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.

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.

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):

Pair	Boards
1	13-16
2	1-4
3	17-20
4	5-8
5	21-24
6	9-12
8	25-28

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:

Pair	Boards
1	19-21
2	13-15
3	1-3
4	10-12
5	16-18
6	4-6
8	7-9
9	22-24
10	25-27

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.

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?

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.