Misadventures In Manhattan

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.



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.



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



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.