Odds & Ends

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.



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.



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.

The Acol Experiment

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.