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 W E S	AKJ7  Q97  A952  43
7 11 14 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 W E S	Q9  AJ8532  3  AK94
5 16 14 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 W E S	AQ95  J32  KJ  AKQ9
11 5 20 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.

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:

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.

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?

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.

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

1♣¹

Pass

1♦²

Pass

2♠³

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 ...

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 ...