Playing with the big boys

Now that the kids are off from school, I have to do less ferrying and so, partner and I were able to go to the city to play a pairs game in the larger club there.

This is a tougher field than we find in Norman, and it is a larger field, so things were somewhat different.

This was a hand that gave me a bidding problem and resulted in a poor score.  In our normal club game, we'd probably have had company, but in the stronger field, this was a poor board. Sitting South, holding 20 points and 4 hearts, I hear partner open 1H.  What would you have bid?

Dealer: N Vul: NS	Partner ♠ Jxx ♥ A10xxx ♦ KJxx ♣ Kx
West ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣		East ♠ Axx ♥ QJx ♦ xxxx ♣ xxx
	me ♠ KQ ♥ K9xx ♦ AQx ♣ AQJx
Bidding:	1H - P - ?	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

I was in a bind.  Jacoby 2NT is out because I really don't care for shortness in any suit.  We should be in slam on high-card points alone. And we have a 9-card fit. Looking at my hand, there are five losers: two aces, the queen of trumps and the two minor suit kings. Even if we played that the cheapest bid after RKC is a queen ask, it doesn't help here because we are playing 0314, so that the response for 1 ace is 5D.  Long story short: I  contracted us for the poor slam off one cashing ace and the guarded queen of trumps.  In our club, bidding this slam probably would not have hurt -- no one bids all that scientifically, and so everyone would be in the slam.  In the tougher field, though, many of the pairs managed to stay out of it.

Even though the field was strong, we did reasonably well, finishing third.  Our 54% game was not because of any superior card play but was instead because of some lucky pickups like this one:

Dealer: N Vul: EW	Partner ♠ 10864 ♥ Jxx ♦ Kxxxx ♣ A
West ♠ 9x ♥ Axxx ♦Q10xx ♣ Jxx		East ♠ KJxx ♥ KQxxx ♦ AJx ♣ x
	me ♠ AQ7 ♥ x ♦ x ♣ KQ 1098 632
Bidding:	P - 1H - 5C - X(!) P - P - P	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

Once partner had passed, and at favorable vulnerability, I bid 5C over East's 1H.  Now, put yourself in West's shoes.  What do you do?  West doubled, which is an excellent decision because 5H doesn't make. Unwilling to lay down the Ace of hearts, however, he led the 9 of spades.  I covered with the 10 and won the trick with the queen of spades when East played his Jack.  Now, a club to the Ace of clubs and a small spade to my 7! I pulled trumps and led towards the king of diamonds and when that didn't work, I claimed 11 tricks.  5C doubled and made was a clear top.  5C doubled and down 1 (the par result) would have been average minus.

The beauty of bridge

What's your favorite aspect of bridge?  Declarer play? Bidding? Defense?

Declarer play is often, like chess, a solitary activity and so I merely tolerate it.  The poker-like skills of reading defenders' tells is also something I don't know.  So, declarer play is not it for me. Although I like the judgment inherent in bidding, any serious partnership quickly delves into complexity and pages of notes.

What is pure, unadulterated pleasure for me is defense.  Defense is logical, it is social, there are only a few conventions (at least at my level) and when things click, it can be magical.

One hand like this can make up for an entire evening of so-so play.

Click on my name to hide the other hands.  What do you lead?



The 2/1 auction and my 9 points indicated that partner was close to being broke. So, leading my ratty spades looked like it would blow a trick. I decided to lead the Q of hearts. Partner might make up in length what he did not have in strength ...

Now, look at my partner's hand. The queen gets covered by the king perforce (I've always wanted to use that word!). Now what do you play?

If you play the Ace, of course, the hearts are blocked. Partner came through, ducking the trick. Even though the King has held, declarer is up to only 8 top tricks. So, he had to take the diamond finesse (the spade finesse also fails and if he plays clubs before taking either finesse, I have two easy discards). When in with the diamond, I continued with the Jack of hearts, unblocking the suit. Partner then overtook the 7 with the Ace and 3NT was down 2.

This bit of defensive communication was good for 90% of the match-points.

Not walking my talk

Having just left a comment on Daniel's blog about how preempting with a semi-balanced hand is a bad idea, I went to go look at some of the hands I'd played on BBO earlier in the evening.

And lo and behold, I had preempted.  With a semi-balanced hand:



This time, the preempt worked out well, though, because it warned partner off from bidding. The juicy double yielded +300 which was worth 82% of matchpoints even with a less-than-ideal defense. Most everyone was in NT our way and going down.

[You can see our defense by clicking on Next;  you can see ideal defense by clicking on GIB]

6-5 come alive ... but twice?

So, would you or wouldn't you? Bid 5C with my hand that is:

Dealer: N Vul: Both	North ♠ K105 ♥ J10987 ♦ 54 ♣ 983
West ♠ Qxxx ♥ KQxx ♦ Axxx ♣ x		East ♠ AJxxx ♥ Axx ♦ KQ ♣ Qxx
	South ♠ 2 ♥ 3 ♦ J9xxx ♣ AKJxxx
Bidding:	P-1S-2NT-3S P-4S-5C(?)-P P-5S-P-P 6C(!)-X-P-P P	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

2NT is the minors, so I have already shown my hand.  Since we are playing min-max Michaels, partner said he thought my 5C bid was promising a monster distributional hand.  That is not the hand I have, to put it mildly.

I played 6C doubled for down 3, but because no one bid the spade slam, -800 was a bad board for us.

On the other hand, overbidding worked out well for us on this hand.  My four small spades and singleton diamond convinced me to take a shot at 3H.  I ended up playing the hand at 5H and made it when west got end-played into leading clubs for me (or giving me a ruff-and-sluff).

Dealer: W Vul: EW	pard ♠ ♥ AK10x ♦ KQJxxx ♣ Jxx
West ♠ KQxxx ♥ Qxx ♦ xxx ♣ Ax		East ♠ AJxx ♥ Jx ♦ xxx ♣ Qxxx
	me ♠ xxxx ♥ xxxx ♦ A ♣ K10xx
Bidding:	1S-X-2S-3H 3S-4H-4S-P P-5H	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

Be wary of BBO Experts

Last week, it was a 3-1 fit.  This time was not so bad. I had signed up as a substitute on BBO and found myself partnering a BBO Expert.  This was the bidding that had me playing a 4-1 fit in hearts:



Silly me, to expect my expert partner to hold the majors.

Avoid 3-1 fits

I thought we had discussed how to explore slam after Stayman.  Partner didn't. And that's how I ended up playing this 3-1 fit:

Dealer: N Vul: NS	North ♠ AKxx ♥ AQx ♦ Axx ♣ AKxx
West ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣		East ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣
	Poor me ♠ Q10xx ♥ x ♦ KQxxx ♣ Qxx
Bidding:	2NT - P - 3C - P 3S - P - 4H(!) - P P! - P 2NT=22-24	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

The heart king was finessable and spades and diamonds split 3-2, so 7S was cold no matter how you played it. 4H wasn't.

Becoming familiar with a new system

We played in an Open Pairs event at a sectional on Saturday and ended up sixth overall (gaining 2.5 silver points) for posting 62% and 53% sessions. The somewhat poor performance is, I think, part of becoming familiar with a new system. Our defense is as tight as it was, but we are not yet very good at evaluating hands (as opposed to merely counting high-card points) and making the right bids.

First of all, why bother learning a new system when we were quite comfortable with 2/1? Here are two hands that illustrate the two key benefits (in my mind) of playing Precision.

One reason is that strong hands in the range 16-21 become much easier to bid. For example, this is a hand that partner opened 1C (16+) points, following which we had a pretty natural game-forcing auction to 4H.  Playing 2/1 or SAYC, this hand would be somewhat harder to bid.  You open 1D, hear 1S and now what?  Do you have the right shape to reverse to 2H? Do you have the right shape and strength to bid 2NT? Will you ever discover your 4-4 heart fit?

Dealer: E Vul: None	North ♠ K1074 ♥ Q5 ♦ 1093 ♣ KQJ2
ME ♠ AQJ63 ♥ J1094 ♦ 64 ♣ 75		PARD ♠ 9 ♥ A732 ♦ AKQ8 ♣ A1084
	South ♠ 852 ♥ K86 ♦ J752 ♣ 963
Bidding:	1C*-P-1S-P 1NT-P-2H-P 3H-P-4H	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

This is also an interesting play problem.  How would you play 4H from the West side on the lead of the King of clubs?

Double dummy, 5H should make, but I played it on cross-ruff lines, making only four.  I took the club lead with the Ace, played the ace heart, and three rounds of diamonds, discarding my club. Then, I cashed my ace of spades and planned to ruff three spades in dummy and three clubs in hand to come to 11 tricks.  South over-ruffed the final spade, however, so I got just 10 tricks. I should not have pulled that initial round of trumps. Even though I needed to ruff only thrice, I can use the Ace to avoid the over-ruff at the end. Still, in spite of this misplay, we got a top board, probably because most pairs were in 3NT.

The second reason to play Precision is tied to the first one. Because all strong hands go into 1C, we can now open very light without the fear that partner will hang us.  For example, we stole this hand holding just 15 points between us.  2S making was a clear top:

Dealer: W Vul: NS	North ♠ K ♥ 93 ♦ AKQ9652 ♣ 874
ME ♠ J6542 ♥ A84 ♦ 4 ♣AJ109		PARD ♠ A1073 ♥ J72 ♦ 73 ♣ 6532
	South ♠ Q98 ♥ KQ1065 ♦ J108 ♣ KQ
Bidding:	1S(!) - 2D - 2S - P P - P	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

Note the unsavoury choice faced by South because of my decision to open my 10-point hand. If she makes any strong bid (3S? 3H, if forcing), they'll get to an unmakeable game contract. And if, as here, she doesn't show her points, her partner passes and lets us play a cold contract at the two-level.

We are moving to Precision because it has its advantages. However, we are still not completely at ease with the system, and so we had several bad boards where the system "led us to a bad contract."  The solution in such cases is to be not too rigid, to realize such situations and take a corrective action.  Here, for example, after I opened 1C, and partner bid 2C (8+, game force), we ended up in a contract that was down 3 (4H is also down 3):

Dealer: E Vul: EW	North ♠ A875 ♥ 4 ♦ K95 ♣ K10952
ME ♠ K3 ♥ KJ8753 ♦ AJ10 ♣ A3		PARD ♠ J42 ♥ Q ♦ Q62 ♣ QJ8764
	South ♠ Q1096 ♥ A10962 ♦ 8743 ♣
Bidding:	P-P-1C*-P 2C-P-2H-P 3C-P-3NT	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

I do learn my lessons though, so four hands later, when I had a comparable hand, I was able to take corrective action. Realizing that my hand was not worth 16, instead of opening 1C, I opened 1NT (promises 14-16, no 5-card major) even though I had 5 hearts. Partner transferred to me to spades and we played there, like every other pair in the room.

Dealer: E Vul: EW	North ♠ KQ64 ♥ K87 ♦ KQ42 ♣ 97
ME ♠ A2 ♥ Q10654 ♦ A83 ♣ AQ8		PARD ♠ J10953 ♥ 3 ♦ J65 ♣ K1052
	South ♠ 87 ♥ AJ92 ♦ 1097 ♣ J643
Bidding:	P-P-1NT(!)-P 2H*-P-2S-P P-P	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

Upgrade or downgrade?

Playing at the club today, I had this feeling that we were having a very bad game. I misevaluated a couple of hands and that contributed to the general feeling of moroseness.  See if you can do any better.

I was sitting South on this hand when partner opened 1S.  What would you bid?

Dealer: N Vul: NS	Pard (North) ♠ KQxxx ♥ ♦ Kxxx ♣ KQxx
	Me (South) ♠ Axxxx ♥ xxx ♦ Qx ♣ AJx
Bidding:	1S - P - ?	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

How good is your hand with 11 hcp?  Since we are playing Precision, partner was limited to 15 HCP, so I just raised to 4S.  As you can see, 6S is cold.  Would upgrading my hand to bid Jacoby 2NT have helped us find the slam?

How about this hand?  What do you open? Now, bid out the N-S hands. What's your final contract?

Dealer: S Vul: NS	Partner (North) ♠ KQ10xx ♥ J10xx ♦ x ♣ J10x
	Me (South) ♠ Jx ♥ KQxxx ♦ KQx ♣ KQx
Bidding:	?	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

If you open 1H and hear back 3H, what do you do? If you open 1NT, what will partner do? Did you stay out of 4H missing four aces?  We didn't. I opened 1C (Precision 16+) and were inexorably led to 4H.

But at some point in the evening, our luck started to change. How do you know your luck's changed?  When you bid unscientific slams and find that they are cold on any lead:

Dealer: S Vul: NS	Partner (North) ♠ K10 ♥ xx ♦ Jxxx ♣ KJxxx
	Me (South) ♠ AQxxx ♥ Axx ♦ ♣ AQxxx
Bidding:	1C* - P - 2C - P 3C - P - 3NT - P 6C	HTML Bridge Hand Layout Creator

Can you find the slam scientifically?  No other pair did anyway and this top board and a few other lucky contracts toward the end of the evening enabled us to finish with a 60% game.