Friday, December 27, 2013

The little club that could

The Norman bridge club (usual game: 3.5 tables) is cleaning up in the ACBL's nationwide Mini-McKenney races.

In the 5-20 race, recently graduated OU student Kyle Olson is second with 248 points.

In the 20-50 race, current OU student Eric Genheimer is first with 396 points. But his position is precarious enough that he is off to Kansas City to play in the last regional of the year.

In the 200-300 race, OU professor Christian Remling is first with 404 points.

In the 500-1000 race, husband-and-wife duo Janet and Don Davis are 14th and 15th with 384 points, but looking to move up after the Kansas City regional.

Although no longer part of the Norman bridge scene, Jay Barron is a former OU student who learned bridge in Norman, so I'll brag on him anyway.  Jay played in the Phoenix nationals with Zia Mahmood and they placed 12th in the Blue Ribbon Pairs.

Congratulations, everyone.  It's been great playing with you all year.

p.s. Obviously, most of their points were gained at tournaments. Our club games award 0.8 for winning, so even if you win every week, it adds up to only 40 points.

p.s.2.  Final updates:
5-20 points KYLE OLSON With 336.79 points   ---KYLE WAS 2ND IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY   
20-50 points ERIC GENHEIMER With 511.55 points ---ERIC WAS 2ND IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY  
200-300 points CHRISTIAN REMLING With 408.18 points--- CHRISTIAN WAS 1ST IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY 
500-1000 points JANET DAVIS with 500.11 points ---JANET WAS 6TH IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY

Sunday, December 15, 2013

What to do when your partner is being boneheaded

One of my favorite partners asked if I wanted to play in the unit's Christmas game.  We don't play together too often because, to play with him, I'd have to play at the Oklahoma City club, which is a 80-mile round-trip from Norman.  So, the last time we played together was about six months ago. Luckily, permission to play on Saturday evening was forthcoming, and I played in my first Christmas party game.

The club was jam-packed.  Good food, good bridge, and (spiked) egg nog to follow. What's not to like?  There were three sections of 14 tables each.  This is, by far, the largest club game I have ever been to.

I started the game in a stupor. Maybe it was the tryptophan.  In a clear-cut auction, after partner had signed off in 5S, I pushed to 6S on the strength of a void.  It turned out that we were off two cashing aces.  The next board, I bid 4S over the opponents' 1H, tempted by the favorable vulnerability. I got doubled, down 2, when they had nothing their way.  And so on.  The first six boards, I estimated that my decisions had gotten us six zeroes (the hand records show that we were 33% on those boards).

"Sorry," I told partner after the sixth board, "that I am playing so poorly. I hope you didn't have any expectations for this evening."

"Don't worry," he said, "I have seen experts take a view on hands with voids. There's a fellow in California who recommends that you take a leap in that position. It just didn't work this time."  Did I mention that he is a favorite partner? This is why.  Of course, he knew that I knew that one doesn't take "views" at matchpoints. You want to be in field contracts and win on cardplay.  But, it was still nice of him to say that.  One of the things about having a good, supportive partner is that it allows you to settle down.

The seventh and eighth boards were against one of the best pairs in the area.  We got two average boards against them.  Those average boards on a table we knew everyone was getting clobbered were the turning point.

On the back half, the opponents gifted us eight tops and near-tops more than making up for the slow start.  We finished with a 61% game, good enough for second overall (missing first by just half a board).

All but two of our tops were on defense -- a measure of how important it was that partner (rather than berating me for my boneheaded decisions) calmed me down. Here's an example of a cold-top (click Next to see the play; I was west):


Yes, declarer can keep this to down 1, and 2H can even make. Tops in matchpoints are often opponents' gifts, and this was no exception.

So, what do you do when your partner is being an all-around idiot?  Calm him down with some cockamamie story about a Californian expert.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Be kind and bid iffy slams

With a few minutes to kill, I found myself playing with a random partner and opponents on BBO.  I was North.  After 3 passes, what would you open?



Yes, the bidding is a little aggressive but I was in slam and got the lead of the Queen of spades.  Click on my username (to hide the other hands) and click Next to view the opening lead.  What are my chances?

"4H was a shutout bid," partner griped as soon as the lead hit the table.  He thought the slam was iffy. And it is. There are three losers: two spades and a club and only two diamond discards.  Got any bright ideas?

Q from QJ.  Could I hope that East  had 4 spades? If so, West would have the doubleton king. Maybe he also has the king of clubs ... The odds of a 2-4 spade break is about 32% and the king being with west is 50%, so this is ... what ... a 16% slam?  A 16% chance is better than none!

I took the ace, pulled trumps, unblocked the diamonds, led a heart to dummy and took away all of west's exit cards. Then, threw him in with (what I hoped) was his doubleton king.  It was. He led a club.  I let it ride to the queen and the slam was made.  (click "Next" on the diagram to watch the play as it unfolded).

"Sorry," said West, presumably to his partner.

"Tough to unblock the king of spades," I replied kindly (I thought).

"If I throw the king of spades, you'll establish the spades and use them to discard the club loser in dummy," West countered.

Well, that was true -- if he unblocked on the first trick, I could totally establish my spades.  Even I know that much.

But what if he unblocked the king of spades on the 4th diamond? Would I have known what to do? I need to switch plans, throwing my low club and play a spade from dummy. East can take his spade, but my hand is now good.  I am not sure I would have found the play, but this teaches me to watch out if a better defender sees the endplay coming and takes countermeasures. (Once he sees the endplay looming, West should anyway throw the king of spades, hoping his partner has the 10 of spades.)

Moral of the story? There are two.

  1. Be kind to your opponents on BBO. You never know what you might learn.
  2. Bid iffy slams. Playing them is good practice.





Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Directing a bust

Because the director of our club was thinking of playing in the Nationals in Phoenix, he asked me to take the ACBL director's test so that I could fill in for him.  I did, and as a certified director of 3 weeks' standing, I showed up to direct this Wednesday's club game.

Well, some sort of word must have gone out. Three of our regulars are in Phoenix. Another bowed out at the last minute. A quartet we can normally count on didn't show up.  Long story short, only 8 players showed up. Well, we can't do a 2-table game (the minimum movement is a 3-table Howell), so I gave them the option of playing an imps cross-teams.  One of the eight said he was not interested and went home, so I played with his partner.

We played 12 boards with the teams (initials only):
     (A) Lak + P, J+C  vs.  (B) A+L, M+B
Then, we switched and played 12 boards with the teams configured as:
     (C) Lak+P, A+L   vs.  (D) J+C, M+B
My team won the first match, and tied the second.  Overall, it turned out to be quite a fun evening.

P. normally plays Precision, so that was what we decided we would play. We had no time to fill out a convention card and so we decided to  "just play bridge".  It was going fine, until we ran into a pickle on this hand.

I was South and opened a precision 1H (11-15, 5+ hearts).  West preempted, North doubled. I assumed that was takeout and showed cards.
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
South
1
3
Dbl
Pass
3
4
4
Pass
4NT
Pass
5
Pass
5
Pass
5
Pass
6
All Pass

I was 6-5 in hearts and spades, so I bid 3S and partner raised me to 4.  My hand was too good to pass 4S, so I bid 4NT (5D should probably be exclusion, but we had not discussed this).  Partner responded 5D (1 keycard). Assuming that the keycard was not the Ace of diamonds, I asked about the queen of trumps. If he had responded King of Clubs, I'd have bid the grand but as it was, I contented myself with bidding 6S.

West led the Ace of diamonds (Ace from AK) and this was the hand that partner had:
N
North
J9xx
Qx
xx
KQxxx
Lead: A
S
Lak
K10xxx
AKx xxx
Ax


Oops.

Partner thought we were playing 1430. His 5D was zero keycards, not one.

Anyway, assume that you are in 6S.  Can you make it?

Yes, if West has a singleton spade honor.  If she has the singleton Ace, then I can pick it up by playing low from both hands and finessing the queen on the second round.  If she has the singleton Queen, I need to plop down the king and then give up a spade trick.  What's more likely?

I decided that with a singleton Ace, West would have had 11 points and was more likely to bid 2D than to preempt 3D.  So, I played her for the singleton Queen.

Success! Plus 1430.

Our opponents got fixed, but they were quite gracious about it.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Using predealt hands in small games

Here in the boondocks, our club games usually range from 7 to 9 pairs.  But I would like for us to take part in the Common Game.  We obviously can not afford to buy a $4000 machine to predeal the hands, or even to shell out $1600 for four "hand-duplicators".

The only option is to print out slips for each of the hands and then have each pair make the hands they are not going to play.

If we have 3.5 tables, this is easy.  We can run a 28-board, 7-round Howell and, assuming that pair 7 is the sitout ("phantom") pair, each pair deals out the boards they would have played against pair 7.

For reference, for a 3.5 table game, these are the boards that each pair needs to deal out before the game starts (7 is the sitout):
PairBoards
113-16
21-4
317-20
45-8
521-24
69-12
825-28

Similarly, for a 4.5 table game, we can run a 27-board, 9-round Howell and every pair can simply deal out the boards they would have played against pair 7.

Again, for reference, for a 4.5 table game, these are the boards that each pair needs to deal out before the game starts:
PairBoards
119-21
213-15
31-3
410-12
516-18
64-6
87-9
922-24
1025-27


But what can we do if we have 4 full tables? Currently, we play a 28-board, 7-round Howell with no sitouts. Everyone plays every board and every pair plays every other pair. These are the best games at the club now.  I can not figure out how best to use predealt hands with this configuration.

One option is to decide that the most important aspects are (a) to play every other pair and (b) play at least 24 boards. We can run the game as 5 tables, 8 rounds and 32 boards, with each pair making up the boards they would have played against pair 9/10 (those pairs are relaying on this movement, so it is only one set of 4 boards that everyone needs to make).  The drawback is that we will have two sitouts, where without predealt hands, we had none and the games will take way too long.

UPDATE:

I asked about this on Bridge Winners and someone suggested that I look at a paper on this topic by Matthew Johnson.  His code no longer works (and tries to do everything including double dummy analysis), but the underlying idea is simple and elegant -- take a sorted hand, deal it once according to a random permutation and then deal it again, this time to the target combination of cards.

So, I went ahead and implemented the algorithm. It is less than 200 lines of Python code ... The program is here and this is what the output looks like.  The output can be printed out, cut into pieces and used to deal the hands.

So, in summary, to use predealt hands in small games:
  1. If you are running a Howell movement with 3.5 or 4.5 tables, have everyone make the hands they would have played against the sitout pair.
  2. If you are running a Mitchell movement where everyone does not play all the boards, have the pairs make the boards they will not be playing.
  3. If you are running a full game, use the 2-stage process above. The predeal.py program will provide the instructions.  There is very little information leakage and people can play the boards that they make.

Poker on the last round

At the weekly club game, our last round was against the pair who usually win. "How are you guys doing?," one of them asks as he sits down. "Pretty good," I reply.

Maybe if we have a good round against these guys, we can win tonight.

First board: they open a 11-13 NT, raised to 2NT and they play there. At other tables, the auction goes 1D-1NT.  1NT played from the other direction turns out to be easier to defend.  First board to the bad guys.

Second board, the bidding is wild.  It goes:
W
West
N
Pard
E
East
S
Me
1
1
4
4
5
5
6
Dbl
All Pass

6H doubled, going 2 down is par on the board -- they are cold for 5S and we are cold for 4H. This turns out to be an average board -- some pairs are in spades and others are in hearts.

Third board is another wild board, but this time they forget to double us and we get a top after going down 3 in 5H.   6C made, as did 5NT their way.  One to the good guys.
W
West
N
Pard
E
East
S
Me
4
5
5
All Pass

So, last board of the night, for all the marbles.  Another wild hand (I am South):


West made the best possible lead, of the King of diamonds.  Click Next to follow the play.

West, who had the 4th spade and the queen of diamonds, gets squeezed as I run off the hearts. When East didn't return a diamond, I could see this squeeze coming, and so as a flourish, I even discarded the ace of clubs!

I was very happy to have made six on a squeeze, but it was a bottom board for us. Turns out that everyone was making six (probably misdefense by West), but all the other pairs were in 3NT.  How? Perhaps the bidding went 1D-1H-2NT-3NT?

After all the wildness, the round itself turned out to not matter. We ended up winning by a couple of boards.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

This won't happen again

I religiously play the bridgez tournament everyday (if you don't have a Windows machine and therefore can not play using the wbridge5 client, then use this website to play the bridgez tournament).

Inevitably, the wbridge5 robot places very high in the rankings, perhaps because it understands the opponents' and partner's signals perfectly.   In the Nov. 17 tournament, however, I managed to beat the wbridge5 robot. In fact, it looks like I beat out all but one of the humans.


What this probably means is that I took a few against-the-odds positions and they paid off. Still, I'm happy to have beaten the robot.  That probably won't happen again.

p.s. Lest you get the wrong idea:  67% is way outside my usual range -- I currently average around 55%.

In my dreams

How bad is it to squeeze your opponent, and then let them slip away because you call for the wrong card?

Happened to me on this hand at a recent Sectional.  I was South, playing 3NT and this is how the play should have gone (click Next to see the plays):


I had the count of the hand and had watched the discards, so I knew West was down to three hearts, a club and two spades. But I got so excited that I was going to carry out my first squeeze that instead of calling for the top spade from dummy, I called for the top club.

How sad is that?

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Sad one no trumps

Playing 2/1 with a 15-17 NT doesn't mean that opening 1-NT when you have a balanced hand and high card points in that range is automatic.  There is some room for judgment. In the club game yesterday, there were two such hands, and I managed to get it wrong both times.  See if you can do better.

Do you open 1NT in first seat with this hand?
S
Me
KJ9xx
AKx
Kxx
Qx


Reasons to open 1NT: You have a balanced hand, and points in the short suits. The spade suit is good, but not great.  You have no good rebid if you start out 1S.
Reasons to open 1S: It gets your suit across. The field will open this 1S and at matchpoints, it's good to stick with the field. You have no way to discover a 5-3 fit after you start out 1NT.

I opened 1NT.  On this hand, partner turned out to have 10 points, 4 hearts and 3 spades. 4S made 5 at every table after the auction went 1S-3S. 3NT went down 1 after our auction went 1NT-2C-2S-3NT.

How about this hand?  Would you open it 1 NT in 3rd seat?
S
Me
KQ
Qx
KQJ10
Q10xxx

I do have 15 high card points, but no aces and the texture of the hand is awful. I decided to downgrade it and open it 1D (can't open 1C and reverse either, can I?) showing where I lived.  Partner bid 1H and when I rebid 1NT, he rebid 2H.  2H played from his side went down 1.  If you had opened 1NT, partner would have transferred you to hearts and passed. Played from your side, the club queen is protected and the strong hand is not visible. Defense is considerably harder, and you'll make either 8 tricks or 9.

After the game, I didn't even wait to learn how we did -- I'm sure something awful, well south of 50%.

p.s. Bridge Winners polls on these two hands:  http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/bidding-problem-2999/ and http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/bidding-problem-3000/.  I have gotten into the habit of posting hands that posed me problems. The comments and votes help me learn how to think about these types of hands better.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Playing the common game

Visiting New York, I wheedled Bill into playing with me again. We won the North-South direction, with 59% although it didn't seem like that good a game while playing.

Partly, this was because the opponents were not making very many mistakes. On board 1, for example, they bid 4S and played a double-dummy line to make 4S:

Board 1 (10/29/13)


N Deals
None Vul
 Q9652
 83
 KQ8
 987

 T843
 AKJ
 6
 QJT62
N
WE
S
 AKJ7
 Q97
 A952
 43
7
1114
8
 -
 T6542
 JT743
 AK5






















See if you can figure out the line to make 4S on the lead of the 8 of hearts.

On board 13, the opponents at our table found a slam that most of the field didn't. Shouldn't everyone find the slam on these cards?

Board 13 (10/29/13)


N Deals
Both Vul
 K8543
 7
 QT9652
 7
13
 A2
 KT96
 AK87
 QT6
N
WE
S
 Q9
 AJ8532
 3
 AK94
5
1614
5
 JT76
 Q4
 J4
 J8532



















It was not all bad luck, however.  There was one bad board that was the result of me making an anti-field decision.  Sitting South, what do you lead if you hold this hand and the auction has gone 2NT-3NT?

 42
 T874
 A965
 852

I figured that I had to lead a major. But which one? Since I had no entries, and partner rated to have 6-10 points, I decided to try to hit his length by leading a spade.  Bad idea. The field chose hearts, and that was the right lead on this hand because 3NT goes down if you lead that suit.  The whole hand:

Board 21 (10/29/13)


N Deals
N-S Vul
 T876
 AKQ
 QT7
 T74
21
 KJ3
 965
 8432
 J63
N
WE
S
 AQ95
 J32
 KJ
 AKQ9
11
520
4
 42
 T874
 A965
 852

















The Manhattan Bridge Club games are part of The Common Game.  Against the full field, these three are still our bad boards, but we improve marginally to 60%.  Why'd we do so well? Superior card play by partner, mostly. He was dropping doubleton queens like flies. On almost every board, we were at or better than the par score.

I was looking forward to expert discussion of these hands on Bridge Winners, but it turns out that the discussion is not for the night-series games.  Sigh.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Do you also zig?

Playing a BBO team match, you know the state of the match at the end of every hand.  With two boards to go, your team is leading by 16 imps.  So, you know the opponents are going to try to create swings.

On the last-but-one hand, RHO preempts 3C and you hold:


What's your bid?

This would be a straight-forward 15-17 NT bid, but 3NT seems a bit rich.  Opposite a typical 7 points, I don't see a way to 9 tricks unless partner has a long suit of his own.

Double has a narrow target -- only if partner bids 3H do I have a straight-forward response. If he bids anything else, we might end up too high.

What about simply passing? Partner rates to be short in clubs and my partner here was quite aggressive. Surely, he'd reopen?  If he reopens with a double, I can bid hearts or pass for penalty.  If he reopens in diamonds, I can bid 3NT. If he reopens in a major, I can cue-bid 4C.  Pass seems the most flexible option.

Well, not today.  Partner passed and we beat the contract 3 tricks, for a loss of 7 imps.  The other table played in 3NT.

This was the complete hand:

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Back to work

The best thing that happened during Wednesday's evening club game happened thousands of miles away -- Congress finally voted to reopen the "non-essential" parts of government, and I can finally go back to work.  Being furloughed was a weird experience.  Even though there was no financial impact -- I knew that I would ultimately get paid -- a furlough is not quite a paid vacation.  Instead, it was just a nasty cocktail of boredom (the kids and wife were off at school and work), frustration (I was unable to even write papers because I was cut off from my datasets and computational resources) and guilt (there is so much stuff I want to get done). Government by crisis is thoroughly demoralizing.  So, I am very, very happy that I will be off to the lab to do some research tomorrow.

But enough about work.  What about the bridge?

We came in second with 57% and three of our bad boards came against the pair who came in first. It was bad luck, though, because all three of the boards belonged to them and an extra trick was there for a good declarer on every one of those deals.  In the end, they beat us by 1.5 boards.  Sometimes, that's how it goes at match-points.

The fourth bad board, however, was a mishap and it came down to four decisions -- I managed to make the wrong one each time. You hold:
S
South (Me)
AJ7
9843
J5
KJ106
RHO deals and opens 1S non-vulnerable. Your call?.
Well, I passed. I do not have the shape, the points or the vulnerability to do a light negative double.  Would you have acted?

LHO also passes and partner doubles, for takeout.  Your call? I think it is close between 1NT (it is matchpoints, after all) and 2H.  I bid 2H.  
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
South
1
Pass
Pass
Dbl
Pass
2
Pass
Pass
2
?

East now comes back in, bidding 2S.  What is your call now?

I have a pretty good hand for defense. Partner rates to have 12-15 points. I have two spade tricks and a club trick or two.  I doubled on general principles.  Do you agree with the double?

Now, what do you lead? I do want to lead a trump, but AJx is a hard holding to lead from -- if partner has neither the K nor the 10, it blows a trick. Diamonds looked reasonably safe, so I led the Jack of diamonds.  Do you have a better lead in mind?

As it turns out, partner had an off-shape double, and his hand was:
N
Pard
Kx
QJxx
K10xxx
Ax
Dummy had AKxx of hearts and declarer had AQxx of diamonds.  The only way to beat 2S was to take 3 club tricks and 3 spade tricks on the trot.  I didn't find the killer club or spade lead and declarer escaped with 8 tricks.

2S doubled and made is never good.


These are the four decisions that led to this debacle:

(1) Passing the 1S in second seat.
(2) Bidding 2H instead of 1NT after partner balanced in.
(3) Doubling 2S for penalty in an attempt to catch up after failing to bid 1NT.
(4) Failing to find the club/spade lead.

Decision #1 was right on the merits. 2-4 were quite wrong.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Any way to avoid this squeeze?

Playing with a pickup partner in a BBO pairs tourney, I found myself squeezed out of my heart winners on this hand.  Is there any way to avoid giving declarer his slow 9th trick on this hand (click Next to view the play)?


And yes, with the Jack of spades dropping, declarer has 9 tricks if he guesses to play diamonds correctly. But it appears that most of the field did not make 3NT.  Was the declarer at my table good or was the South defender poor?

Monday, September 30, 2013

Are we there yet?

If you, like me, are an intermediate player, a tricky question is whether you are getting better. You can check whether you are doing better in club games, tournaments, but the vagaries of partnerships can trip you up -- you may be doing better simply because your regular partner is better. Or worse because a regular partnership has broken up.

Another way to gauge whether you are better, of course, is to play against a computer and see if you are getting better scores than before. The robots are not any better, and the field probably isn't either.

It has been a few months since I played a robot tourney on BBO, so I decided to see how well I did.  It appears that the format has been changed, and the tourneys are now flighted.  BBO put me in flight B and I came in first in B, but only 3rd overall.   So, at first blush, it appears that there is no improvement -- coming in 3rd out of 20 players is about where I usually landed up a few months ago.

Disappointing!

Still, digging further, I see that there were just two hands that made a difference.  One positive and one negative.

Hand 2 was the negative influence. The thing is that I still do not know whether I made the right decision (scoring is IMPs).  I bid 3H and made 4 for a pick up of 0.9 imps.  Actually bidding and making 4 would have been worth 9 imps (enough to win).  Would you have bid 4H on this hand?
At the table, I decided that my club shortness was offset by the unsupported Jack, and so my hand was not worth any upgrade. My hearts were piss-poor, so I took the low road. Right decision?

Next question: how do you play the hearts?  Lacking the 10 of hearts, I led low to the King. That struck gold and I was soon in +170.  Lots of others seem to have tried to run the jack and finding that they now had 2 heart losers.  Which is why I actually gained imps for not bidding the thin game.

Hand 5 was the positive influence and the reason I at least came in third -- by bidding and making a vulnerable game that the field went down in. 
Would you have bid 4S on this hand?  My diamond singleton, 9-card fit and two aces convinced me.  The field was also in game.  East leads the two of hearts.  Plan the play.

Well, if East has 4 hearts (likely from the lead) and 6 diamonds (likely from the bid: if West had 5 diamonds and no spade honors, he would surely raise to 5D), he will have only 3 black cards. Most likely, I thought, a singleton spade and 2 clubs.  In that case, game is cold -- I can lose one spade, one diamond and one club.  So, that's what I played for, changing the way I played the clubs once East showed up with 2 spades (why didn't he lead his singleton?). The field, on the other hand, seemed to be finessing clubs the wrong way, so the play here was worth 9 imps. 

Maybe I am getting better -- a year ago, I'd have been played the club suit in isolation too.  Now, I can see that the best way to play clubs (taking the bidding, presence of two spades and heart lead into account) is to cash the Ace and lead towards the queen.

Another possibility exists of course. It never even occurred to me in the play.  What if East had a singleton heart and 4 clubs?  That would explain the heart lead and the lack of a club lead.  My line in clubs would then be the worst ... I should have checked that East did not start with a singleton heart by ruffing a heart ...

Aargh.

No one plays bridge because it's an easy game.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Good players sometimes err

We were playing in a club game against the best pair in the room (they'd go on to win, with a 69% game). We are North-South (I am South) and we get too high in the auction:
.
Board: 16
Vul: N-S
Dlr: North
N
North
10x
Qxx
xxx
QJ10xx
.
W
Defender
Kx
xxx
Qxxx
Axxx
Lead: 4
E
East
Qxx
xxx
Kxxx
xxx
.
S
Me
AJ9xxx
AKJx
Ax
K
.
The bidding goes:
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
Me
Pass
Pass
11
Pass
12
Pass
23
Pass
3
Pass
3
Pass
3NT
Pass
4
All Pass
(1) 16+ artificial
(2) 0-7, artificial
(3) 20+, 5+ spades

I get the lead of a low diamond and immediately, I see that I have one loser each in clubs and diamonds. I need to play the spades for one loser, but there is only entry in dummy, so I can not take two spade finesses.  Any ideas?

I took East's King of diamonds with the Ace and decided to see if I could sneak a trick past them. I led the king of clubs like a man who has Kx and wants to enter dummy to take a finesse.  West took his Ace of clubs though and cashed his Queen of diamonds.  He then played a third diamond and I ruffed.  What now?

I went to dummy with the Queen of hearts and tried to run the 10, but West had the King of spades. He now thought for a while and put a club on the board.

Time for thought.  From the bidding (2S-3H-4S), everyone at the table knows that I have 6 spades and 4 hearts. I have already shown up with 2 diamonds and therefore, I could have had only the singleton king of clubs. Why would West put me on the board, begging me to finesse the spade again?

Only if he had the KQ tight of spades! In that case, he'd be worried that if I was stuck in my hand, I'd have no choice but to bang down the Ace, felling the queen and making the contract!

So, I led spade from dummy. East played a low spade. Decision time.  I decided to go with my gut. West could not have made such a rookie mistake as to give me a finesse opportunity if the finesse was working. I went up with the Ace.

Wouldn't you know it?  East had the Queen of spades.  They had given me the opportunity to make the contract by making a defensive error and I didn't believe that they had ...

Monday, September 9, 2013

The difference between set puzzles and real play

I've written before about the 16-board free online tournament that is run by bridgez. I can not praise the tournament enough -- it has really improved my card play. As a bonus, because it is only 16 boards, I play less computer bridge than before (more time for other things), but get more benefit out of it -- the best of all worlds!

There is one feature of the tournament I do not care for, though. The very first board is usually a fixed contract.  Everyone in the tournament is playing the exact same contract and so, you are being ranked purely on your card play.

Take this board, for example, from a recent tournament (cards are approximate since I can not find a way to get back past boards).  You are in 7D and South leads the 3 of clubs. What's your plan?
W
Dummy
xxx
AKxxx
J93
xx
Lead: 3
E
You
AQJ10
AKQ10872
AK


Here is the thing: you know this is a "fixed board" and that 7D can be made. So, how do you play it?  The spade finesse is less than 50% (there is the danger of a ruff).  If you can set up one heart, though, you are home and you can if hearts are 4-4. Try it first and fall back on the spade finesse only if hearts are not 4-4. How do you do this?  You will need three entries to dummy, and you have it in diamonds.  So, lead the 10 of diamonds to the Jack and if they both followed, ruff a heart with the Ace of diamonds. Now, lead to the 9 of diamonds and ruff another heart high. Now, back to dummy by leading the 2 to the 3 and and play Ace and King of hearts on which you throw two spades. If hearts break 4-4, you have a parking spot for your queen. Otherwise, take the spade finesse.

I did this, but I did this only because I knew that this was Hand no. 1.  Had this been an anonymous hand at the local club, I am quite sure I'd have been at the mercy of the spade finesse.  So, in that sense, the "fixed" hand does not do anything to improve my card play.   Loosely speaking, this is the difference between solving end-game puzzles in chess ("3 moves to mate") and actually finding spectacular checkmates in a real game.

Another example, this time from a few days ago.  Again, the cards are approximate.  The opponents are in 4S on an auction that seems to have gone 1S-2H-2S-4S.  Partner leads a diamond.  What's your defense?
.
N
Dummy
Jx
KQJxxx
xxx
AJ
W
You
xx
xxx
Axxx
Kxxx
Lead: ♦7















Again, the thing to realize that because this is board #1, it is a puzzle and not a real hand. The contract is beatable. The threat, obviously is dummy's hearts. Partner has no diamond tricks, so the only hope is that he has the Ace of hearts, Queen of spades and Queen of clubs (they must be in a 25-point game).  That, along with the Ace of diamonds, will beat the contract.

So, I took my Ace of diamonds and tabled the king of clubs.  This has the additional benefit that it takes out dummy's club entry immediately.  That was the winning play, but is this something I would do in a real matchpoint club game?  I am not so sure.

p.s. this grew out of  a comment I started to leave on Paul Gipson's blog ...