shift responses are simple pre-empts, showing 6+cards and 0-5hcp. (I don't believe in pre-empting partner unless my hand is really, really bad.)

An idea that might work is Reverse Flannery. After a minor suit opening, if responder has 5+cards in spades and 4+cards in hearts, he is not well placed for getting his distribution described accurately, especially when he is not too strong. Reverse Flannery uses the jump-shift responses of 2H and 2S to cover these hands, 2H being (say) 6-9hcp and 2S being 10-12 (or maybe just 10+) . 2NT can be used as a relay/distribution inquiry, similarly as in the original Flannery convention, if opener wants the details of what responder has. I have no experience with this, and I don't know anyone who plays it, but it sounds like a very reasonable idea, and a solution to a genuine (if not all that common) problem. Of course weak responding hands frequently cannot describe their distribution, but when they hold both majors, we should try and find a way for them to manage it. There are some details to be worked out before we try and play this. Maybe we should make the ranges 6-8 and 9-11, and make both bids non-forcing, on the grounds that if you're 12+hcp you'll manage anyway.

Adopting some version of that would take care of all the jump-shifts after minor-suit openings. There's still the question of what to do after major-suit openings. I can't believe simple pre-empts are such a great idea - I can't even remember ever bidding one, or hearing one from Agent 99.

At the moment, my plan is to talk her into using them as fit-jumps - essentially, limit raises with a decent side-suit. That's not too sexy, but I'm not interested in Bergen raises (or variations thereof) because I don't believe in the Law (I'm an LTC fan, myself). Elwood persuaded me that mini-splinters weren't a good idea in practice (although they have some attraction in theory). And I haven't come across any other particularly great ideas yet. Maybe strong jump-shifts by unpassed hands and fit-jumps by passed hands? That might work.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2009-07-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

The dealing machine engaged its slam option the other night. I was playing with an occasional partner who doesn’t manage bidding much more sophisticated than major suit transfers. He compensates by punting when we seem to be in the ballpark, so we had some notably short slam bidding sequences.

This one came up in the first round.

E-W Game, dlr E

♠ Q
♥ A 10 7 5 4
♦ 9 6 5
♣ Q J 8 7
♠ K J 10 9 7 2 ♠ A 8 6
♥ K 9 8 [ ] ♥ Q J 3
♦ K Q ♦ A 10 7 3
♣ K 9 ♣ A 6 3
♠ 5 4 3
♥ 6 2
♦ J 8 4 2
♣ 10 5 4 2

N E    S    W
1NT pass 4♣
pass 4NT pass 6NT
all pass

South tried a short-suit lead, so the ♥A appeared at trick one. I agonized over which high spade to cash, and eventually got it wrong by cashing the king (I was tricked by the opening lead, honest). Fortunately, North had the right singleton to make the slam cold, and we got a top because everybody else chose to play in spades for some reason.

This one came up for the opponents in the second round.

E-W Game, dlr N

   ♠ K 7 6 5
   ♥ A 6 5 4 2
♦ -
   ♣ A Q 7 6
♠ 8 4 3 ♠ J 9
♥ 9 8 7 [ ] ♥ Q 3
♦ A 8 5 4 ♦ K Q J 10 7 6 3
♣ J 4 2 ♣ 10 5
♠ A Q 10 2
♥ K J 10
   ♦ 9 2
♣ K 9 8 3

N E    S    W
1♥ 3♦ ?

I’m not sure how N-S should proceed. Our opponents made no real effort, and played quietly in 4♥, wrapping up 13 tricks in no time as declarer nonchalantly dropped my doubleton trump queen. We had some company, but that was below average as only one pair managed to bid a slam, any slam. Thirteen tricks are available in spades, hearts and clubs: bidding a small slam should be possible, surely. If South doubles, North cuebids 4♦, South shows heart support. Now North has to be interested in 6♠. He knows that there is a double fit, and he has first round control of the other suits. Maybe a jump to 5♠ would ask about the quality of the spade suit at this point (because North has already cuebid the enemy suit). South should have no worries on that score.

In the third round, it was our turn again.

E-W game, dlr S (rotated for convenience)

♠ A 9 4
♥ -
♦ A 9 7 6
♣ K Q J 7 5 3

[]

♠ K Q 8 2
♥ Q 7 2
♦ K Q 10 3 2
♣ 2

S    W    N    E
1♦ pass 2♣ pass
2♦ pass 6♦ all pass

The diamond rebid on a 5-card suit is a matter of personal style – I know some people would prefer 2NT, and 2/1 bidders might bid 2♠ (not showing extra strength, just shape). But using primitive bidding, 2♦ seems like the simplest and most honest bid to me, even without 6 cards. With all his controls, that was enough to push partner to slam. And with diamonds 2-2 and clubs 3-3, there were no obstacles to 12 tricks. Only one other pair bid this slam, and I’m not entirely sure why. It’s true that I only have an ace-less 12-count, but that hand’s an opening bid every day of the week. E-W might have spoken up in hearts, and that might have put some people off. But at the vulnerability, they wouldn’t go leaping about, and seeing a void in their suit ought to have interested North. So I don’t know.

This one came up on the last hand of the evening. The dealer had gone quiet for a couple of rounds, so as we pulled the cards from the board, partner said “OK Richard, let’s finish with another slam”.

Love all, dlr S (rotated for convenience)

♠ A J 7 6 2
♥ A K 7 4
♦ 10 3
♣ A J

[]

♠ K 8
♥ Q 9
♦ A K 8 7 6
♣ K 9 5 3

S W    N    E
1NT pass 6NT all pass

I nearly fell off my chair laughing when he made his bid. There was no hesitation at all. “Let’s have a slam”. Bang, 6NT.

As usual, he bid like this when my 15-17 1NT was at the 15 end of the range. But this time, we didn’t quite have a suit fit, although all the suits had some possibilities. West thought for a long time, and finally produced the ♥5 – 4, 10, Q.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that lead: it didn’t feel like a simple 4th-highest. But anyway, there are only 9 top tricks, and spades might supply all 3 extras if this was to be a really lucky hand. So the obvious plan was to test them first: ♠K, ♠8 to the ♠J, ♠A and East discards a small club. I cleared the spades, discarding two diamonds as East gave up a second club. Another long pause from West, and the ♦J eventually appeared – 3, 4, A. And I wondered how to proceed.

♠ 7
♥ A K 7
♦ 10
♣ A J

[]

♠ -
♥ 9
♦ K 8
♣ K 9 5 3

You need all 7 tricks, and you have 6 winners. Obviously the club finesse seems a fair bet, West having discarded a couple. But he’s good as well as tricky – could he have started with 5 clubs? You have good menaces in hearts and clubs, and a weak menace in diamonds. Maybe if you cross to the ♣A, cash the ♠7, come back to the ♣K, cash the top hearts. That would give you the right configuration for a double squeeze, assuming the long heart is to your left and the long club to your right.

But I really didn’t believe that was the situation. And if the squeeze wasn’t double, then I wasn’t confident that I knew what simple squeeze I could go for. So in the end, I decided that if I believed that the clubs were on my left, I should go with the simpleton line of the club finesse.

Love all, dlr S (rotated for convenience)

♠ A J 7 6 2
♥ A K 7 4
♦ 10 3
♣ A J
♠ Q 10 9 4 ♠ 5 3
♥ J 6 5 [] ♥ 10 8 3 2
♦ J 5    ♦ Q 9 4 2
♣ Q 10 7 6 ♣ 8 4 2
♠ K 8
♥ Q 9
♦ A K 8 7 6
♣ K 9 5 3

Actually, East would have been squeezed in the red suits if I cashed all the black suit winners. I probably should have figured it out, but it was the end of the evening and my brain was seizing up. The club finesse was right anyway, so 12 tricks rolled home and we got another top – nobody else bid this one.

Reverse Drury

2009-07-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

With Elwood I play 2/1, and Drury is one of his favorite conventions.

Systems that use sound first and second seat openings (particularly 2/1) often use light opening bids in third and fourth seat. It is not uncommon these days to see third seat openings on 8 counts, but usually a light opening is in the 10-12 HCP range. The expert style is to always open in a real suit in third seat if the hand is light, so four-card major openings are common. In responding to these light openings, you need to have a way of showing a near opener (good 9 to bad 12 HCP hand) with support for opener’s suit without going past the two level. The Drury response of 2C fills this need. In the original version of Drury, a rebid of 2D showed a minimum opening, other rebids showed a full opener (12+ HCP). Using Reverse Drury, opener rebids his suit to show a light opening (he may have to rebid a four card suit) or rebids 2D with a full opener, but perhaps only four cards in the suit opened. After the 2D rebid the responder may bid up to three of opener’s suit with four card support, after the rebid of the major he is asked to pass except with an exceptionally good passed hand.

Responses by a passed hand

After pass – 1S; ?
• 1NT - semi-forcing, up to 11-12 HCP. Opener passes if light or 5332 shape with 12-13 HCP
• 2D/H - not forcing, decent 5 card suits, 9-11 HCP. Deny three spades
• 2S - normal single raise, not constructive, limited to a bad 9 count
• 2NT - 4 card spade support and 9-11 HCP with a singleton somewhere. Opener relays to discover the singleton
• 3C - shows 6 clubs and about 10-11 HCP. The hand type is a flawed initial preempt (two side cards or bad suit are possibilities).
• 3D/H - a flower bid (4 card support for spades, decent 5 card side suit, near opener).
• 3S - this is preemptive, something like SJxxxx Hx Dxx CQxxxx

• 2C - any hand of 10-12 HCP with three plus spades, could be a good 9 count with 4 trumps and a ruffing value (Reverse Drury)

Responses after a 1H opening are essentially the same, except that with 4+ spades and only 3 hearts you should generally prefer a 1S response to a Drury response.

All 2C responses are Drury, even after intervention. For example,
Pass – (pass) – 1S – (1NT); 2C is Drury

Drury sequences: Pass – 1S; 2C - ?

• 2D - full opener, may be a suit also, but presumed to be a flattish 12-14 hand. Responder continues:
o 2H - natural, 5 card suit, usually only 3 spades, not forcing, suggests hearts as alternate trumps
o 2S - usual rebid, 3 or four spades, not forcing
o 2NT - natural, 11-12 HCP, only 3 spades
o 3S - strong game invite, 4+ good spades
o 3 bids - short suit game tries, singleton or small doubleton

• 2H - natural, does not guarantee a full opener, could be a light 55 hand for example
• 2S - a light opener, less than 12 HCP
• 2NT - 15-17 HCP with 5332 shape
• 3C/D/H/S - slam tries, new suits are natural
• 3NT - balanced 18-20
• 4x - short suit slam tries
• 4S - a common rebid, no slam interest but enough extra to play game.

Lionel

2009-07-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

I was somewhat upset when I realized that Multi-Landy is a Mid-Chart convention per the ACBL. And when I checked, they won’t let me and Agent 99 play it at the Manhattan (not in the afternoons, anyway – we might be able to get away with it in the evenings, because the usual evening crowd is more sophisticated). Apparently, the 2D overcall to show an unspecified major suit is more than the average little old lady should be able to defend herself against. I think that’s bullshit, but I think the blame lies with the ACBL, not the Manhattan. If the Multi 2D had been legal in the US for the last 40 years, neither it nor Multi-Landy would be raising any eyebrows anywhere in the US.

I want to use decent tools. If I have to follow ACBL strictures, fine, but we’re going with Lionel.

Double shows 11+hcp, a two- (or possibly three-) suited hand that includes 4 or 5 spades. The defined minimum is 4-4 in two suits, one of which is spades, but against a strong no-trump I think we should stick to at least 5-4 (although spades might be the 4-carder) or extra high cards. Against a weak no-trump, you can be as adventurous as you like. If responder passes, advancer with 11+hcp can (and probably should) pass also, converting the double for penalties. (This implies that overcaller shouldn’t shade his point-count, only the distribution.) If that doesn’t look attractive but he likes spades, advancer can bid spades at what seems like the best level, or can bid a new suit at the 3-level as a splinter raise of spades (game-try). If he doesn’t like spades, with a weakish hand he should bid his cheapest 4-card suit and we’ll try to find somewhere to play at a low level. With a really good hand, he can bid 2NT, suggesting “game somewhere”, and overcaller should show his second suit.

Overcalling 2C shows clubs and hearts, overcalling 2D shows diamonds and hearts, as mentioned above promising only 4+4+ cards but usually better. Neither overcall is forcing. A 2NT overcall is the Unusual No Trump, showing both minors 5+5+ cards. And that takes care of all the two-suited hands. All of those bids, including the double, need to be alerted, but they are all legal per the ACBL General Convention Chart.

And all the other overcalls are natural. 2H and 2S could be 5 cards against a weak no-trump, but will usually show a 6+card suit. Three-level overcalls would be natural and 6+cards.

The method doesn’t change with the strength of the opening 1NT. But the weaker 1NT is, the more aggressive the overcalls can be. I have the feeling that this could be much more destructive than Multi-Landy, but that’s the way the ACBL wants to play.

Splinters

2009-06-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

I think one of my lectures sometime soon is going to be about splinter bids. There are a number of the low-ranked players who show up for one or more of the 299er games who don’t seem to know anything about them (not especially surprising, since I’m sure splinters don’t feature in the beginner or intermediate classes). But some splinters should be simple enough for them to manage without too many disasters. I’m thinking those from paragraph 1 below, and maybe paragraph 2.

Splinter bids are bids that (by agreement) show shortness. There are a large number of possible bidding sequences where a splinter can usefully be defined. Some are commonly known and used, others are less common and typically only used by regular partnerships. In general, it pays to take a little time to define a fairly wide variety of splinters, and use them as often as possible, for a couple of reasons. First, the overhead cost is low: the bids defined to be splinters typically have no other particularly good meaning, and the memory-burden is generally small (for that reason). Second, the payoff can be quite large. Knowledge of a singleton or void in partner’s hand allows a much more focused assessment of your values, which can lead to games and slams on relatively low point-count when assets are working, and also to good stops when combined high point-counts are not fitting so well.

All splinters are alertable, whether or not most people play them.

1) The splinter bids that everyone knows are 4-level responses to a major-suit opening. For example, 1H – 4D! shows a game-raise of hearts that includes a singleton diamond. To give this better definition, we should note that this sort of raise is laying some groundwork for slam bidding, so the raise to game needs to be full-strength: 10+hcp, no more than 7 losers on the LTC, and including 4-card trump support. That doesn’t make it excessively strong, and with many hands, opener will merely return to game and that will be the end of the auction. But even with a near-minimum, opener may want to investigate if it looks like the hands fit well. The Losing Trick Count is a better guide, but a rule for high card points is that slam will usually be a good bet if you can count 27 points in the combined hands counting only the ace in the splinter suit, or with 24 points and no high cards in the splinter suit. (This rule guarantees that you will not be off two cashable aces or the ace and king of a suit.) The one sequence I always mention to a new partner is 1S – 4H. I like to play that as a splinter raise of spades, some people like to play it as natural. I can live with it either way (for one session), but I really hate playing 4H in a 3-1 “fit”.

2) A similar sort of splinter happens the other way round, in sequences that begin 1minor – 1major. For example, in the sequence
1C – 1H; 4D!
opener is showing a game-raise of hearts that includes a singleton diamond. Typically, opener’s hand will not only be in the upper range (16+hcp) but will also include length in his first-bid suit. Responder should be aware of the possibility of a double-fit, if he has some support. A special case is sometimes called an auto-splinter: this where opener “splinters” in his own suit, for example
1C – 1H; 4C!
This sort of sequence should show a solid 6-card suit, 4-card support for responder, and an unspecified singleton in one of the other two suits.

3) Some bids of a new suit at the 3-level can also be defined as splinters, similar to those just mentioned but forcing only to 3 of responder’s major. For example,
1C – 1H; 3D!
doesn’t have an obvious natural meaning, since 2D would be a reverse and so opener doesn’t need to jump to show strength. I recommend that this and similar sequences be played as splinters supporting the major. Some attention has to be paid, since some sequences are needed for natural bidding, for example 1D – 1H; 3C looks similar, superficially, but opener is just showing clubs and a good hand. I don’t think there is much real risk of a misunderstanding, because the general rule is that if a bid might be natural, it is. It’s only the “jump reverses” and other such oddities that become splinters.

4) Any unusual jumps (often a jump in a sequence that is already forcing) should probably be treated as a splinter. For instance, playing inverted minors,
1C – 2C; 3H!
should be a splinter where opener is 16+ and is suggesting game or slam in clubs, and alerting responder to only try 3NT if he has the hearts well-covered.
1NT – 2D; 2H – 4C!
should imply a 6-card heart suit and be a mild slam try, since just bidding 3C would show a club suit and be forcing. This rule of thumb can be applied in competitive auctions, also, although I’m sure some partnership discussion is needed. But whether you are the opening side or the overcalling side, there are a lot of sequences where a jump or double-jump in a new suit makes no sense normally and can be used as a splinter raise of partner.

5) Splinters typically show singletons. They can also show voids, which can cause problems. A solution for the 1major – 4x type of splinter (paragraph 1) is to set aside the cheapest triple-jump bid as a void splinter, showing a void in an unspecified suit. The 3NT response (currently unused) comes into play for this. So
1H – 3S and 1S – 3NT
are the void splinters. Opener bids the next step as a relay for responder to show where the void is (bidding 4 of the trump suit to show the suit that isn’t available to bid below game level):
1H – 3S; 3NT – 4C/D/H void in clubs, diamonds or spades respectively
1S – 3NT; 4C – 4D/H/S void in diamonds, hearts or clubs respectively
The only singleton splinter that is compromised by this scheme is 1H – 3S. That is fixed by using 1H – 3NT as (specifically) a splinter showing a singleton spade.

This idea has a little bit more memory-burden than basic splinters, but it does clear up an (admittedly rare) issue using only otherwise-unused bids.

I play all of this stuff with Elwood. Agent 99 wouldn't go for the void splinters, but Elwood has a mischievous streak.

Coffee house

2009-06-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie.

I directed two games at once today, the first time I've done that. There was an open game of 14 tables, and a 299er game of 4 tables. I seemed to be horrendously busy all afternoon, but actually things went pretty well.

There was one interesting ruling which has prompted this post. Halfway through a hand, a defender leads a spade through declarer, and LHO wins the trick with the queen. Declarer says "I couldn't see your card; did you win the king?". LHO subsequently lays down the ace of spades, thinking that his partner has the king. But near the end, the king of spades appears from declarer's hand.

I haven't seen a coffee-house like that in quite a while.

Crawling Stayman

2009-06-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Here’s a hand that came up in a pairs session with Elwood.

N-S Vulnerable, dealer West
♠ K Q J 4
♥ J 10
♦ A K J 9
♣ K 10 5

[]

♠ 10 8 6 5
♥ 9 7 4 2
♦ 4 3
♣ 8 6 3

W N E S
1♣ 1NT Pass Pass
Pass

There was no way for Elwood to make his contract, despite his high point count. -100 didn’t get very many matchpoints at all, though, because several pairs playing our way made impossible contracts, and several others registered small pluses as E-W “won” the contract but found they couldn’t make much either.

Elwood wasn’t happy, and I was very embarrassed. With my other partners, I play the usual Garbage Stayman. On this hand, I considered the bid, but rejected it, on the grounds that if the answer from North was 2♦, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. But at Elwood’s insistence, many months ago, I had agreed to play a variation he calls Crawling Stayman. In this version, a bid of 2♥ over the 2♦ reply doesn’t promise more than a 4-card suit. Opener (or overcaller, in this case) is expected to correct from 2♥ to 2♠ in the event that he holds a doubleton heart. Of course, this isn’t something that comes up very often, but there’s very little downside, and it just so happens to work very well on this particular hand. The crawling mechanism doesn’t come into play, but because it is available, South can bid 2♣. The answer of 2♠ finds the one contract that N-S can make against any defence.

And I just forgot all about it. Completely. Never even entered my mind.

I hate it when that happens.

I think, in general, I’m pretty good about remembering the different systems I play with my various partners. I have two regular partners, and two fairly regular but somewhat less frequent ones (including Elwood). And then again I play occasional games with all sorts of people as I fill my roles as TD/house player. No two of them play exactly the same stuff, except maybe the 299ers when I have to fill in the movement in their game. But my recent experiences with Elwood are ruining my self-image, and maybe my reputation. He is one of the most intense and thoughtful players in the club (the biggest fault he ever gets accused of is over-thinking things, which isn’t a complaint you hear too often at the club level). I love that in a partner, and I’m more than willing to listen to what he wants in our bidding system. I know that anything he brings up will have been considered, usually in great detail, and often in some directions and situations that wouldn’t have occurred to me. I do get my ideas in, of course, and veto some of his, but the end result is that our bidding system is probably 60%-40% his ideas versus mine. I’m sure it’s very good, but the result of this mixture is that there’s a memory burden on me that I haven’t successfully addressed. With him, I’ve agreed to play stuff that I don’t play with anybody else – and I’m failing in my obligation to remember it all.

So this is coming at an awkward time, and it’s the wrong time of year anyway, but I’m making a resolution. I resolve to document our frigging system, and read the system summary before every session. I think I remember stuff better after I’ve written it down in my own words. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll blame Mad Cow Disease and English roast beef.

Congratulations

2009-06-15T00:51:00.000-07:00

It may compromise my mild attempts at "anonymizing" him, but I can't let pass without comment that Elwood has been getting some great results lately. In the recent World Wide Bridge Contest, he actually placed second in the world - a terrific achievement. Very well done.

Big hand

2009-06-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to publish this hand, because it gave Elwood agita at the table while I just cruised through a slam. Entirely different subjective experiences for North and South.

Game N-S, dealer South
♠ J 7 x
♥ Q x x x x
♦ x x
♣ 7 x x

[]

♠ A K Q x
♥ -
♦ K J
♣ A K Q 8 x x x

S W N E
2♣ Pass 2♦ Pass
3♣ Pass 3♦ Pass
3♠ Pass 4♣ Pass
6♣ All pass

A♥ opening lead.

When Elwood bid 3♦, East asked if it was a “second negative”. I said I thought so, but wasn’t entirely sure. Elwood gave me a bit of a look, and then when I bid 6♣ he was about ready to chew the table. Of course we had discussed this, of course 3♦ was negative, and I was going to need a very strong hand to make even five clubs (all this as he slammed his cards down).

Well, I was trying not to laugh, as I thanked him for his huge dummy. Three trumps and the J♠! Magic. That South hand has to be one of the strongest I’ve seen for a while – one loser on the LTC.

The bad news was that trumps were 3-0, but the good news was that the first discard on my left was the 8♦. Reverse attitude, said the polite pro on my right. So a diamond to the K♦ quickly wrapped up twelve tricks. His client sitting West had failed to interfere holding seven diamonds, Q 10 x x x x x. Our teammates managed to bid on those cards, and East ducked smoothly on the lead from dummy, giving declarer at the other table virtually no chance to get the diamond position right.

Elwood was slightly mollified by my making the contract, but he still hasn't forgiven me for the "not sure" comment.

Eastern States (3)

2009-05-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

So what exactly did we do at the regional?

Agent 99 and I played in two events, the horizontal IMP pairs (two sessions, one Thursday evening, one Friday evening), and a bracketed compact knockout (all day Saturday). On the Monday, I played with Elwood in a bracketed round-robin team event.

The IMP pairs was a disaster, as far as the result goes, but it was a good warm-up for the team events. It seemed like a very strong field to me - not nationally-known players, perhaps, but a lot of the local pros and experienced A players. (It was stratified, and there were only four C pairs.) It seemed like every time we sat down, we were facing a pair of veterans who knew exactly what they were doing. Thursday evening, neither Agent 99 nor I was in any sort of form, and we got hammered, basically lying some distance away last at the halfway point of the event. Friday evening we got our act together, somewhat, and actually managed to finish not last, overall. Apart from attitude, the adjustments we made before the second session related to our approach - we decided we weren't being aggressive enough on the part-score hands. At IMPs, you have to fight energetically at the one and two level, becoming more cautious at the three level. On Friday, we didn't let people push us around so much, and did more pushing of our own.

In the knockout on Saturday, we were teamed with another of the directors from the Manhattan and his wife, and that put us in the top bracket. But the field was not nearly so intimidating (most of the good players were taking a run at the Goldman Pairs). We survived two 3-way matches in the morning, then lost the semi-final after lunch, but came back strong to win the third place game. Nearly four and a half gold points for that.

In the round-robin on Monday, I played with Elwood in the same team that did well in the previous regional in New York. Unfortunately, I was as sick as a dog. I decided it was just a cold and not the swine flu, and went ahead and risked infecting most of the bridge players in NYC. It was a big event, 71 teams I think, and there were other events in the same room, so I'm not entirely kidding about most of the players being there. But I took every kind of drug I had available, and wasn't actually sneezing or coughing on passers-by. We were in the third bracket (eight teams to a bracket), and won five of our seven matches. Actually, we were kind of upset to lose the other two - we felt we lost the matches, rather than that the opposition beat us. But our performance was good enough for second in the bracket and more than six gold points.

And therein lies the tale. I started the tournament needing 10.88 gold to become a life master. I won a grand total of 10.78 gold. And there followed at least a little bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Eastern States (2)

2009-05-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Some answers.

A)
Game N-S, dealer South
♠ A J 9 8
♥ K 6
♦ K J 9 7 5
♣ J 5

[]

♠ Q 7 5 4
♥ A Q 5
♦ Q 10 3
♣ K Q 4

S    W    N    E
1NT Pass 2♣ Pass
2♠ Pass 4♠ All Pass

Trick one was the ♦6 to East’s ♦A, and the return was ♦4. Now what do you do? It seems fairly clear to play trumps, and if you win the ♦Q and lead a small spade, West produces ♠10. Does that change anything?

I didn’t mention the diamond spots on the second trick. Obviously there is some danger of a diamond ruff, and actually, West played upwards, suggesting he may have hit on a useful MUD lead from three small. Normally, you would probably just play Ace and another spade, hoping to take out the (potential) ruffer’s trumps while perhaps dropping a singleton spade honor in the event of a bad break. But if East is the one short in diamonds, the finesse may be better. If it works, you can play three rounds of trumps, and even if it loses, East may have the club ace, or may err and lead a heart.

I have to say I like the idea of finessing, especially when the ♠10 appears. Fortunately, I was West, declarer had gone to sleep, and I won my doubleton ♠K to give Agent 99 a ruff, after which she cashed ♣A for down 1. Teammates scored 11 tricks, of course.

B)
Game All, dealer East

E    S    W    N
1♥ Pass 2♦ Pass
2♥ Pass 4♥ Pass
6♥ All pass

South holds:

♠ K J 6 5 4
♥ 6 5 4
♦ 10 7 2
♣ 8 2

What’s your opening lead?

That final jump to slam makes no sense. East must have some sort of distributional hand, and be hoping to make even if missing two quick winners. Well, two aces seems unlikely. The best bet must be to try for AK in one suit, and therefore you ought to lead a spade.

Not so good this time. I was the smart-ass with the East cards, and Joan Dziekanski was the wrong opponent to mess with. Down one. (She won the event, and the swing on this board was enough to move her from 5th to 1st.)

C)
Game All, dealer West
♠ K 4 3
♥ 4
♦ Q 9 7
♣ A Q J 9 6 5

[]

♠ Q 10 6 2
♥ A K J 6 5 2
♦ K 8
♣ 4

W    N    E    S
2♦ 3♣ 3♦ 3♥
Pass 3NT Pass 4♥
All Pass

Trick one is the ♦A on which East drops ♦10. West looks at this for a long time, then switches to the ♠5. East wins the ♠A, and returns ♠9 which West ruffs with the ♥7. Now a small diamond runs round to your ♦K. How do you take the rest?

When you saw the dummy, you wished you had passed 3NT. But at the time, it sounded as though the contract had gotten wrong-sided, and maybe 4♥ would be safer. Wrong choice, but let’s make the contract anyway.

Obviously you have to assume hearts were 3-3. You can play to drop the ♥Q if you think West has her, or you can cross to the ♣A and finesse if you think she is on your right. You know West started with six diamonds to the AJ and a singleton spade, so picturing three hearts and three clubs looks OK. For a vulnerable weak two, I’m guessing she should have either the ♥Q or the ♣K, or maybe even both. But maybe not. And how about East? Five spades we know, three hearts we assume, two diamonds we know, three clubs we assume. High cards might be just the ♠AJ we know about, or might include the ♣K or the ♥Q.

I looked at this for quite a while before making up my mind. I don’t think you can place the ♥Q a priori – the bidding makes sense either way. But the rhythm of the play – the opening lead, the long hesitation, and then the switch to a singleton – persuaded me. I decided that West had chosen to play her partner for the ♦K for a second ruff. And the reluctance to lead the singleton, both at trick one and trick two, was because she would be ruffing with a natural trump trick, and therefore playing for a ruff only looked right when there seemed to be a chance at two ruffs. So ♥AK, and watch that lady fall.

   ♠ K 4 3
   ♥ 4
   ♦ Q 9 7
   ♣ A Q J 9 6 5
♠ 5 ♠ A J 9 8 7
♥ Q 9 7    [ ]    ♥ 10 8 3
♦ A J 5 4 3 2 ♦ 10 6
♣ K 10 7    ♣ 8 3 2
♠ Q 10 6 2
   ♥ A K J 6 5 2
   ♦ K 8
♣ 4

Eastern States (1)

2009-05-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

The Eastern States Regional is done. I had a moderately successful time, gaining between 10 and 11 gold points. According to my calculations, though, I failed in the main mission. I am not yet a life master, needing a further 0.1 gold points – very frustrating.

More on that later, but first here are some questions that came up in IMP games with Agent 99. Nothing too difficult, but big swings depend on getting them right.

A)
Game N-S, dealer South
♠ A J 9 8
♥ K 6
♦ K J 9 7 5
♣ J 5

[]

♠ Q 7 5 4
♥ A Q 5
♦ Q 10 3
♣ K Q 4

S W    N    E
1NT Pass 2♣ Pass
2♠ Pass 4♠ All Pass

Trick one was the ♦6 to East’s ♦A, and the return was ♦4. Now what do you do? It seems fairly clear to play trumps, and if you win the ♦Q and lead a small spade, West produces ♠10. Does that change anything?

B)
Game All, dealer East

E S    W    N
1♥ Pass 2♦ Pass
2♥ Pass 4♥ Pass
6♥ All pass

South holds:

♠ K J 6 5 4
♥ 6 5 4
♦ 10 7 2
♣ 8 2

What’s your opening lead?

C)
Game All, dealer West
♠ K 4 3
♥ 4
♦ Q 9 7
♣ A Q J 9 6 5

[]

♠ Q 10 6 2
♥ A K J 6 5 2
♦ K 8
♣ 4

W N    E    S
2♦ 3♣ 3♦ 3♥
Pass 3NT Pass 4♥
All Pass

Trick one is the ♦A on which East drops ♦10. West looks at this for a long time, then switches to the ♠5. East wins the ♠A, and returns ♠9 which West ruffs with the ♥7. Now a small diamond runs round to your ♦K. How do you take the rest?

second and third thoughts

2009-05-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

As usual, the analysis of that last hand happened in the few minutes after the game was over. The two or three of us that looked at it were pleased with the conjunction of endplay and squeeze to try and get 11 tricks out of the cards, with the added fillip of the coup-like lead of the unsupported king to foil the attempt.

But after I wrote yesterday's post, the hand was back in my mind, and continued to percolate as such things do. I started to wonder: would it actually be better to play the spade ace and another, rather than taking the double finesse? That wouldn't be nearly so pretty, but it would work at least as well.

For a little while, I thought that the hand was really cooked, in that laying down the ace was better, but I don't think so now. My latest view is that both plays work on the same spade distributions, so why not go with the prettier play? But you can really start to hate this game and the self-doubt that it can generate.

A hand

2009-05-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here’s an interesting hand that came up in a pairs session with Agent 99.

Game All, dealer West
♠ Q 5 4 3
♥ 7 6
♦ Q 10 5 2
♣ A 6 5

[]

♠ A 10 2
♥ 5
♦ A K J 7 6 4 3
♣ Q 4

W    N    E    S
Pass Pass 2♥ 3♦
4♥ 5♦ All Pass

Trick one was the ♥2 to East’s ♥Q, and he continued with the ♥A which was ruffed small. On the ♦A, West contributes the ♣7, and follows up with the ♣2 when you continue with another diamond to dummy’s ♦10. Now what?

East has shown ♥AKQ, so both black kings must be on your left. It has to be right to try a spade to the ten now. This loses to the ♠J, but West is end-played. In fact, if spades are 3-3, making the fourth round a threat for a club discard, he must exit with a club now to avoid conceding two tricks! (A heart allows you to discard a spade and ruff the suit out). But even so, West is dead meat if the clubs are 6-2 (which is not so unlikely in this layout). With two tricks lost and ten winners in sight, you can simply cash the ♠A and run the diamonds to inflict a simple squeeze.

♠ Q 5 4 3
♥ 7 6
♦ Q 10 5 2
♣ A 6 5
♠ K J 8 ♠ 9 7 6
♥ J 8 3 2 [ ] ♥ A K Q 10 9 4
♦ - ♦ 9 8
♣ K J 9 8 7 2 ♣ 10 3
   ♠ A 10 2
   ♥ 5
♦ A K J 7 6 4 3
♣ Q 4

Agent 99 was the declarer, but didn’t manage to navigate through this one. We didn’t feel so bad when we noticed first that four hearts is cold, and second, that West can kill the squeeze by exiting with the ♣K. That still concedes the tenth trick, of course, but it takes out dummy’s entry.

I wanted to talk about this hand in one of my lectures, but I was assured that it was way, way past what the target audience would understand.

In recovery

2009-05-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

In the last week, I've directed four games without a screw-up, so I'm feeling a bit better now. The one that had me scared was yesterday afternoon. I agreed to direct the open game, covering for a guy who's out of town for a few days. Now, the 299ers that I usually direct are easy. They don't call the director too often, and when they do it is generally straightforward stuff. The open game is a different kettle of fish. The game is typically bigger, in terms of number of tables, more demanding, in terms of the cantankerous personalities involved, and more challenging, in terms of the types of calls you get (hesitations and the like).

In actuality, the game turned out to be small, relatively speaking, at 12 tables, and getting everybody seated at their favorite table turned out to be not a problem (much to my amazement). Usually, there is much foofaraw about who is sitting where. I anticipated some of it by printing out the player lists for the preceding two Mondays, which apparently gave me enough inside information to avoid any serious problem. I didn't have to play, and we played 3 boards a round for 8 rounds, which makes the timing easier (we always play 24 boards at the Manhattan). I pushed them along at 7 minutes a board for the first few rounds, handed out a couple of late plays to get things co-ordinated in the middle, and we finished on time even after slowing down a bit for the last few rounds. Very smooth. There was only one somewhat contentious ruling (well, the ruling wasn't contentious, but at least one of the players was). After an auction 1NT - pass - pass - 2S - all pass, it transpired that dummy had been asked what the overcall was and answered "natural", whereas declarer intended it as Capp, showing spades and a minor. Moreover, at the end of the auction, declarer didn't correct the mis-explanation. Now, 2S made, and the defence claimed that they misdefended because of the misinformation. This all seems clear enough, and I was inclined to award an adjusted score immediately. But it happened in round two, and I wanted to wait and see what happened at other tables, because it wasn't at all clear that the claimed damage was real. In the meantime, I talked it over with an experienced director who also happens to own the club. We reviewed the hand record, and his reaction was that they couldn't prove damage, and didn't deserve an adjustment. By the end of the afternoon, the loudmouthed bloody woman had touted her complaint to anyone who would listen for more than two hours, which was rather tiresome. But when the scores were in, 2S had been played several times and had been made only once. I took that as confirmation that damage had really occurred, and on that basis I adjusted the score. (But no doubt she thinks that she won some great victory by being a pain in the ass all afternoon.)

Anyway, now I think I can concentrate on the upcoming Regional. We want gold points!

Disaster

2009-05-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm definitely not feeling good now. But they say confession is good for the soul, so here goes.

I directed the 299er game yesterday afternoon, no problem. One pair turned ugly when I gave them a late play, but screw them, they were way late. I patrolled over to them to tell them to hurry up and finish because the move had been called, and only then realized that they were finishing up the second of three boards. Late play!

Today, disaster struck. Another 299er game, six tables (the Saturday 299er is a small game). So I went with the relay-bystand, which is one of my favorite movements. Except today, I put the bystand in the wrong place. Ugly, ugly, ugly. And nobody to blame except me. We reshuffled the boards and in effect ran two three-round games and added them together. But that is a kludge of the first water.

And guess what? I have to do it again tomorrow. Hopefully, it will be an odd number of tables.

Mixed entry

2009-04-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

I definitely am having trouble finding the time and energy to post to this blog regularly. This entry is a bit of a mish-mash to catch up on the past couple of weeks.

* * *

In the STaC week at the end of March, I was looking for about eleven silver points. I’m in Unit 155 of the ACBL, which covers New York City, and there are several clubs in the city which run games at the same time. In STaC week, we all use the same hands, of course, and the number of master points you get can be based on a city-wide overall standing. Sometimes a club will have a game that is different from everyone else’s, and that will stand alone, but for the usual afternoon and evening open pairs games you hope to ring up a big percentage and rake in ten or a dozen silver points in one go. Well, I didn’t do that. But Monday afternoon with Agent 99 was good enough to get 4.5 points in one game and 2 in another. Put together with a scattering of points from other sessions, I managed a total of just over twelve, and so now my focus is on gold points, where I also need about eleven. The Eastern States Regional is at the end of May, so I’m in negotiation with Agent 99, Elwood and others about what events we can play.

* * *

Finding lecture material is still a bit of a challenge for me. I’m just not as good as Jeff when it comes to looking back over a session and seeing what I could talk about for half an hour. It did occur to me that I should probably spend a session on the grand slam from the last regional. There are interesting points in that hand in both the bidding and the play. Well, not that interesting, but interesting enough given the target audience.

Then there’s this defensive problem, based on a hand from last night, and this is a candidate for a lecture, I think.

N-S game, dlr W (rotated)

♠
♥
♦
♣
♠ ♠ 5 4
♥ [ ] ♥ 9 8 4 3
♦ ♦ A 4
♣ ♣ 10 8 6 5 2
♠ K 10 8 3
♥ J 6 2
♦ K 10 8
♣ Q J 7

W N E S
2NT Pass 3♣ Pass
3♠ Pass 3NT All pass

The opening lead from partner is the ♥5, and declarer takes your ♥J with the ♥A. At trick two, he leads the ♣3. Partner plays the ♣9, covered by the ♣10 and won by your ♣J. Now what?

If partner’s heart lead is 4th best, and there’s no reason to suspect otherwise, declarer has a doubleton, and winning the first trick with the ♥A suggests that it is probably AK tight. We know declarer has four or five spades, and they certainly contain at least a couple of honors to count towards his opening bid (20-21). Probably only four pieces, because with five he would likely be playing that suit instead of clubs. Diamonds we don’t know much about – probably declarer has the queen, maybe the jack too. But what about clubs? What is declarer up to?

He can’t have four pieces of clubs, or his play makes no sense at all. If partner had been looking at a singleton ♣9, declarer would have held ♣AKxx, and he would have played them from the top. Equally, declarer can’t have two clubs, because then he wouldn’t be bothering with the suit at all. No, he certainly has three clubs to either the ace or the king. (Again, with both he would have started them from the top). So we can picture declarer’s hand as 4=2=4=3, and we know where most of the high cards are. What will happen if we return partner’s suit now?

Obviously, declarer will win the ♥K and play another club. Quite probably, he will be playing ♣A and another, clearing the suit. Then we can cash a couple of hearts, and partner can play a diamond through for my king. The contract goes one down, or so it appears. What could go wrong?

♠ 9 7 2
♥ Q 10 7 5
♦ J 9 6 2
♣ K 9
♠ A Q J 6 ♠ 5 4
♥ A K [ ] ♥ 9 8 4 3
♦ Q 7 5 3 ♦ A 4
♣ A 4 3 ♣ 10 8 6 5 2
♠ K 10 8 3
♥ J 6 2
♦ K 10 8
♣ Q J 7

On the fourth heart, I signal with the ♦10. But declarer sees it too. So he doesn’t run the diamond switch around to his ♦Q. Instead, he rises with the ♦A and cashes the long clubs. On the first, both declarer and I discard spades, no problem. But the last club squeezes the south hand. I have to let go another spade. Now declarer can ditch the ♦Q, and one spade finesse lands three tricks, and the contract.

That’s not good enough. So what can we do instead? Well, there’s only one entry to dummy. How about taking away that entry before the clubs are established? If you switch to the ♦K, it doesn’t even help declarer to duck, because you can continue with a second diamond to force the ace. Now declarer can only take two spade tricks, two hearts, one club, and maybe three diamonds (if he has the ♦J to go with his ♦Q). Meanwhile, we’re going to get two hearts, two clubs, and eventually either the ♠K or a long diamond. That’s one down.

I thought that the lead of an unsupported honor to kill an entry was the Deschapelles coup, but it isn’t. I discovered that it is instead known as the Merrimac coup. The Deschapelles coup is somewhat similar, but has the objective of creating an entry to partner’s hand.

In the original hand, declarer held ♠AK, so 3NT was always going one down, but the switch to the ♦K ensured two down for a better score. Making the change to the spades makes it a little more interesting.

And no, I didn’t find the switch. I was declarer, and the defender found it against me, the rotten bugger.

Lecturing

2009-03-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

I direct tournament games at the Manhattan Bridge Club, usually once or twice a week and occasionally more often. The games I run are mostly what we call “299ers”, limited to players with less than 300 masterpoints. (In practice, I generally set the top strat to non-Life Master, and allow in some players who are a little over the 300 limit but whose standard of play is appropriate). Before each 299er game, there is a lecture, about half an hour long. The lectures are free and open to all, but the 299er players are the target audience. Sometimes one of the regular teaching staff gives the lecture. And sometimes, I have to give the lecture myself.

Now, I have had a career as a software developer and analyst, and I’ve had to make presentations to management, users, and subordinates. It wasn’t necessarily my favorite thing to do, but I got by. But a teaching presentation is a little different, and I don’t mind admitting that I’ve had some trouble finding my - well, groove, for lack of a better term.

The topic of the lecture is, quite literally, anything the lecturer wants to talk about. There may be a few things that deserve a talk. For example, if I could get them all to understand (and use) the Losing Trick Count, I’m sure that their bidding would improve dramatically in the area of getting high enough when appropriate and staying low enough when the warning flags are out. But that’s a bit much to get across in a 25 minute talk. I’ve seen at least two of the teaching staff try it, and as straightforward as the LTC is, you still have to talk fast to get across all you want in the time-frame. And there’s no time left over for some example hands and bidding sequences, which is actually pretty critical stuff for a decent teaching effort. These days, I’m starting to follow the lead of Jeff Bayone, the owner of MBC. Jeff sometimes gives the lecture himself, and he doesn’t have a topic. One of his lectures is all about a hand. Just one hand, and the interest is usually not the bidding. It’s all about the play.

That sounds like it could be boring or repetitive. Or it could easily drift into techniques that are beyond the grasp of the intermediate players who are the audience. All of those dangers are real, but at the same time, there is plenty of scope for some interesting stuff that they really need. From declarer’s side, everything that Mike Lawrence wrote about reading the opponent’s cards is relevant, and well within their capabilities. So are some basic ideas around avoidance, suit establishment, card combinations, safety plays, and so on. From the defensive side, I’m not so sure (I’ve not tried a defensive lecture yet). I think it should be possible, though. There must be some hands that have enough points of interest to last 25 minutes! You need more than just one critical lead or switch to focus on, so I’m thinking perhaps a no-trump part-score will have two or three points to make.

Which leads to the next question: where do you get the hands from? I don’t really like to use composed deals to make a point in this sort of format. If I’m going to stand in front of a room full of people and chat about a hand, I want to be able to say “Here’s a hand from Houston last week” or “Here’s something that came up Thursday evening”, or something like that. But I don’t seem to be able to spot the right sort of teaching material as it comes up, at least, not yet. I’m hoping I get better at this with practice.

2009-03-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been a bit busy, one way and another. But today’s laundry day, so I might as well put something up between visits to the basement.

It’s STAC week again, and I’m trying to gather in the 11 or so silver points I need for Life Master. So far I’ve not had too much success, but there have been some wild hands and even wilder opposition. A session with Agent 99 started slowly but accelerated when one pair of opponents perpetrated this horror show.

Love all, dlr S

♠ A Q 9 7
♥ K 9 8 3
♦ 8 7 5
♣ A 3
♠ 8 6 5 4 3 2 ♠ -
♥ 4 [ ] ♥ 10 7 2
♦ A 10 6 2 ♦ J 9 4 3
♣ K 9 ♣ Q 10 8 5 4 2
♠ K J 10
♥ A Q J 6 5
♦ K Q
♣ J 7 6

S W    N    E
1♥ pass 1♠ pass
2NT pass 6♥ dble
All pass

I don’t know exactly how N-S should bid in their methods, but I’m confident that both of them overbid in practice. I don’t think the South hand is too strong to open 1NT 15-17, and North was in too much of a hurry. If she had gone slower, maybe South could have talked her out of it. Agent 99 started with the ♦A, so only 2 down, but that was a top.

That was the last board against them, so we moved to a new table and this was the next board.

Game all, dlr W

♠ Q 5
♥ 9 5 4
♦ A Q 10 7 4 2
♣ 6 4
♠ J 9 8    ♠ K 10 6
♥ A K Q 2 [ ] ♥ 8 7 3
♦ J 9 6 ♦ 8 3
♣ J 8 3 ♣ A Q 10 7 5
♠ A 7 4 3 2
♥ J 10 6
♦ K 5
♣ K 9 2

W N    E    S
1NT pass pass 2♠
pass pass 3♣ pass
pass 3♠ dble All pass

The above auction isn’t the whole story, not even close to it. South actually overcalled 1♠, and when this was pointed out to be insufficient, corrected to 2♠. I asked North what they were playing over opponent’s no-trumps, and she said Cappelletti, so I called the director, but before the director arrived, South commented that they played Capp over strong no-trumps but hadn’t discussed weak ones.

That makes a bit of a mess. You can’t just make an insufficient bid minimally sufficient without penalty if the result would be conventional, and a Capp 2♠ would show spades plus a minor suit. And North now has the somewhat unauthorized information that South only intended 2♠ as natural. On the other hand, the point about not having discussed weak no-trumps specifically is valid: the director could decide that without a specific agreement to play Capp on their card, making the bid sufficient to a natural 2♠ could be allowed without penalty. Rather than get into a big hypothetical argument, I suggested to the director that we let things go and see how it all turned out. He agreed, adding a specific warning to North that she should bid as if all she had seen or heard was the 1NT and the 2♠.

I pictured a somewhat more robust suit in the South hand, for which my ♠K-10 seemed to be well-placed (as far as South was concerned). On the other hand, I didn’t want to sell out, so I bid 3♣. At that point, South has just pushed us from a hopeless contract to our best spot. North wasn’t finished, though. Holding diamonds and hearing me bid clubs, she decided that there was enough evidence that South was single-suited in spades. True enough, but why she raised spades without mentioning diamonds I don’t know. I did know that I couldn’t let them play undoubled, however.

Now, throughout all this, Agent 99 is sitting looking at a hand full of jacks and figuring that whatever the opponents bid, they are probably making overtricks. But she kept a good poker face, and while I can’t remember the exact sequence of play, she did lead the 13th heart at some point for me to uppercut with the ♠10 and get 3 down for 800.

Was justice done? I think so. I know South didn’t want to sell out to 1NT, but that overcall was pretty disgusting, really.

Hands

2009-02-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

Here are a few hands from the past couple of weeks, more or less at random. First, a couple of items that came up in the Grand National Teams.

You pick up
♠ x x x
♥ -
♦ A K 10 9 x x x x
♣ x x
and hear partner open 2♥ (as partners will). RHO passes - what do you do? I think your only choice is to pass. Partner went quietly two down, which was an OK result (a small gain, I think). Bidding 3♦ would be forcing, so if you try it, you will probably finish in 5♦, and the higher-level contract will offset any extra tricks you might make. We play lead-directing bids after a double, but if the auction starts
2♥ - (pass) – pass – (double);
pass – (pass) – 3♦
that obviously doesn’t apply: the opponents are trying to penalize you in 2♥, so you can’t be raising to 3♥. In this situation, 3♦ must be to play, and that means you can escape to your eight-card suit if things turn nasty.

This hand was a source of discussion:
♠ x x x
♥ J 10 x x x
♦ Q 8
♣ x x x
At our table, this hand was opposite a 2♣ opener that rebid 2NT to show about 24hcp. Do you mention the heart suit, or just bid 3NT? Our opponent simply bid 3NT, which made.

At the other table, the dealer psyched a 1♠ opening, the strong hand doubled, and over the 2♥ reply jumped to 3NT. After spending some time in the tank, our team-mate decided to pull this to 4♥. On the day, this was wrong, since 4♥ went one down and 13 IMPs went the wrong way. Probably he shouldn’t have done it, but on another day, 4♥ would make and 3NT would go down. Who knows?

At the Manhattan the other day, I was directing the Wednesday afternoon 299er (limited to players with less than 300 master points). I had to actually play, to complete a table, and so I came to pick up this hand:
♠ A 5
♥ K Q J 6
♦ A K 10 3 2
♣ J 10
Not a bad collection, much better than I usually get. So of course the auction got messy.

N me S    W
2♠ Dbl Pass 3♥
Pass 4♥ 4♠ Pass
Pass Dbl All pass

Doesn’t a double seem reasonable? You have four quick tricks for defence, and you are missing some big cards for offence. Partner has basically shown nothing.

N-S game, dlr N

♠ K J 9 7 4 2
♥ 10 8 4
♦ -
♣ 8 5 4 3
♠ 6 ♠ A 5
♥ A 7 5 3 2 [ ] ♥ K Q J 6
♦ Q J 6 5 ♦ A K 10 3 2
♣ 9 6 2 ♣ J 10
♠ Q 10 8 3
♥ 9
♦ 9 8 7 4
♣ A K Q 7

Yep, South has played you for a sucker. That adds up to -990. I tell you, I get no respect from these 299ers.

In the Thursday night pairs, we overcame some obstructive bidding to get to a fair slam.

♠ K J 9 2
♥ K 9 3 2
♦ J
♣ Q 8 5 4

[]

♠ A 6 4
♥ A 4
♦ A K
♣ K J 10 9 6 2

W    N    E    S
Pass Pass 1♥ Dble
2♦ 2♠ Pass 3♣
Pass 4♣ Pass 6♣
All pass

Trick one is the ♦10, covered by jack, queen and ace, and I pause to take stock.

There are only 11hcp missing, so clearly east’s 3rd-seat opening was very light. And where did the 2♦ reply come from? West must have virtually no points, so the diamond suit must be very long, seven or eight cards probably.

Drawing trumps must come first, so I lead the J♣, ducked all round, and then put East in with another club. She gets off lead with the ♥Q, taken by the ace as west follows with the ♥8. Both opponents follow to the ♦K, dummy discarding the ♠2.

I think that if West had a singleton heart, he would have led it, so that places him with two (or possibly even three) hearts, to go with his club and his long diamonds. It is just possible for him to hold three spades to the queen, but I don’t believe it. I think East has four spades to go with her heart suit. So I cash three more clubs, discarding the ♠9 on the third one. West ditches diamonds, naturally, while East parts with one heart and (somewhat reluctantly) two spades. Now the ♥K and a heart ruff exposes the distribution, and I know that the remaining spades are 2-2. The ♠6 takes the last trick.

   ♠ K J 9 2
   ♥ K 9 3 2
   ♦ J
   ♣ Q 8 5 4
♠ Q 10    ♠ 8 7 5 3
♥ 8 5 [ ] ♥ Q J 10 7 6
♦ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 2 ♦ Q 3
♣ 7 ♣ A 5
♠ A 6 4
♥ A 4
   ♦ A K
   ♣ K J 10 9 6 2

Of course, the stupid ♠Q was doubleton all along.

GNT

2009-02-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a bit busy the past few weeks, one way and another. Part of the busy-ness was working towards flight B of the Grand National Teams. Since we did so well at the regional, Elwood and I decided to stick with the same team for the GNT. The opening salvo was yesterday, but sadly the team’s performance was not up to snuff, and we got knocked out.

It was very disappointing. We were in a three-way match, playing 24 boards against each team, and all three teams won one match and lost one match. The tie was then broken by total IMPs. One team was positive, one totaled -3 IMPs, and we finished at -10. But we actually beat the team that finished positive, and lost to the team that finished at -3.

What was particularly galling was that Elwood and I were distinctly unimpressed with the pair at our table, who seemed to be a scratch partnership with unclear bidding agreements, and one of them also displaying distinctly questionable judgement. But in the second quarter, he punted four times in the six boards, and generated about +25 IMPs when some unlikely games made. We got some swings back from boards where his optimism ran into normal luck, but the damage was done. Either his team-mates at the other table were good, or our team-mates had a bit of a bad day, (or more likely, a bit of both), but in the sessions where Elwood and I felt we had done well and expected to get some ground back, the gains didn’t materialize. Now, the elimination margin was 7 IMPs, but that was between us and them. So in fact, if we had managed a 4 IMP swing somewhere, +4 to us and -4 to them would have squeaked us through. In twenty four boards, there can’t have been more than about a dozen opportunities for such a swing.

Meanwhile, the third team comprised fellow Manhattan Bridge Clubbers, and Elwood and I were a little nervous about facing them, judging them to be a pretty strong team by flight B standards. And yet we did to them what the other team did to us, score-wise. A big second quarter opened a lead that they never looked like closing. In this case, the swings came from a misplayed game and from better judgement in the bidding. We got swings of 6, 5, and 4 IMPs by going plus at both tables when the pair at our table over-reached or over-competed.

Oh well.

Misadventures In Manhattan

2009-01-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

The guy I play with on Thursday nights had his routine radically disturbed one way or another over the past few weeks. So when I sat down to play with him last night, it wasn’t just our first game of 2009, it was actually the first game with him for a month. And the computer seemed to want to celebrate by giving us some weird stuff.

The obligatory punt had to wait for the second half.

N    E    S    W
1♠ pass 2♣ pass
2♥ pass 3NT pass
6♠ all pass

It’s your lead from:
♠7 6 ♥ 10 6 3 2 ♦ K J 8 6 4 3 ♣ Q

So what’ll it be? (The full hand is a bit further down).

In the first half we seemed to be trapped in a world of clubs. Five times the contract was 3♣, and on a sixth board it was 5♣-2 and arguably we should have been in 3♣. That’s a quarter of the boards in one contract – definitely odd. In the third round, one of the non-3♣ boards was when we doubled the opponents in 4♥.

N E    S    W
Pass pass 1♦ 3♥
3♠ pass pass 4♥
?
You hold:
♠10 7 6 3 2 ♥ - ♦ K 10 6 ♣ A Q J 8 4

You’ve mouse-trapped yourself, of course. If you had bid 4♣ over 3♥, you would be bidding 4♠ like a shot. Now you’re somewhat stuck. But you have an ace and a king; partner opened, and he doesn’t usually get too frisky in third seat; you have a void in trumps, and West hasn’t bid like someone with a nine-card suit (although bidding again is a bit suspicious), so maybe partner has a nice surprise in the trump suit. So you whack them.

And as usual, West does indeed have a nine-card suit, solidified by his partner’s singleton queen. And the 1=9=1=2 distribution delivers a tenth trick when dummy has the ♣K – if the doubleton had been somewhere else, even a nine-card suit wouldn’t have been enough.

Even more droll is the traveler – you open it, and announce “flat”. -590, -590, -590 – what a start.

Now back to that slam. I’m going to call this my slam try – you bid the slam, then try to make it.

N-S Game, dlr N

   ♠ A K Q J 9 8 5 2
   ♥ Q J 8 4
♦ -
♣ 10
♠ 10 4 3 ♠ 7 6
♥ K 9    [ ] ♥ 10 6 3 2
♦ 10 9 7 ♦ K J 8 6 4 3
♣ A J 6 5 4 ♣ Q
♠ -
   ♥ A 7 5
   ♦ A Q 5 2
   ♣ K 9 8 7 3 2

N E    S    W
1♠ pass 2♣ pass
2♥ pass 3NT pass
6♠ all pass

West clearly shouldn’t lead a major suit on this bidding. I think it’s pretty obvious that if North has a loser outside the majors, you need to try and cash it at trick one. Maybe North was encouraged by a club fit, so West led a diamond, which might have been correct. But it wasn’t, so the club loser disappeared and 6♠ rolled home. Pretty brutal, really.

Defensive conventions

2009-01-13T16:48:00.000-08:00

There are a few competitive/defensive treatments that need to be documented.

Flannery is an opening 2D bid that shows five hearts and four spades and 11-15hcp. The idea is that such hands pose the most difficulty for systems that use 5-card major openings with the 1NT response forcing, because they are not strong enough for opener to reverse, and so over 1NT he may be forced to rebid 2C on a doubleton – hardly descriptive. If such hands are separated out of the 1H opening, they can be bid conveniently, while the forcing no-trump complex becomes cleaner. (While this is true, the cost – using up the 2D opening – really doesn’t appear worth the benefit, to most experts).

There are variations: some play that the Flannery bid includes 4-6 hands. It is also possible to play Flannery as a non-forcing 2H opening, rather than a forcing 2D opening. Neither variation poses any additional problems for the defence.

While we don’t meet Flannery very often, we should have a defensive approach defined. As per Elwood, over 2D we play
• Double – shows diamonds, equivalent to a 2D overcall of a 1H opening
• 2H – take-out of hearts, showing support for the other three suits (including spades), equivalent to a double of a 1H opening
• 2S – both minors, equivalent to 2NT against a 1H opening
• 2NT – natural, equivalent to 1NT over a 1H opening, but a bit stronger, say 17-19hcp
This is straightforward, really, although the only time (so far) it has come up playing with Elwood, I forgot. That’s the main reason for getting it down in writing.

Unusual over Unusual is a more commonly-occurring treatment.

Over a one-level opening, a 2NT overcall is the Unusual No Trump, showing the two lowest unbid suits, at least 5-5. Since opener has bid one suit and the opponents have shown two, responder only really has three active courses of action: to attempt to penalize the opponents, to support opener, or to show the fourth suit. The intent to penalize the opponents can be demonstrated by doubling the 2NT bid. This should indicate a willingness to make a penalty double of at least one of overcaller’s suits, and implies not too much fit with opener’s suit.

When it comes to bidding our suit(s), there is a problem in that it would be nice to have both a merely competitive raise and an invitational raise, but we have been crowded to the three-level. However, by way of compensation, we have two cue-bids available. In the ordinary overcall situation, an immediate raise to the three-level is pre-emptive, and a cue-bid of the overcall is limit+. For example, 1H – (2C) – 3H is pre-emptive, and 1H – (2C) – 3C is a limit raise of hearts (or better). In the Unusual situation, the lower cue-bid shows the lower of our suits, and the higher cue-bid shows the higher suit, while direct bids are merely competing. Examples:
1H – (2NT) – 3C is a limit raise or better of hearts
1H – (2NT) – 3H is pre-emptive
1H – (2NT) – 3S is not forcing
1H – (2NT) – 3D shows spades and a tolerance for hearts, invitational-plus strength.
1D – (2NT) – 3C is a limit raise or better of diamonds
1D – (2NT) – 3H shows spades and a tolerance for diamonds, invitational-plus strength.

This treatment can be extended to use against any overcall method that specifies both suits. For example, Michaels over a minor suit opening to show both majors:
1C – (2C) – 2H is a limit raise or better of clubs
1C – (2C) – 2S shows diamonds and a tolerance for clubs, invitational-plus strength
1C – (2C) – 2D, 1C – (2C) – 3C, and 1C – (2C) – 3D are all just competing.
When only one suit is exactly specified, it doesn’t apply. For example, Michaels over a major:
1H – (2H) – 2S is a limit-plus raise of hearts, but there is no second cue-bid available because overcaller’s minor suit is not known.

Weak Two Bids

2009-01-11T21:54:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everybody. Let's start with some more system notes.

There are some bids that “everybody” plays, so you might wonder what needs to get documented. In ACBL-land, weak twos, especially in the majors, fall into that category. Playing with Elwood has opened my eyes.

The standard for opening a weak two varies wildly, depending on who you ask. Some people treat the bids as purely destructive, and are willing to open on almost any garbage, even not-that-great five-card suits. Some people are quite strict, imposing restrictions on suit quality and other features of the distribution. Elwood runs closer to the wild side than I do, but is more disciplined than many I know. He regards two-bids as belonging in the spectrum of pre-emptive hands, and judges whether to open based on likely tricks and losers, taking into account the vulnerability and so on. That means he doesn’t have hard and fast rules about suit length or suit quality or point count, but on the other hand, if he judges correctly, you aren’t likely to make a killing off a penalty double of him either. I am a bit more old-fashioned, and consider the openings more like the bottom tier of constructive bidding. Therefore I will have prospects of a defensive trick, and I generally try to follow the old standard of “two of the top three or three of the top five”, at least in first and second seat. I have been known to open on a five-card suit, but the few times I’ve done it, it was a very good suit, AKQxx or better, and the strategic situation seemed to call for extra effort. I think I’ve opened two on a seven-card suit, also, but that would be even rarer. (I usually take any excuse to open a weak three-bid, and at that level I tend to be much wilder than Elwood).

When I first played weak twos, many moons ago, we played step responses that are known these days as Ogust. Most common now seems to be the idea of using 2NT to ask for an outside feature, defined to be an ace or a king. Rather than choose between these methods, Elwood plays both. So we have that 2NT asks for a feature, and a 3C response is Ogust: opener rebids
• 3D = bad hand, bad suit
• 3H = bad hand good suit
• 3S = good hand, bad suit
• 3NT = good hand, good suit
Responses in a new suit, other than the 3C ask, are natural and forcing. Direct raises are to be considered as raising the pre-empt, and opener should not be encouraged.

When the opponents interfere, we use an approach generally known as McCabe. After 2x – (dble) - ?, a new suit is lead-directing, and opener is expected to return to three of his own suit. This hasn’t come up yet, but it sounds like a useful weapon. After some discussion, we decided to keep 2NT as a feature-ask. The alternative was to use it for a relay, with the idea that responder is running to a suit of his own which he deems a better idea than staying with opener’s suit. It’s a close call – neither use seems likely to come up, to be honest. The other call to be defined is a redouble. Elwood had a little menu of possible meanings, and I chose the one he didn’t expect. Redouble shows Ax or Kx in opener’s suit, and a good hand. I picked that meaning because it seemed to me to fit the lead-directing strategy – responder is really telling the opener that it’s OK to lead small away from his suit.

Now all we need is some aggressive opponents.

Regional

2008-12-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

Some more hands from the regional. These two were against a pair that were just too timid.

N-S Game, dlr N

♠ A Q 10 9
♥ 10 6 4 2
♦ Q 4
♣ 6 5 4
♠ 8 ♠ J 5
♥ A 8 5 3    [ ] ♥ J 9
♦ 7 6 ♦ A K 10 9 5 3 2
♣ A 10 9 8 3 2 ♣ K Q
♠ K 7 6 4 3 2
♥ K Q 7
♦ J 8
♣ J 7

N E S W
Pass 1♦    2♠ 3♣
pass 3♦ all pass

I just don’t understand North’s pass in the second round. Partner is pre-empting, you have a strong fit and no defence. You can’t find even a single raise? In a sense, inaction is correct, because however high N-S go, we are likely to bid one more than that and make the contract. In actuality, South decided that the ♦J looked like a good lead, and I soon wrapped up thirteen tricks: twelve tricks are available against any lead.

So how should we bid the hand (assuming N-S shut up)? Reaching even game seems to involve an optimistic view.

E-W game, dlr E

♠ K 8 7 2
♥ K 7 5 3
♦ A J 9 7
♣ 2
♠ 4 ♠ Q J 5
♥ A 2 [ ] ♥ Q
♦ Q 6 5 3 ♦ K 10 8 4 2
♣ A K J 10 7 4    ♣ Q 9 6 5
♠ A 10 9 6 3
♥ J 10 9 8 6 4
♦ -
♣ 8 3

E S W N
Pass pass 1♣ dble
1♦ 2♦ 3♦    3♠
4♣    4♠    5♣ all pass

With such prime controls and a double fit in evidence, Agent 99 didn’t have much hesitation going to 5♣. I just don’t know how either North or South could feel that it was reasonable to leave us there undoubled. Of course, if you double, North has to find a diamond lead (not difficult on the bidding). In practice, she led a spade to South’s ♠A, which killed the defence and 5♣ made. So as the old saying goes, it was only one mistake: if she was going to defend like that, failure to double was not an error. But then, knowing she was capable of such defence, South should certainly have bid 5♠. Perhaps her dummy play is equally as bad.

Now here’s a bidding problem. You hold
♠Q J 10 5 ♥6 ♦10 ♣A J 9 8 7 4 3
Nobody vulnerable, you hear 1♥ on your left and 2NT (Jacoby) on your right. Doesn’t it sound like they have at least a game, and 5♣ might well be a good sacrifice? I thought so. And yet neither side has a game double-dummy, while both sides may make game at the table.

Love all, dlr S

   ♠ 7 3
   ♥ K Q 8 7 2
   ♦ K J 4
   ♣ K 10 2
♠ 8 6 4 2 ♠ Q J 10 5
♥ A 4 [ ] ♥ 6
♦ A 9 5 3 2 ♦ 10
♣ Q 6 ♣ A J 9 8 7 4 3
   ♠ A K 9
   ♥ J 10 9 5 3
   ♦ Q 8 7 6
   ♣ 5

S W N E
1♥    pass 2NT 5♣
pass pass dble all pass

It should not be too difficult for E-W to find the diamond ruff to beat 4♥, but it’s not a sure thing. If the bidding hasn’t given too much away, and if West leads the Q♣, South may be smart enough to not cover, and that makes it very difficult. You would expect some, perhaps even most, N-S pairs to make game.

Even more so, the spade ruff to beat 5♣ looks simple. And yet our opponents, who were not idiots, had a mix-up over signals. After one top spade, South switched. I had asked about the bidding, and South could have made a penalty double. Since he clearly must have had a minimum opening, I played North for all the trumps and made 5♣ for most of the matchpoints.

The analysis software points out that 3NT is cold E-W, but it doesn’t suggest how we bid it.

Regional

2008-12-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

OK, I’m back from my second event of the regional, a Swiss Teams. I was playing with my other decent partner, a 2/1 Game Forcing aficionado that I’ll call Elwood, and a decent pair that included one of the directors from the Manhattan. Actually, they were probably more than decent, because we won seven out of eight matches, and I wasn’t defending too well. But we fitted into the B/C Swiss, and I guess that was enough of an edge.

The wild distributions were notable. There were a couple of 7-6 hands, one or two 7-5s, and it seemed like endless 5-5s and 6-5s, and these were all hand-dealt, at the table! That’s a lot of stuff in 56 boards.

Anyway, the bottom line is it seems I won five and a half gold points for Friday’s effort, and eight and a half gold for Sunday’s effort. So my two days of work has taken me more than halfway to the requirement for Life Master. Not a bad deal at all, although it might make you wonder whether the Life Master rank means much.

Regional

2008-12-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

This weekend is the Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional in New York City. I decided to try and get a little more serious about winning some gold points, and so I'm playing in a couple of events. Friday was the Jim Becker Open Pairs, and Agent 99 and I were in as a C pair. This is a fairly prestigious event, and I didn't expect to be in the running overall, but I was sure we could be as good as any other C pair around. And so it proved. It's a two-session event, and we rang up 58% in the first session to actually stand tied for 7th overall at the halfway mark, well clear of the rest of the C crowd. The later session was something of a let-down, unfortunately, and we dropped off the overall leader-board. But approximately 50% in the second session was enough to stay at the top of the Cs, and so we gained our first gold points.

I'd prefer not to dwell too much on the second session. But there were some magic results in the first half.

Game all, dlr W

   ♠ 10 6 4 2
   ♥ 6 5
   ♦ J 10 8 4 3
   ♣ 10 5
♠ Q J 9 5 3    ♠ A
♥ A K J 8 [ ] ♥ 10 9 2
♦ Q ♦ A K 9 6
♣ J 7 4    ♣ A K Q 9 6
♠ K 8 7
   ♥ Q 7 4 3
   ♦ 7 5 2
   ♣ 8 3 2

W N E S
1♠    pass 2♣    pass
2♥ pass 3♦    pass
4♣ pass 4♦    pass
4♥ pass 5♦ pass
5♥    pass 7♣    all pass

Agent 99 bid out her shape, and I went through Redwood 1430, taking it all the way to the grand slam. It's perhaps a bit of a stretch, but I could count twelve tricks as long as the distribution was reasonable, and I thought there was bound to be play for thirteen.

In fact, you can make all the tricks in clubs, hearts or no-trump, because the heart finesse works. But playing in clubs is best, as it gives you multiple chances. The trump opening lead didn’t hurt anything, so I had choices to make. A diamond ruff in dummy would make the twelfth trick, and then you could try the heart finesse, a ruffing spade finesse, or a spade-heart squeeze for thirteen. Or you could ruff a couple of spades (if the trumps are 3-2) hoping to drop the ♠K. The main issue is how to combine the most chances.

The best I can come up with is:
1: ♣6 (North didn’t want to waste his ♣10)
2: ♦Q
3: ♠A
4: ♦9 ruffed in dummy
5: ♠ ruffed in hand
6+7: ♣AK, drawing trumps, discarding ♠9 (if trumps turn out to be 4-1, you have to ditch the spades and rely on the heart finesse)
8: ♥A
9: ♠ ruffed in hand
Now if the ♠K fell, you have thirteen tricks. If everybody has followed to the spades but the ♠K hasn’t appeared, you now cash the ♦AK, discarding the ♥8 and the ♠Q from dummy (unless South discards the ♠K). If South holds the ♠K, he has been squeezed, and you can play for the drop in hearts, making even against a doubleton ♥Q in North. And if you think North had the ♠K all along, there is still the heart finesse to fall back on.

In practice, you aren’t tested since the ♠K does fall. The main lines that don’t work are ones involving the ruffing finesse in spades.

We were the only ones to bid a grand – most tables rang up 1470 (for 6NT+1).

E-W game, dlr E

♠ 10 9 7
♥ 9 3
♦ A K 5
♣ J 9 5 3 2
♠ A 5 3 ♠ K Q 8 6
♥ J 10 7 5    [ ]    ♥ Q 8 6
♦ J 9 8 ♦ Q 6 4 2
♣ Q 7 4 ♣ K 8
♠ J 4 2
♥ A K 4 2
♦ 10 7 3
♣ A 10 6

E S W N
1NT dble pass pass
redbl all pass

West has an awkward hand for our methods. It's the sort of hand that you would really like to just leave at 1NT doubled and see what happens. While you can be reasonably optimistic about our chances, because the points seem to be split more or less 20-20 between the two sides, it really looks thin for a business redouble. But running is distinctly unattractive, and we can only stand with a redouble – so that's what Agent 99 did.

South started with the ♥2, which went to the ♥9 and ♥Q, and I returned the ♥7 to his ♥K. A diamond switch put the danger hand in, but North's return of the ♠10 didn't help their side any. I won and played a third heart, and South persisted with diamonds. When the smoke cleared, I finished up with an overtrick. +1160 isn't bad on a hand that should be held to down two, double-dummy.

The Bucket List

2008-12-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

When you are a beginning student of this game, everything is new and it can seem difficult to impose order on all the things that you have to try to remember. There comes a point, when you are an intermediate player, where some level of basic knowledge has been absorbed, and you start to become acquainted with more advanced matters of technique. And somewhere about there, you find that you are reading about a particular type of play and looking for a chance to use it at the table. Probably, the throw-in and the simple squeeze are the simplest “advanced” techniques, and the time when you learn about them is around about the time I mean. If you are a keen student, you may work on a number of techniques before the proper occasion at the table crops up (or is recognized, anyway). And that means you have a list, of sorts, of plays that you are waiting for.

Now, throw-ins and simple squeezes are pretty common, so they don’t stay on the list too long. Elopement plays and coup en passant variations I had played before I knew they had a name, so they actually by-passed my list. Some items get onto the list for sentimental or whimsical reasons, rather than any special technical element. I haven’t put “the beer card” on my list of things to do, but I might, just for fun. A weird one was the really deep finesse. I did play a suit contract (5♦ doubled, it was), and on the first round of trumps I led the ♦5 from dummy and ran it, winning the trick with all players following suit. I didn’t make the contract, but I didn’t care since that deep finesse worked. (It sounds ridiculous when you first think of it, but it’s actually not that bad. RHO was the doubler, of course, so I knew he had a trump stack, and LHO was either singleton or void. So then it’s a matter of waiting a few years or a few thousand hands to find LHO with the right singleton.)

As time goes by, and your studies get more esoteric, the items that stay on the list tend to be things that are intrinsically rare and unlikely. Top of my list for now (and for the foreseeable future, truthfully) is a backwash squeeze. But there are some easier items still there. And the other day, one of the more recent additions actually got knocked off.

A technique I hadn’t heard of before came to my attention on BBO, within the last year (actually, probably within the last six months). Watching Vu-graph matches at BBO on-line, I saw described and executed what is known these days as an intra-finesse. With a holding like
A 8 x x x opposite Q 9 x,
if you have to play the suit for one loser, you have some fairly limited options. The king being singleton would do, but you aren’t going to play for it (too rare). If the suit is breaking 3-2, leading low to the queen will work half the time. But what if the bidding and play leads you to think that the king is sitting over the queen? You can play for the king being doubleton (ace and duck). Or you can play for either the knave or ten to be doubleton in front of the queen. You do that by playing small to the nine (the intra-finesse). That loses to the jack or ten, but when you get back in, the lead of the queen pins the doubleton honor in the other hand.

Now, I haven’t tried to calculate the odds of different configurations. But I’ve had my fill of hands with KJx sitting over my queen, and the chance to strike back with a winning line definitely got on my list.

N-S game, dlr E

♠ J 7
♥ 7 4 3
♦ Q 7 6 2
♣ A 8 6 5
♠ A 9 6 3 2 ♠ Q 8 4
♥ A J 9 6 5 [ ] ♥ K 10 2
♦ - ♦ J 9 5 3
♣ Q 7 2 ♣ K J 10
♠ K 10 5
♥ Q 8
♦ A K 10 8 4
♣ 9 4 3

E S W N
Pass 1♦ 2♦ 3♦
3♥ Pass 4♥ All pass

At trick one there was an infraction. South led ♦A, dummy ruffed with the ♥5, and North played ♥3 to a chorus of queries. This became a penalty card, so to try and take advantage, I played a club to the ♣K to get to hand for a trump finesse that would definitely win. So trick three was hearts – 2, 8, 9, 3.

And there I was, in dummy, and there was still work to do. I would have to bring in the spade suit. I placed the ♣A with North since the ♣K held, so that meant there was an excellent chance that the ♠K was in the South hand. They can still force dummy with diamonds, so I need trumps 3-2, and I need spades 3-2 to keep down the losers and avoid a ruff. The bidding suggests diamonds 5-4, so there’s no great reason to think South might be short in spades. So the stage is set for the intra-finesse – trick 4 was spades, 2, 7, 8, 10. South exited with the ♥Q, won in hand so I could lead the ♠Q. And then it’s just mopping up: draw the last trump and the last spade, concede a trick to the ♣A, and claim 5-odd. No problem!

Bidding over opponent’s 1NT response

2008-12-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

When the opponents start the auction 1D – 1NT, in Standard American auctions it is pretty much a given that the 1NT bidder will have a club suit. This observation leads to a couple of neat overcalling possibilities.

First, consider how you are placed when in the “sandwich” position, after (1D) – pass – (1NT) - ?
The BobbyBridge page about Multi-Landy observes that it works here. Since we won’t want to make a simple minor-suit overcall in this position, we can play that 2C shows both majors and 2D shows a weakish overcall in an unspecified major. That lets us specify that the 2H and 2S overcalls are full-value – opening bid strength – so we can intervene relatively cleanly in either (or both) major.

Second, consider where you stand in the re-opening position, after
(1D) – pass – (1NT) – pass; (pass) - ?
On Eddie Kantar’s website, he notes that a re-opening 2D here should be natural, because you may have been silenced by the opening bid (which might only be a 3-card suit). However, it is still true that you won’t want to reopen in clubs with a known suit behind you. So we can (again) use 2C as showing both majors, in this case not strong and possibly only 4-4.

Third, Kantar also remarks on
(1C) – pass – (1NT) – pass; (pass) - ?
He notes that a re-opening 2C here should be natural, because you may have been silenced by the opening bid (which might only be a 3-card suit). However, it is also true that a natural re-opening 2D bid is very unlikely, since any such hand would almost certainly have overcalled 1D in the first place. So we can use 2D, this time, as showing both majors, again in this case not strong and possibly only 4-4.

These may seem like little things to clutter-up your memory, possibly causing more trouble than they are worth. That remains to be seen. Being able to fight for part-scores at the two-level is important at any form of scoring. Allowing the opponents to settle in 1NT too easily is faulty strategy.