No free lunch

There is no free lunch.  By avoiding the need to jump, Precision lets you stay low when you have 17-19 points and partner is broke.  But on the other hand, something like this hand could arise as it did during a pairs tournament at the OKC regional:

.

Board: 3

Vul: E-W

Dlr: South

N

Pard

♠

Q98

♥

J94

♦

K8

♣

K9632

.

W

West

♠

KJ53

♥

10763

♦

Q752

♣

J

Lead: ♣J

E

East

♠

4

♥

AK52

♦

J964

♣

8754

.

S

Me

♠

A10762

♥

Q8

♦

A103

♣

AQ10

.

Our bidding went:

South (me)

North (pard

1♣¹

2♣²

2♠³

4♠⁴

—

—

(1) 16+ artificial

(2) 5+ clubs, 8+ points

(3) 5+ spades

(4) fast arrival

It is a hopeless contract on the lie of the cards.  Standard bidders started with a 15-17 1NT and played in the comfortable 3NT contract.  This was in a regional pairs game, and close to zero matchpoints out of 15.

On the other hand, the opponents opened a 15-17 NT on this hand and could never catch up:

.

Board: 16

Vul: E-W

Dlr: West

N

Pard

♠

—

♥

643

♦

KJ943

♣

AK1032

.

W

West

♠

AKJ53

♥

J102

♦

A52

♣

QJ

Lead: ♣A

E

East

♠

Q87

♥

Q7

♦

1086

♣

98654

.

S

Me

♠

109642

♥

AK985

♦

Q7

♣

7

.

West opened her hand a 15-17 NT and found the auction quickly spinning out of her control:

W

West

N

Pard

E

East

S

Me

1NT¹

2NT²

Pass

3♦³

3♠⁴

Pass

Pass

Pass⁵

—

—

—

—

(1) 15-17

(2) Minors

(3) choice of minor

(4) Cut it out guys.  I have a 5-card suit!

(5) Not sure if partner will bid again if I double.

3S down 3 was 300 to the good guys and a matchpoint top.  Those two boards evened out and we ended up with 53% over two sessions for fourth place and 2.3 gold points.  Had I not forgotten our system a couple of times, we may have won the thing outright.

Confusing the defense

It is match-points and I was playing against three robots.  The bidding went:

W

West

N

Pard

E

East

S

Me

—

—

1♦

1♥

1♠

3♥

All Pass

Dummy comes down with 4 hearts and a diamond void. Plan the play on the lead of the 4 of diamonds.

N

North

♠

AJ83

♥

9842

♦

—

♣

Q9432

Lead: ♦4

S

South

♠

952

♥

AKJ10

♦

K10652

♣

6

Yes, I over-called my chunky 4-card suit; wouldn't you? Anyway, assume you did and partner raised to the "law" level. How do you play this?

It is a little hard to count tricks in this situation. With the lead, I have two top tricks: Ace of spades and king of diamonds. And three hearts if I give up the queen. That is 5 tricks. Where are four more tricks? One way is to use all 4 of dummy's trumps to ruff.  In order to enter back to my hand, though, I have to give up a club. And the opponents will lead trump at that point. So, it is only 3 dummy ruffs, 3 hand ruffs and two top tricks. Only 8 tricks. What am I missing?

What I was missing was that the opponents had not led trump yet. I needed to plan the hand assuming that the defense will not find a trump switch. The defense thinks I have five trumps and so, I need to act like a guy who has a spade honor and is missing heart honors.  If I had Q10 of spades and only AJTxx of hearts, I would be throwing a club, so that is what I need to throw from the dummy.

The second thing that I was missing was that even if the opponents led a trump, I may need only 3 ruffs in dummy if I can finesse the queen of trumps.  So, 3H has a a couple of chances. I need to maximize both.

One advantage of playing robot tournaments is that I can look over the other boards and see what would have happened if I had thrown a club on the first trick. Then, East cashes his King of clubs (to show where his entry lies) and leads a diamond, hoping his partner has a singleton heart honor and can ruff in front of dummy.  Instead, if one throws away a spade (as I did), East simply continues diamonds (go figure) and then once a club is led, they find the trump switch. At that point, if I take the finesse, I scamper home with 9 tricks (if the finesse loses, I get only 7 tricks: which is why throwing a club on the first trick is so important).

The complete deal:

p.s. The double-dummy line to make 3H without resorting to subterfuge is very interesting. Essentially, it involves ruffing the first trick (!), cutting defender's communications in diamonds and then finessing the spades. Highly unlikely that I would find it at the table!

Reversing dummy

In an effort to improve my declarer play, I have been using the bridge software wbridge5.  I can play at a table with 3 robots, and if the robots are set at the maximum level, they bid, play and defend quite well. As far as I can tell, wbridge5 is a little better than BBO's advanced GIB robots in terms of bidding and signalling. Also, the deals are more realistic in that one can not make decisions based on having been dealt the most high-card points. Plus, it saves me 2.5c a hand ...

Having bid and played out the hand, I can ask the software to tell me the par on the deal. The report includes how many tricks one can make in all 20 possible trump-declarer combinations. These are, of course, double-dummy and it is not possible to expect to get to par always, but it is a pretty good way to gauge one's play of the hand both as declarer and as defender. (The human plays the hand for the robot if the robot partner ends up declaring).

The contract is 2H by North.  East leads the 7 of diamonds. West takes his Ace of diamonds and leads a trump. How many tricks can  you take?

My plan was to reverse dummy and to ruff twice in hand.  Two top tricks in clubs, ruff a club, ruff a diamond and four tricks in hearts (assuming hearts break 3-2) makes 8 tricks. Making 2H is, however, not par. You need to make 9 tricks. Can you see it?

The best line, believe it or not, is to establish the spades and forget about ruffing a diamond (click Next to see the play):

Is this simply a double-dummy line or is it something that you would think of doing at the table? It seems unsafe, since if spades are 4-2 and the hand with 3 hearts gets in, they can hold me to 7 tricks.

A failure of imagination

Playing online, everyone non-vulnerable, I pick up this nice hand.  Playing 2/1, what do you open?

I decide to open 1S. If partner can't scrape up a bid, 1S may be enough. Partner replies 2S (the opponents are silent throughout).  Now what?

If partner has his points in diamonds and not in hearts, we may have a slam. What do I need from him for the slam to be cold?  Kxxx xxxx KQx xx would do.  So, I decide to bid 3D, a help-suit game try.  Partner should reply either 3S or 4S and then I can decide.

Partner replies neither 3S nor 4S. Instead, he bids 4D.  The bids so far:

Now what do you bid?

Can you envision a grand slam because that is what you make? This is what partner has:

At the table, I convinced myself that if partner had KJxx of diamonds, he was unlikely to also hold the King spade and the King of clubs.  So, the slam would be on two finesses (diamond queen & spade king, for example). I chickened out in 4S.

Partner's 4D was a very descriptive bid, but I had had a failure of imagination.

Comedy of errors

The crucial thing when playing error-prone bridge is, of course, to not be the last to make a mistake.  This hand illustrates what I am talking about.

Playing online, we used a precision auction to investigate slam and stop at 5S:

The 1C was Precision, showing 16+ points.  Partner's 1NT is natural, showing 8-11 points.  I showed my 5 card suit and he raised with 3-card support. 4C is a control-bid as is 4H.  This denies a diamond control, so I know that partner does not have the Ace of diamonds. Should I explore slam?

This is where Culbertson's rule comes in handy. If you can come up with a minimum hand consistent with the bidding where slam is cold, then explore slam. What does it need for slam to be cold? Partner needs the king of spades, Ace of hearts, QJ of diamonds and KJ of clubs.  That is 14 points. Partner probably has 10-11. So, what should I do? I should sign off in 4S.

But ... mistake #1, I bid Roman-Keycard Blackwood.  Partner showed 1 key card with 5D.  East now doubled for the lead.  That is mistake #2 -- he should not have doubled (you will see why shortly). I bid 5S which gets passed out.

West, following his partner's lead-directing double, leads the 10 of diamonds. This is mistake #3.  What should I play from dummy?

The 10 would normally deny the Jack, so it clear to put up the Queen. When East goes up, I can now finesse his Jack with K-7. Watch the spots! Unfortunately, I failed to do that. I woodenly played low from the board -- mistake #4.  The right play is why East was wrong to double -- left to my own devices, I can not play the diamonds for only one loser.

But East didn't make a mistake now. He correctly ducked the 10 diamond lead and my 5S contract was toast.  I had made the last mistake on this hand, in not going up with the Queen of diamonds.

Playing in a sectional Swiss over the weekend, there was board after board of this type of play-of-the-hand mistakes. Mostly, my mistakes didn't cost us imps, but they prevented us from gaining useful imps. We ended up losing matches when the opponents managed to find and bid against-the-odds slams and games.  We would gain 1-2 imps a board and then lose it all on the freak hand. Gaining 2-3 imps a board, which is what we should have been doing sans card play issues, would have gotten us a better finish.

As it was, though, losing our matches early allowed us to blitz back through the soft-underbelly of the field, and finish 3rd in B. Still, it felt ridiculous to be playing a C team in the last game of the Open Swiss and finding that we were getting a double game swing on this hand:

.

Vul: None

Dlr: East

N

Pard

♠

KJx xxxx

♥

xx

♦

xx

♣

xx

.

W

West

♠

x

♥

xx

♦

Jxxx

♣

AKQJxx

E

East

♠

xx

♥

AQJ xxxx

♦

xx

♣

xx

.

S

Me

♠

AQx

♥

Kx

♦

AKQxx

♣

xxx

.

At our table, the auction went:

W

West

N

North

E

East

S

Me

—

—

2♥

3♦

Pass

3♠

Pass

4♠

All Pass

You could argue over whether you should double or bid 3D or 2NT with my hand (what would you do?). But you have got to do something ...  At the other table, our teammates preempted a level higher (7-card suit, 6 losers whichever way you look at it) and the auction went:

East

West

3♥

4♥

—

—

Somehow, both contracts made (can you come up with a legitimate line for 4H to make?) and it took us a while to realize that the board was not a push.

Partner doesn't have it

I went looking for perfecto bids and went past our last positive score.  At matchpoints, of course, this is a disastrous and we could not recover from three zeros.

Holding:

N

Me

♠

xxx

♥

AKxxx

♦

Kxx

♣

Qx

I opened 1H and this was the auction:

W

West

N

Me

E

East

S

South

—

1♥

Pass

1♠

Pass

1NT

2♣

Pass

Pass

Dbl

Pass

2♦

All Pass

That reopening double put partner in an uncomfortable position. His hand was 4-1-4-4 with 8 points i.e. he held neither 2 hearts nor 5 spades and his clubs were 9 high, so he didn't think he could pass 2C.  1NT and defending 2C were our last positive scores. Given that the auction looks like a misfit, I ought to have passed.

Here was another poor decision. I held:

N

North

♠

87

♥

K10875

♦

Qxx

♣

KQ10

I passed and the auction was:

W

West

N

Me

E

East

S

South

—

Pass

2♥

2♠

Pass

2NT

Pass

3♣

Pass

3NT

All Pass

Partner had bid 2S essentially to play since I had passed originally. Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo.  I was so sure that his hand was strong that I drove to game opposite the 16 or so points I imagined him having.

The third zero of the night came about on this deal.  I held:

N

North

♠

Axx

♥

9xxxx

♦

x

♣

Axxx

The auction was:

W

West

N

North

E

East

S

South

—

—

1NT¹

2♥²

Pass

4♥

All Pass

(1) 15-17

(2) Natural, with extra shape

4H went down 1. The rest of the field was in 3S their way, going down 1.

As the bridge maxim goes "if you expect partner to have a card for your bid, he doesn't have it."  The thing  common to all my bids was expecting partner to have something -- shape in the first, points in the second and tenaces in the third -- that he didn't have.  There were hints in each of the deals that pointed me to this, if I had bothered to look. In the first hand, partner passed over 2C, denying the ability to bid 2H or 2S. In the second, I had passed the first time, so partner is telling me something by retreating from 2NT.  In the third hand, I need too many nice things to happen to make 4H and I do have two defensive tricks.  So, 3H is probably enough.

Squeeze wanted

As an intermediate player, I set goals to meet. As in consistently doing something that I find hard to do.

My last goal was to find and bid slams, especially grand slams. So, it was cool, therefore, when we managed to bid and make two grand slams in the course of a 8-board robot tournament on BBO.

The first was 7D found in the teeth of aggressive competition:

and the other was a slow march towards 7S after North opened 1S and I bid 2C:

It was not completely rosy. We missed this cold small slam on the final board:

We would have found it, I think, if I had bid 3S instead of 4H. Still 2 of 3 slams is not bad. 

Time to set the next skill-based goal. My next goal is to find a squeeze at the table. I know how squeezes work ... but as far as I know, I've never successfully executed a squeeze.

I had high hopes on this deal (yes, I miscounted my points and opened 2NT -- the things one does to a robot partner!):

West leads a spade. I took the King and led back a heart. West took his ace and led back another heart. I took my winners in hearts and spades. And the end-position when the last heart was led from dummy was:

.

Vul: None

Dlr: South

N

North

♠

—

♥

—

♦

Kx

♣

xxx

.

W

West

♠

x

♥

—

♦

Jx

♣

Jxx

E

East

♠

—

♥

—

♦

Qxx

♣

Qxx

.

S

Me

♠

—

♥

—

♦

A10x

♣

AK10

.

East throws a club and West throws a spade.  It is declarer who is squeezed. The only chance now seems to be to finesse the 10 and hope East started with QJ. If East splits his QJ, then I can go back to dummy with King of diamonds and repeat club finesse. That doesn't work here with the honors split.

Oh, well. I'm sure a squeeze will come one of these days. I'll keep looking.