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.