Squeezing The Dummy

New Site!

2009-03-29T01:42:00.002-06:00

The new site is up (finally!) Thanks for all your loyalty, I am proud of this site, and think my new site will be even better. Go to http://www.justinlall.com if you're interested.

OzOne

2007-04-24T10:47:00.000-06:00

Tonight I'll be playing an exhibition match against the OzOne team on BBO. I'll be playing with David Grainger, Bart Bramley, and Jay Stiefel.

A wealthy donor founded the OzOne project in order to increase the standard of the Australian teams sent for international competition. They have recruited some of the best talent in Australia to work on their partnerships and become great, much like the Dallas Aces of old. Part of their training is playing exhibition matches on BBO which they do regularly.

Our opponents tonight will be Richman and Nagy with Hans and Nunn at the other table. I met both pairs for the first time last year in the Cavendish and have since seen them at NABCs (North American nationals). I even got to play a session with Hans on BBO.

Richman and Nagy play a variant of MOSCITO, a system that I have never played against since it is illegal in most of the tournaments I play in. As far as I can tell it is a very active strong club system with transfer openings, 4 card majors, and weak NT. I am really excited to play against this system and I think it will be a good learning experience. You never know, sometime in the future I may be playing against this system at a world championship so practicing against it could turn out to be very useful.

Needless to say I don't know the best way to defend against MOSCITO or the 1-level openers, so if anyone has any suggestions let me know before 7:00 central tonight. Thanks!

Update: We won 53-13 in a 20 board match. I'll try to post a match report at some point.

Bridge Documentary: Resolution

2007-04-23T17:46:00.001-06:00

Many people have been asking me why the documentary is no longer available at YouTube. Perhaps this excerpt from an e-mail written to me by Andy Pedersen, director of In The Cards, will clarify:

I appreciate your desire to introduce the show -- and bridge -- to a wider audience, but the YouTube postings will actually limit the show's potential audience. It's no secret that television is a commercial business; no American, European or Asian television network will invest in a show and broadcast it to a mass audience if it feels that most of the core audience, bridge players in this case, have already seen the show. The YouTube posting could also damage my chance to make a longer and more bridge-accurate version of the documentary that I would then package on DVD with lots of extras (including a section about the Americans' very dramatic victory during the '05 world juniors).

But like I said, I'm afraid it's all jeopardized by the YouTube postings.

Essentially Andy is worried that overexposure will cause other markets not to want to air the documentary. Fair enough, but one could argue the reverse as well. If there was lots of interest on YouTube the networks may think the market for In The Cards is larger than they realized and it may encourage them to pick it up. Only a small fraction of the market would ever see the YouTube postings anyways, and those that did could create a huge word-of-mouth buzz. You see very similar things happen with free music downloads of relatively unknown artists.

This is not my call though, Andy is the copyright holder and has every right to choose to have the YouTube clips taken down, and that is what he has chosen to do. Hopefully Andy is very successful at selling the documentary to US and foreign networks, and hopefully other film-makers follow suit (no pun intended).

Before the videos were taken down part 1 of the documentary had been viewed about 5,000 times all the way down to part 5 which was viewed about 1,500 times. The small bridge blogosphere gave it a lot of hype including links here, here, here, here, here, and here. There were also posts on rec.games.bridge, the bridgebase forums, and netbridge.dk about it.

I even became a celebrity for a few days when bridgebase linked me on their main page inviting people to view the documentary. My traffic went from about 300 unique hits a day to 3,000.

I sincerely hope that the YouTube postings both exposed the bridge world to a larger audience and helped Mr. Pedersen's cause rather than hurting it.

Justinlall.com

2007-04-23T13:38:00.000-06:00

Many months ago I formed a great idea for a website. It would be complete with book reviews, blog posts, articles, forums, news, link, and a lot more. Just as there was a need for quality bridge blogs when I started this blog, there is a need for more quality bridge sites now. I purchased the domain justinlall.com and began learning how to make websites. Unfortunately making a good website is a lot of hard work, who knew? Too bad I'm so lazy...

I still want to make this project happen and have decided to leave website building to the pros. If you are interested in designing my website then please e-mail me with the following information:

Any examples of past sites that you have designed.
A little background information about your web design experience.
Your price.

I want a site that is easy to navigate and has a clean look. Nothing too flashy.

My e-mail is justin.lall@earthlink net. Thanks in advance!

1C-(2D)-X...

2007-04-22T14:44:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about auctions that start 1-(2)-X-(p). This seemingly simple auction can quickly become one of the murkiest constructive bidding sequences in bridge.

The double can be made with both 4 card majors, one 4 card major, or a 1 suited hand with a major. It could even be made with 5-5 in the majors and a weakish hand. Opener can then bid a 3 card major himself or make a very nebulous cuebid. Fundamentally both the double and the cuebid are overloaded.

For instance, if the auction started 1-(2-X-(p)-? one might bid 3 with any of the following hands:

KQ43 KQ2 A43 AJ2
A2 A3 432 AKQJ32
KQ32 KQ92 4 A652
KQ3 AJ2 872 AKJ4

On hand 1 opener cannot just bid 4 as partner may have a 3 card suit, and 3N may be the right spot.

On hand 2 opener just needs a stopper and doesn't want to bid 4 and bypass 3N.

On hand 3 opener has an invitational strength hand with 4-4 in the majors and wants partner to pick a major. Some people may even be planning to pass a 3M bid by partner!

On hand 4 opener is strong and balanced with no stopper. and is hoping partner can bid 3N.

So the cuebid covers a GF with 1 major, strong with clubs, invitational or game forcing with both majors, or strong balanced with no stopper. Great! The first thing that is clear is that the cuebid needs to create a force. With hand type 3 you just have to bid game or bid 2 of a major. What's not clear is what responder's duty is; bid 4 card majors up the line or bid NT with a stopper? If he bids NT with a stopper then a major suit fit may be lost opposite hand type 1 (the most common). If he bids majors up the line then hand types 2 and 3 are screwed. Not to mention that 5-3 fits are going to be very difficult to find.

We also have the issue of finding 3N when opener has one 4 card major and a stopper and responder has no stopper and the other 4 card major. For instance if you have hand 1 the auction might go 1-(2)-X-(p)-3-(p)-3-(p)-3-(p)-? Should responder always bid 3N here, with or without a stopper? This risks some silly 3N contracts as well as wrongsiding the contract if the stopper is Kx or the like.

These aren't even the only problems with this auction. The other day I had an auction start 1-(2)-X-(p)-2-(p)-3-(p)-? My partner had 4 hearts and a diamond stopper and bid 3N, worried I had a hand like 4333 with no diamond stopper. I had 4 hearts and a game going hand and was worried my partner had bid 2 with only 3. If you don't believe this is possible, ask yourself what you would do with a hand like Kxx AKx Qxx xxxx. 2N is horrible with this hand type and 2 is really your only choice. Anyways, I passed 3N and we missed our best spot of 4. I pointed out to partner that he should bid 3 and I would bid 3 with 3 hearts and no diamond stopper. While he agreed with this he wondered what would have happened if our fit was spades and not diamonds; I would be endplayed over a 3 rebid.

There are no great solutions to this problem, but perhaps with some artificiality we can improve on this auction.

Bob Hamman has played for a long time that jump shifts are forcing after a negative double. In this auction 3M can be forcing, and that eliminates hand 1 from the immediate cuebid. Over 3 partner can bid 3 without a fit or diamond stopper and opener can bid 3N with a stopper. There is still a guess over a jump to 3 though.

This would leave the direct cuebid to show a strong hand with clubs or a strong balanced hand without a diamond stopper. This would leave responder free to bid 3N whenever they have a stopper, and bid 3M with a 5+ card suit. Definitely a big improvement.

Even better would be to use 2N as an artificial bid. Really, bidding 2N with a weak NT is not a good option anyways, you may have only half the deck and would much rather play 2 of a major. 2N could puppet to 3, then 3 could show 4-4 majors invite, 3M could be that major plus a stopper in diamonds, game forcing. 3N would be 18-19 balanced with a diamond stopper. A direct 3 would simply be GF in clubs or strong balanced without a stopper, 3M would be natural and forcing, denying a stopper, and a direct 3N would be based on club tricks and a diamond stopper (so partner won't pull with a 6 card major). This solves all hand types and eliminates guessing.

That would mean that 2M could frequently be based on a 3 card suit. Over the cue you only have a problem sorting out stoppers and 4-4 fits if opener has 4 spades and a stopper and responder has 4 hearts, less than 4 spades, and a stopper.

I think this is a great improvement for almost no cost on one of the worst auctions in bridge. You only lose a natural 2N (useless) and invitational 3 of a major bids (of very limited use), in order to gain a lot of clarity on the NT vs major decision. A nice advantage of forcing 3M bids is better slam bidding as well (as trumps are set earlier).

Hard Work

2007-04-20T07:56:00.000-06:00

Professionals at the top of all sports and mind games spend countless hours with coaches training to improve their games and keep their edge. For some reason this doesn't seem to hold true in bridge. Sure, the top players play a lot of hands (but not more than half of the year usually), but in general these are against weaker opponents and time is not spent critically analyzing the bidding and play. Is bridge inherently different from other games and sports?

I don't think so. Certainly there are diminishing returns from studying positions and analyzing hands, but that is true in all sports. The edge gained from studying is worth it to stay sharper than your opponents. In general I believe that once the paychecks start rolling in and your play reaches a certain level it is easy to become complacent and not work on your game. Your hunger and desire goes away, and your thought process turns to landing your next client.

The biggest reason the Aces were so successful is that they analyzed every card played and bid made together with a critical eye. They would have heated discussions that would sometimes result in hurt feelings, but it made them tough. It made them into a machine that would just make fewer errors than their opponents (except the Blue Team). Players on the Aces like Hamman, Wolff, Soloway, Goldman ended up becoming some of the best players in the world.

I have realized I don't want to become complacent, and I don't want my game to stagnate. To take it to the next level I have to practice and train every day with peers, essentially I can't just be lazy and be happy to get by with sub par performance. I have started training with Chilean junior Joaquin Pacareu and Josh Donn. I am also studying double dummy problems every day. Ideally we'd have a coach but no one fits the job, and if they did they would probably want to be compensated for it.

Yesterday we had several interesting hands. Here was an error I made that cost twelve imps. I picked up 2 AJ7 AKQT654 T6. I opened 1 and partner bid 2 which was game forcing. I chose to rebid 3 showing a solid suit and some extra values. Partner bid 3N. What would you do now?

I felt like I had shown my hand. I had shown solid diamonds and extra values, and that's what I had. At the table, I passed. After a lengthy discussion I believe that this was a mistake. Notably, my hand would be far worse if I had 2 spades and 1 club as opposed to my actual holding. Having 2 clubs is really important opposite a long suit; we have more chances to establish it and we won't be off 2 cashing tricks as often. For slam I really need very little, basically just good clubs. Also, it is very hard (but possible) to construct hands where 5 is going to go down so if I bid 4 and we end up playing 5 it's not the end of the world. Had I bid 4 that would catch a 5 bid from partner which would really turn me on (no spade cue means good clubs), and I could have bid the slam.

Without having Josh and Paca analyzing hands with me, I may have just continued thinking partners 3N bid was bad. Or I may have just been lazy and not tried to figure out what went wrong at all. I'm really excited about these sessions and am hopeful that I can improve my game and fix some holes in my thought processes.

Bridge Documentary

2007-04-19T07:45:00.000-06:00

A few years ago there were always cameras following my friend Gavin Wolpert around at bridge tournaments. Eventually I learned that a documentary was going to be made about him and his partner Vince Demuy. That didn't seem too exciting as I often hear about potential bridge documentaries and movies but the project always seems to fizzle out.

Not this time. On April 7th the documentary aired on CTV. Wait, CTV is Canadian! I was lucky enough to get to see it about a week ago in Gatlinburg when Gavin brought it on DVD. I was very hopeful that it could increase the visibility of bridge and enhance its image if done correctly.

For those of you masochistic enough to be loyal readers, you will remember that my concept of the best way to do something like this is to have almost no bridge content at all. The atmosphere and drama need to be the focus with actual hands playing a very small role so that even non-bridge players can watch and enjoy a movie or documentary on bridge.

In The Cards did not disappoint, the whole story being about a young partnership trying to prove themselves in a world of established professionals. Once they did that and got hired onto a major team they had to perform. All the while they had to maintain their friendship and partnership, a very hard thing to do. There was little talk about bridge. This is perfect because if someone who doesn't know how to play bridge watches the documentary they'll think, "That was really interesting, I want to learn bridge and become a part of that world. Bridge seems like a cool game." There was drama, big money, fierce competition, and highs and lows.

I really think that this documentary is great for the game. The only problem is that all the Americans and Europeans and Asians who don't have access to CTV may never see it. Because of this Alan Crank has put the documentary on YouTube. Since it's about a 45 minute documentary and YouTube can't handle videos that large he has cut it up into separate 9-10 minute segments.

So far only the first 2 parts are up, but as he gets more of them up I will update the list. I encourage everyone to watch the documentary and show it to all non bridge players they can, preferably young people. I also encourage all bridge bloggers to add links to the YouTube video. I really think that if bridge is going to try and get the attention of my generation it needs more media coverage of the young stars and their exciting lives. This video is a great start and we need to capitalize on it by giving it a lot of exposure.

Update: Part 3 is now up.

Update 2: Part 4 is up.

Update 3: Part 5 is up. Part 4 is apparently having some technical difficulties, but will be working again shortly. Gavin has also written his thoughts on the documentary. If you enjoyed it, I recommend reading what he has to say. If you have any relatives or non-bridge playing friends please tell them to watch this.

Recap

2007-04-18T13:45:00.000-06:00

I flew home two days ago after an exhausting 2 weeks of bridge. First was the San Diego regional, and from there I went to Gatlinburg. Overall I would say both of these tournaments were successes.

San Diego was a beautiful place to play a regional and had the most amazing weather I've ever seen. Being a Texan I'm not accustomed to anything other than scorching heat. I really enjoyed going on walks and being near the beach, it reminded me of when I lived in LA. I started off staying with my first time partner Grant Baze. We went over our card and knew what we were doing, but we did have an accident in the finals of a knockout because we had never played together before.

The auction went 1 on my left, X by Grant, 1 on my right, and I bid 2. Grant thought 2 would be the cuebid and 2 was natural, while I thought I was cuebidding. This resulted in an embarrassing down 5 in 2. In retrospect I think I shouldn't have risked bidding 2 undiscussed and that he shouldn't have risked passing. Generally it's best to safety play the auction and discuss it later. Grant was a great partner though and didn't say a word. This is a good auction for all partnerships to discuss, but we waited until after the session to discuss it. We lost this final by 3 so this was a decisive board.

We got redemption later in the week in a swiss team that we won in amazing fashion. With 1 round to go we were in third place pretty far back from first and second. We needed Joe Grue's team to get either 13 or 14 VPs, and we also needed a blitz. Basically we needed a miracle. We managed to get the parlay and ended with 93 VPs while the other two teams had 92 and 91 VPs.
Later in the week my friends from BBO, Phil Clayton and Matt Haag, came in and I got to party with them. We ended up going to Phil's house on a whim one night which was about an hour and a half drive (Orange County). It was a lot of fun and they were both great guys. Phil even grabbed an expensive dinner bill from me and refused to let anyone but himself pay.

Matt ended up being my nemesis in the next swiss team (where I played with Mike Passell as Grant had another date). We had to lead after 2 pass 4 with something like Kxxx of diamonds and xxx clubs and the spade ace. I opted for the aggressive lead of a diamond which let the contract make while Matt led a club. This match proved crucial as we ended up tied for second with Matt's team. I still like my diamond lead, I think it's best to lead aggressively on this type of auction as dummy will often have a long suit to establish and we need to set up our tricks first.

I was happy with how I played with Mike and Anita Cokins in the swiss teams, but early on in the knockouts with Grant I was playing terribly. I'm not sure why but I was very disappointed in my performance the first couple of days. My teammates Anita, Grant, Chris Compton, and later Mike Passell, all played very well. Luckily I was able to bounce back and play well at the end.

From San Diego I flew in to Knoxville and hung out with my best friend Jeremy Fournier. We had a good time, especially when we played Donkey Kong on SNES. I hadn't played that game in about 12 years but it was just like riding a bike, you never forget how to do it.

From there we drove to my house in Gatlinburg which was completely awesome. I had 9 roommates, all good friends of mine and mainly junior bridge players, and we had even more people coming over at night to hang out. Somehow I ended up playing pool for money even though I am a terrible pool player. Hustled yet again.

The bridge area was the craziest thing I had ever seen. There was a sea of people; I couldn't even find my teammates half the time. If you've never been to Gatlinburg, you should go, it is the biggest regional of the year. This year it broke 10,500 tables which is bigger than some nationals. There were 33(!!!) brackets of knockouts, and we were in the top bracket, so the competition was very tough. We ended up getting a 2nd and a 3rd/4th in 2 knockouts as well as winning 2 swisses. This was good for 120 masterpoints. That might sound like a lot, but there was a team that broke 230 masterpoints! That is the most anyone has ever won in a regional.

My teammates were John Kranyak, Kevin Bathurst, Shannon Cappelletti, and Stacy Jacobs. My partner was Ron Smith. I really loved this team and it had great harmony and chemistry. Everyone got along really well and played very well, and even in the heated post mortems no one ever said anything mean spirited. I really believe team harmony is important. Playing with Ron was a real pleasure, he encouraged me to do whatever I wanted and told me he would never hang me. Right he was!

One hand in third seat I opened light and Ron did not force to game with KTx AJxxx xxxx x. Remarkably I ended up in 3 making (they could have beaten me) with the opponents cold for slam! Ron didn't hang me with 5 trumps and a stiff by bidding 4, instead just giving a limit raise and figuring out by the opponent's 1 minute hesitations that he should just pass me in 3. Ron was also a very encouraging partner and never said a mean word.

Everyone on our team played well and I was happy with my play other than two hands. It was always fun to compare with Shannon because she would always have a ridiculous +600 on her card from nowhere. I started expecting it, and the one time she didn't have one of those Stacy did!

It looks like I will be playing a lot more this year so I'm going to buy a laptop so I can actually blog from the tournaments. I know I had a lot of good hands but just can't remember them right now. It's pretty much all a blur. I really love playing though and am looking forward to playing more.

Update: It turns out that Stacy has other talents besides bridge; she is also a blogger/writer. She wrote about Gatlinburg as well and has a picture of our team so go to her blog if you want to read more.

Lots of Bridge

2007-04-02T02:00:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be gone for 2 weeks, first in San Diego and then in Gatlinburg. In San Diego I will be playing with Grant Baze for the first time and I'm really excited about that. I've known Grant for half of my life, and he has always been extremely nice. He also happens to be one of the greatest players in the world and someone who I can learn a lot from. Our teammates will be Chris Compton and Anita Cokins. It should be a fun week, especially since I get to meet a long time BBO friend, Echognome, for the first time. My only fear is that I will forget the notes that Grant sent me, but I have studied hard and don't think I will.

After that I will be going to Gatlinburg, the biggest regional of the year. I'll be playing with Ron Smith, one of the most fun and relaxed people in the world, on a team with Kevin Bathurst, John Kranyak, Shannon Cappelletti, and Stacy Jacobs. It's my first time to go to Gatlinburg, but I've heard the playing area is amazing. I'll be renting a huge house with a bunch of the juniors and Ron that looks completely sick. There's a hot tub, 57 inch HDTV, 8 other TV's, pool table, swimming pool, BBQ, and 8 bedrooms. Hopefully these things won't be too distracting and I can play some really good bridge.

My goals for these tournaments are to play very solid and thoughtful bridge and make no stupid mistakes. My focus has been a little off recently, so I'll need to watch that. I should have a lot of interesting hands to post when I come back, and I may do a tournament report. See you in two weeks.

How To Read Your Opponents... Hesitations?

2007-04-01T12:26:00.000-06:00

Bridge and poker have a lot of similarities, but they diverge wildly in rules about tempo. In poker anything goes, you can hesitate whenever you like and try to fool your opposition, but in bridge you can never purposely mislead your opponents by hesitating. However, you can take inference from the opponent's hesitations (but never from partner's). This gives you a huge advantage if you know how to filter through this information and figure out what it means.

Let's start with an easy one. The opponents bid 1-1-2(hesitation) uncontested. The opponents are intermediates. What does the opening bidder have?

He will almost always have a 3 card raise. The other possibility is something like a 4441 14 count that was thinking of jumping to 3. However, most intermediates would not think about jumping with the latter hand, and if they did think about it they would probably do it. With a hand like 3451 it would take them some time to raise since it might just be a 4-3 fit. If you are thinking of balancing, it's less likely to be right with the information you now have. It also is more likely to be right to lead a trump if the opponents get to 4.

How about this one, you open 1 and your LHO thinks for a while and passes at favorable vulnerability. What does LHO probably have?

It is very likely he has at least an opening bid with diamond length. If you end up declaring this information could be very useful. I once had a funny hand where after that start to the auction my partner responded 1, and with 6 mediocre diamonds I chose to rebid 1N. Sure enough LHO had 5 diamonds and 1N was much better than the normal 2.

The thing you have to do to figure out what type of hands your opponents have for their hesitations is ask yourself what kind of hands will have a problem. Maybe in the latter case your LHO was thinking of overcalling for instance, but at favorable vulnerability if he wanted to overcall he probably would have. All the hand types where he will have a problem are hands with long diamonds and a good hand.

The best, and most confusing, clues you will find from the tempo come from the play. It is important to remember in the play that very often the opponents will try to deceive you with their tempo even though they are not allowed to. That is fine though, we can still exploit their tendencies.

Suppose you have Qxxxx in your hand and AJT9x in dummy. You lead the queen, LHO fumbles and gives it a 2 second hesitation and plays low. You should 100 % go up with the ace. If LHO had Kx he would never be considering playing the king looking at all the high ones in dummy. He would play low smoothly with that. With xx he may be idiotic enough to think that hesitating and playing low will make us think he has the king. Don't fall for it.

Now, suppose you have xx opposite KJTx and your opponents are experienced players. You lead towards the KJTx, and LHO thinks for a noticeable amount of time and plays low. Without the ace he wouldn't think for a long time as you could call him on it, if he wanted to deceive you when he held the Q he would think for maybe 1 or 2 seconds at most. So he has the ace. Why would an experienced player think with the ace in a situation he's probably seen 1000 times? With just the ace he would play low quickly. In my experience, they always have the AQ in this scenario. They want you to know they have the ace so that you go up with the king. So play the jack and lead up again, that way you'll have 2 tricks available from the suit. Be careful though, if your opponents are very inexperienced, they may just have the ace and not know what to do.

What happens if the opponents deviate from their tempo by playing very FAST? I had an interesting scenario involving that recently. I was in 7N. In the end game I had a good heart in my hand, a losing club, and a small diamond. Dummy had the AQ of diamonds and a losing club. RHO was known to have the winning club. I led my good heart and pitched a club from dummy and RHO pitched an extremely quick diamond. Now I had to guess whether I had squeezed RHO or if the finesse was on. I judged that RHO would only pitch a diamond that fast because he had seen the squeeze coming and was scared if he pitched a diamond slowly I'd realize he must have the king. As a result, he pitched too fast to compensate. If RHO simply had 2 small diamonds he would have nothing to worry about and would pitch in his normal tempo, or even hesitate to try and mislead me. So I dropped his now stiff king and made my contract.

Another situation where they're playing fast is when they literally pull a card to play before you have called from dummy. This almost always means that they're going to follow suit and cannot beat any finesse you could take. So if you have KQTxx opposite Ax and play the ace and another one and RHO pulls their card and is about to play it before you have even played from dummy I would recommend finessing the ten.

I cannot go over every situation where a variation from normal tempo gives you information, there are simply too many of them. Don't ignore it though, try and logically figure out what their problem could be and take advantage of it!

Forcing 2N bids

2007-03-27T08:00:00.000-06:00

In recent years there has been a movement towards defining a lot of 2N bids as forcing in uncontested auctions. Bidding lots of suits with a strong, balanced hand leads either to convoluted auctions where you never reveal the true nature of your hand or requires you to jump to 3N killing an enormous amount of bidding space. In general with balanced hands you always want to describe that feature as early and cheaply as possible.

In an auction like 1-(p)-1-(p)-2 if responder happens to have 4324 or 4333 with 16 points he has to bid either 2 or 3 and later guess whether to go past 3N in order to raise diamonds. This leads to silly things like bidding THREE suits with a balanced hand and possibly never bidding NT. If you are willing to give up on an invitational 2N you can use 2N here as forcing, solving these issue and leading to much smoother auctions. Of course this leaves you stuck with a balanced 10 or 11 points, but some of those hands can game force and several can bid 3. It's unlikely that 2N will be a much better spot than 3 anyways.

Auctions like 1m-(p)-2N and even 1M-(p)-2N can be played as forcing for similar reasons. The biggest advantage, though, is that the integrity of your other sequences is preserved as you no longer need to create auctions to handle the balanced hand type. Of course, barring artificiality, with 11 or 12 and a balanced hand you will need to either game force or make a non forcing bid. That may seem like a significant loss but keep in mind how narrow that range is. Much more often you will hold a balanced game force, and on those hands you will now be well positioned to reach an intelligent contract.

It occurred to me yesterday that this principle could be extended to times when the opponents overcall over a minor suit opening. In fact, it is much easier to do so after an overcall.

After 1m-(1M) experts will not bid 1N freely with something like a 7 count. This is mainly because it is now more dangerous to bid and you don't need to keep the auction open for partner. So the range of a 1N bid is something like 8-10 when bid freely, but I have certainly seen people bid 1N with a bad 11 (usually when they don't have a double stopper in RHO's suit). I have also seen people bid 3N with 11 if they had something like AQTx in RHO's suit because their honors are well placed.

This would seem to beg the question, what use does an invitational 2N have? If you just increase the range of 1N by a point and game force with 12 you can once again use 2N as forcing.

2N forcing is especially useful after an overcall because sometimes you will only have 1 stopper. For instance with Q832 KQ3 K32 AT2 after 1-1 you would hate to bid 3N as it could easily be a terrible contract opposite short spades. You have no good options though; a cuebid shows diamond support and doubling shows 4 hearts. Bidding 2N forcing allows partner room to describe his hand below 3N, and you can show some doubt about NT and perhaps get to 5 of a minor. The forcing 2N also aids your slam bidding significantly by giving you an extra level, and gives you a way to bid a hand like 18 or 19 balanced without having to invent a ridiculous auction and then guess what to do.

A Blog? With Posts?

2006-10-22T02:06:00.000-06:00

Did you come to read some exciting bridge material? In that case, you meant to go here.

I recently stumbled upon this excellent blog written by my friend Jinzhou. Jinzhou was part of the Singaporean team that played in the recent World Youth Championships in Thailand. In his blog he recounts every match he played that led up to his teams great bronze medal, becoming the first PABF team to medal in the World Youth Championships. It's a thrilling read, and I highly recommend it. Besides, it's not like you're going to find any interesting material here.

Nightmare Set Conclusion

2006-09-12T02:09:00.000-06:00

After trouncing us 55-0 in 8 boards, Italy was down just 41 imps with 8 to go. If they could complete their comeback, it would likely be the greatest in the history of international bridge.

On board 9 our opponents bid to a 19 point 5. The contract needed a finesse and a 2-1 break and made. I thought it was likely our teammates would find the game as well, and sure enough they did. They also got doubled as their auction made it sound like they were saving. Something strange happened in the play though. Joe Grue with a club suit of AKT975 opposite 8432 led low to the seven! Joe felt from the tempo that clubs were 3-0. He was wrong this time, but what makes him so great is his courage to back his judgment and buck the percentages. Nine times out of ten he is right. This time we lost 11 imps.

Italy 66 USA 0

Thankfully for us at this point there were 5 flat boards where we were outscored 3-1. There was a game that both tables went down in that was makeable, but both declarers took the correct percentage line.

Italy 69 USA 1

On board 15 I picked up 7 AJ3 KQJ86 T875. Ari opened 1 and RHO bid 1. I had numerous options here. I could bid 2 to show a good club raise, or 3 to show a game forcing club raise with spade shortness. My club support seemed very weak for both of those actions though as partner may have a 3 card suit, and diamonds might well be our best spot. I could bid a simple 2 to be followed by a club bid, but I was worried that the opponents with a big spade fit may preempt to a high level and leave us guessing. I decided to make a fit jump with 3 to show diamonds and clubs and invitational or better values. This gave Ari a difficult problem with AK4 42 9732 AK94. With such weak hearts, 3N was out. Would 3 show spade values and heart weakness? Similarly, would 3 show the same thing? We were not on firm ground, and Ari's prime values argued for suit play anyways. He bid 4 and I raised him to 5. That went down with 3N cold. I knew this was a very poor result, and it ended up being a 10 imp loss when our counterparts found 3N. In retrospect, I think my hand was not pure enough for a fit jump and I should have just taken my chances with a 2 bid.

Italy 79 USA 1

On the final board of the set, I held KT2 9 AKQJT92 54. Ari opened 1, I forced to game with 2, and LHO came in with 3. Now Ari bid 3N. This brings up an interesting theoretical question, should 3N show extras or just a double stopper? If it showed extras then with a minimum you can pass and bid 3N if partner Xs. However, if it shows a double stopper then passing and bidding 3N would show a single stopper. Theory didn't matter much to me at the table though, I had to make a bid. I had a great hand, but not good enough to force it to slam (especially if partner just had a minimum). I didn't want to risk any spade ruffs playing diamonds, so I bid a quantitative 4N. Ari, who thought he hadn't shown extras, drove it to slam with AQ AQ752 86 QJ98. The AK of clubs was on lead and doubled us for -200. At the other table the Italians got to 6. Now the AK of clubs was not on lead, and the contract can actually make with a spade lead via a strip squeeze! John found a heart lead, which broke the communications for the squeeze and held our loss on the board to 3 imps. Had he led a spade we would have lost 17 imps on the board, and won the event by a single imp!

Final Score: Italy 82 USA 1

Wow! We had held on to win by just 15 imps. Let's analyze how the Italians had managed to pick up so many imps in the last set.

There were 4 major swings, 4 medium swings, and 3 minor swings their way. There was only 1 minor swing in our favor.

The major swings were caused by a different lead against a slam, a marginal overcall being made at one table and not at the other, a different guess in the trump suit, and a different game being reached. These swings amounted to 53 imps.

The medium swings were caused by better judgment on a partscore hand, better judgment in high level competition, a different partscore being reached due to systemic differences, and a double made at one table but not the other. These swings amounted to 23 imps.

The minor swings were a couple of overtricks and a double made at one table and not the other. These swings amounted to 6 imps. Our minor swing was only 1 imp.

The Italians were NOT swinging, doing anything wildly anti-percentage, or anything else that could be classified as crazy. They simply played good aggressive bridge, and did it much better than us in that set. We made some mistakes and they made very few.

To me the lesson that can be learned from this amazing set is that no matter how many imps you are down, you should just keep playing normal bridge. This is what Bob Hamman has been trying to tell me for years, but I had to learn the hard way. Who could have guessed that he knew what he was talking about this whole time?

Nightmare Set Part 2

2006-09-10T04:00:00.000-06:00

When we last left off Italy had outscored us 36-0 in the first 4 boards of the final 16 board segment of the World Youth Teams. They were still down 60 but they had momentum and nothing to lose at this point.

On board 5 systemic differences contributed to a swing. At our table the Italians opened 1 with 4432 shape. This enabled them to easily get to 3 in their 6-2 fit where there was nothing to the play. In contrast, Grue opened 1 and Kranyak had a normal 1N response so clubs were missed. Kranyak could have made 1N by playing for a finesse but instead he took a line requiring 3-2 clubs and 4-4 diamonds. This may seem strange, but it just shows that fatigue is really a factor in these marathon events. Grue and Kranyak played every single board for our team, and this was the last set. If you are ever going to lose focus a 1N contract in a match that you're supposed to have locked up is the time to do it. Kranyak would never have misplayed this hand had he been fresh, but as it was we lost 5 imps.

Italy 41 USA 0

On board 6 our opponents got to 5 with a trump suit of AJT86432 opposite 7 needing to play it for 1 loser. Playing low to the jack caters to KQx onside but loses to Kxx or Qxx onside. The odds are exactly the same for both plays (2 cases each of 3-1 splits). However, getting to dummy to lead up to the AJT would run the small risk of a ruff should a side suit split poorly so declarer played the ace from hand. It was KQ9 onside so he went down 1. This was a potential plus position for us but in the other room Grue played the same way, no swing.

Italy 41 USA 0

On board 7 Ari picked up KJ7654 T3 K87 AJ. With everyone vulnerable he opened 1 and I raised to 2. He had a preemptive 3 bid available now and had to choose whether or not to use it. Personally, I like passing. The only reason to bid is if you fear the opponents can make something at the four level as you can always bid 3 after passing if they balance. With so much defense and no shortness, that risk seems pretty small. Given that you don't need to shut them out of the four level, passing is best because you might buy it there. Ari did bid 3 and went down 2 after misguessing the play. In the other room Lo Presti passed in the same position and got to play it there. He judged the play well and made, so we lost 7 imps. Sometimes these seem like nothing hands, but these 5 and 7 imp losses were adding up quickly.

Italy 48 USA 0

On board 8 I picked up A96432 --- K765 T87. Partner passed, and RHO bid 1. With nobody vul it felt right to jam them with a 2 preempt. The auction proceeded 3 on my left, 4 from partner, 5 on my right, pass, 6 on my left. Partner now doubled them! He was asking for an unusual lead, so I had to pick which minor he wanted.

I considered laying down the spade ace on the assumption that we needed two tricks, so the ace of spades would need to cash. Then after seeing dummy I could tell which minor my partner wanted. Partner may have a trump trick and a void though, or my diamond king may be scoring so if the spade ace got ruffed that would be a disaster. Obviously diamonds is most likely to be partner's void since I have more of them, but a club lead was attractive for a couple of reasons. For starters, if partner was void in diamonds RHO may still hold the ace allowing me to set the contract anyways if I could score my king later. However, if partner had a club void a diamond lead would almost certainly let the contract make. Also, if LHO is bidding based on a long solid minor and heart support it is far more likely that he has clubs since he could have all the honors in that suit. It didn't sound like they had enough HCPs for slam, so they probably had a compensating trick source. After agonizing for several minutes I chose a club to lead.

Partner was void in diamonds, but had 5 trumps and ended up with 2 natural winners anyways to go with my spade ace. It was all irrelevant and we collected a satisfying 300. At the other table the auction had the same start except that 3 showed exactly 3 hearts. Grue, with KT AKT65 JT842 9 didn't like his chances at the five level with an just 8 card fit and the wasted spade king, so he Xed to tell his partner not to bid. His partner obediently passed, but with both opponents void in a red suit the contract proved to be unbeatable! That was 590 and another 7 imps to Italy.

Italy 55 USA 0

After 8 boards Italy had not only shut us out, they had scored an incredible 55 imps themselves! They were down to a manageable 41 imp deficit with 8 more boards left. Usually that would seem like a lot, but since they had just scored 55 imps in the same amount of boards and had tremendous momentum it seemed feasible to everyone that they could win. By the change in their expressions at the table, the Italian players also seemed to believe it.

Nightmare Set Part 1

2006-09-08T16:11:00.000-06:00

Recently I was almost a part of the greatest comeback in the history of junior bridge. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side!

At the 2006 World Youth Teams in Thailand, Italy was down by 96 imps to the US team with 16 boards to go. 3 years earlier, USA had come back 60 imps in 1 set against Italy in the semi-finals, only to lose by half an imp. Would history repeat itself with the teams reversed? Would Italy come out firing on all cylinders? This is the story from my perspective, remember I did not know the running score while I was playing.

On board 1 we bid to a 21 HCP 5, but we had a 6-5 fit and a void so it seemed fairly normal. At the other table the Italians also bid 5, but got Xed so we lost 4 imps.

Italy 4 USA 0.

On board 2 our opponents got to a cold 3N with 25 highs and 2 6 card suits. Ari and I missed a profitable 4 save which would have been 500. At the other table the Italians found the save and our teammates bid on to 5. Joe Grue had to judge whether his LHO who had shown the majors was 5512 or 5422. However, as RHO had suggested equal length in the majors and he had 4 spades and 5 hearts between dummy and his hand, he knew it had to be the latter and played accordingly. Well done for a push.

Italy 4 USA 0

On the third board I had QT8 AKQT9 J2 K87. Red/White the auction started 3-X-4 to me. Not knowing what 4N meant, I thought my options were 5 or 6. Partner is a solid player at these colors, and I figured they'd bid slam at the other table so I just jumped to 6. Mateo Sbarigia found a killing diamond lead from 95 -- Q9874 QT9643. When dummy came down with AJ32 J642 A65 A5 I was still on a spade hook, but when that lost I was down. The lead was well reasoned; it sounded like we were ready for a club lead and with so much length in that suit it was unlikely they could set up a trick there. I was certainly worried about this result, and sure enough at the other table the contract was played from the other side and Grue was never going to find a diamond lead so we lost 17 imps.

Italy 21 USA 0

On board 4 I picked up this lovely collection: T972 T Q43 98743. With everyone vulnerable, partner opened 1 and RHO overcalled 2. I jumped in there with 3, preemptive. LHO bid 4 and my partner, Ari Greenberg, bid 5. This bid was designed to involve my judgement if the opponents bid to 6. When they did I had an easy 6 bid given my stiff heart and Qxx of partners second suit. This was a great save, going for 500, and I thought it was a sure plus position. Even if our teammates were +680 it was a 4 imp gain. It didn't work out that way, and we lost 15 imps! At the other table Grue did not overcall with 864 KQJ62 T65 AK and Kranyak did not bid over 3 with 5 A9753 A2 QJT52. Neither bid over 4 and it made. In my view, neither player did anything unreasonable. Grue had xxx of spades and Kranyak had a terrible suit with no way to show a two-suiter.

Italy 36 USA 0

After 4 boards Italy had made up 36 imps. If that pace was sustainable, they would win, but they were still down 60 imps with just 12 boards to play and were huge underdogs at this point.

Old Position, New Twist

2006-09-05T02:42:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite bridge stories occurred at the San Antonio bridge club several years ago. I was playing a contract against a very sweet but completely clueless little old lady. I needed to play AT9 of clubs opposite Kxx for no losers so I stripped the hand and put her in to break the suit for me. Without a care in the world she put the queen of clubs on the table. Ordinarily, one should play for this to be from Qxx based on restricted choice (the defense must exit an honor or you have no chance to guess the suit). In this case however, I was confident that this lady had the QJx otherwise she would never exit with an honor. I played accordingly and went down! She had found the Q play from Qxx. When I congratulated her for her excellent play she had no idea what I was talking about. She found it to be nothing more than routine.

Aaron Haspel, as an unfortunate result of being a good friend of mine, has had to suffer through that sad story dozens of times. I'm sure it was on his mind when, playing against me, he wound up in 4 with these cards:

KQ53
K75
AQ6
842

AJ972
AT9
J52
Q9

In the auction I had made a takeout double of 1 on his left and then they had a free run. On the ace of clubs lead his RHO played the jack, and I continued with king and another club which he ruffed. I had shown up with the AK of clubs and had to have the king of diamonds for my bid. Aaron now saw that the best possible way home would be to strip everything but hearts and put me in with a diamond (seem familiar?). He started by drawing two rounds of trumps, everybody following. Now he finessed against the diamond king, cashed the ace, and exited with his last one. I was in with the king and produced...the queen of hearts! Putting yourself into Aaron's seat, what would you do now? Before immediately deciding to play for split honors based on the previous story, let's think about this a little deeper.

There is a key difference between the hand in my story and the one Aaron was playing. Here there is not restricted choice on the Q, assuming I am a good defender. As I have only shown up with AK, K and have followed to 2 spades, I know that declarer has already placed me with the Q for my bid. Accordingly, with QJ I MUST play the queen, otherwise Aaron will know that I still have it in my hand. This means it's not clear what the percentage play is in hearts. To figure it out we need to calculate the number of possible QJx(x) combinations and weigh it against the number of Qxx(x) combinations. If I have 3 hearts, there are 4 QJx's possible and 6 Qxx's possible. If I have 4 hearts there are 6 QJxx's possible and 4 Qxxx's possible! Based on the club and diamond cards played, Aaron felt that I was most likely to be 2344 or 2335 making it percentage to play for Qxx(x) if I would also always exit with the Q from that holding too. But would I?

We've established that I should clearly play the Q from QJx(x), but that is not so clear from Qxx(x). Remember, I'm not looking at the T or 9 in dummy. Therefore, if Aaron had started with ATx of hearts I could get out with a low one and guarantee a set. Only getting out with the queen would give away the contract. I would have to know that Aaron has AT9 specifically to know that it's right to exit with the Q. Amazingly, I should know just that. If he had had ATx of hearts his only shot at the contract would be to find me with the QJ of hearts, and exit with 3 rounds of hearts instead of 3 rounds of diamonds. If I did have the QJ of hearts, I would be forced to lead away from the K. For Aaron's line to make any sense, he must have AT9 specifically.

After weighing these considerations carefully, Aaron did play for split honors and was right. After I gave him kudos on his nice play, he told me that it was routine.

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that my math on the number of possible QJx(x) combinations was wrong. In fact, it was perfect if there were SIX missing hearts, but there are actually 7. Brilliant! This means there are more Qxx combinations than QJx which makes Aaron's play mathematically correct even if he could not read my shape.

A Classic Fit Jump

2006-09-02T00:59:00.000-06:00

Nobody is vulnerable and you pick up K9742 74 6 KJT87. LHO passes, partner opens 1 and RHO makes a takeout X. You're not sure how to describe your hand, but luckily you have you have a 4 gadget at your disposal to show 5+ clubs, 4+ spades and a game going hand. In fact, this would be the textbook hand for that auction. This "fit jump" enables partner to accurately judge what to do if the opponents compete to the 5 level and can get you to a low HCP slam opposite a prime double fitter. It's the perfect bid right?

WRONG!

A bid being the perfect description of your hand does not necessarily make it the right bid. Though in constructive auctions I advocate describing your hand as well as possible, competitive bidding is a completely different matter. Tactical approaches that will make life hard for the opponents should often be adopted, even at the cost of some accuracy.

The biggest problem with the 4 bid is that it gives LHO entry to the 4 level to introduce a save-suggesting bid. For example, with a hand like 63 KQ853 Q542 94 LHO can bid 4 to invite his partner to save in 5. This way they get to communicate and judge intelligently whether they should be bidding at the 5 level or not. Had you just bid an immediate 4 your left hand opponent would be forced to pass with that hand, and your RHO would also pass without significant extra values.

The other problem with 4 is that you aren't just telling your partner what your hand looks like, you're telling the opponents. That information gives them an even greater ability to judge whether to bid on, double you, or pass. If RHO has a balanced 18 count with most of his values in the red suits, he would have to double back in if you jump to 4. However, by jumping to 4 you alert him that his red suit tricks are not cashing so he will no longer feel compelled to double you. Likewise, LHO will not X 4 with a random 10 or 11 after a 4 bid unless he has values in the black suits. He will even know that his red suit values are likely to be working on offense and may save or suggest a save that he wouldn't have done after the more straight forward jump.

What about the potential downsides of disguising your hand with an immediate jump to 4? If the opponents do go on to the 5 level then you will be poorly placed. You will guess right some of the time, but not as much as you would have had you started with 4. This risk is not as great as it seems though. With LHO being a passed hand he is unlikely to have a long enough suit or a good enough hand to bid at the 5 level. If he does bid, it will most likely be a card showing X which will generally be passed out at such a high level. You also might miss a slam, but that would be a rare occurrence after RHO has shown opening values. Partner would need to have a great fit, and in that case the opponents may have one as well and might have a cheap save at the 7 level.

It is worthwhile to note that the problems of making a fit jump in this auction are so severe because the suits involved are spades and clubs. If you made the hand 6 K9742 KJT87 74 after partner opens 1 and RHO Xs, a 4 bid would have a lot more appeal as you now give the opponents very little additional useful room. Since you need to prepare for the likely 4 bid it now becomes a good tactical maneuver to describe your hand. However, in the original example a fit jump is clearly a tactical blunder.

A Comedy of Errors

2006-05-01T08:55:00.000-06:00

Bridge is often like a ping-pong match. Sometimes the declarer will make a play that will allow the contract to make... unless the defender finds the perfect counter... to which declarer counters... and back and fourth they go. More often, it's the opposite. A hand I played online against a couple of friends recently was exactly like this.

Vulnerable against not, I picked up QJ9642 KQ6 K 962. My partner opened 1, RHO bid 1 and I bid 1. LHO raised to 2 and partner raised to 2. I wasn't sure if he played support doubles here as he was a pick up partner, but I had an easy 4 bid either way. However, RHO butted in with 4 first. Obviously he had a shapely hand and was trying to bully us out of the hand. I bid 4, and LHO Xed. I suspected RHO had nothing and LHO didn't realize this, so I XXed. It figured to be down 1 at most which is good odds, plus the chance that RHO runs to 5. As it was everyone passed and I got the 3 of hearts lead (3/5th).

I was now playing 4XX with:

A53 7 A8732 KQJ4 opposite
QJ9642 KQ6 K 962.

Aside from dummy only having 3 spades, he had a very good hand. I was sure all the spades were on my left from the bidding though, so it looked like I had 2 trumps and 2 aces to lose. RHO won the ace of hearts and shifted to the queen of diamonds. I took it and led the queen of spades. LHO covered with the king and RHO not surprisingly showed out. Now I ruffed a diamond to shorten myself, and led a club. LHO won the ace and played another one. I was at the cross roads now. If LHO was 4342 I needed to play ace of diamonds pitching a club, ruff a diamond, cash my hearts and exit a low spade to endplay LHO. However, if LHO was 4333 I needed to cash a club, ruff a diamond, cash my hearts and exit a spade. From the carding I felt very confident that LHO was 4333, so I took the indicated line and LHO was endplayed into leading a trump into my J9.

Could the defense have done anything? Let's go back to when I led the spade queen. If LHO ducks I lose an entry to dummy. I can never ruff a heart or lead a spade to the ace or the endplay will automatically fail. So I must lead a club. Assuming LHO wins and continues clubs, I can only ruff two diamonds with my 2 club entries. In the end game I'm stuck in my hand J9x of spades opposite Ax and a diamond. Ducking a spade this time won't work as LHO can exit a spade into the stiff ace.

Now let's go back even further. My diamond king has suddenly transformed into a small one. How would I play then? I'm quite confident I would win the diamond ace and ruff a diamond immediately. Now if I lead the spade queen and it gets ducked, I lead a club again. LHO can win and lead a club, but I now ruff a diamond, cash 2 hearts and cross to dummy with a club. I've achieved the same endgame, J9x of spades opposite Ax of spades and a diamond but this time I'm in dummy. I now ruff a diamond and when LHO overruffs he is endplayed into leading away from his KT of spades. The diamond king was a mirage. Winning the ace and overtaking is actually an obvious play; hopefully I'd find it if I were playing in something more serious.

Does all this mean I was cold? Nope, if we go back even further to the point where RHO returned the diamond queen, we see that his best plan would be to attack our entries. If he plays a club and LHO continues I lose an entry. So long as LHO doesn't cover the queen of spades I am toast.

Overall just a comedy of errors.

Promoting Bridge

2006-04-29T14:57:00.000-06:00

It's no secret that in North America the game of bridge is effectively dying. The average age of ACBL members keeps rising and you see less and less young faces at tournaments. As well as promoting the game to retired people with lots of free time, efforts need to be made to get younger people interested in bridge. In order to understand how to go about this, two key questions need to be asked.

First, what will attract teenagers to the game? As a teenager myself, if someone were to tell me that bridge is great for the mind and a very interesting game, I wouldn't have any desire to learn the game.

I would be interested in the great rivalry between USA and Italy, the huge money that professionals are making, big prize money tournaments like the Cavendish, and the great party atmosphere at night during tournaments. Though these things have nothing to do with the game itself, they are interesting and would make me want to become a part of the bridge scene. To do this, obviously I'd have to learn the game.

There was a great poker movie made in 1998, Rounders, starring Matt Damon. To watch this movie and enjoy it, you would literally need no knowledge of how to play poker. The movie was a hit, and many college kids started playing as a result. The natural reaction to being captivated by a movie about poker is to actually go out and learn how to play. Of the people who do that, some percentage will keep playing for the rest of their lives. The point is not to market the game, but to market the drama and atmosphere that surrounds the game.

Imagine a movie about a young bridge professional trying to make it in a highly competitive world. He falls into the trap of drugs and drinking during the wee hours of the night during regionals and nationals and hits rock bottom. At some point, he rises above all of this to greatness. At the climax he's playing his nemesis, the antagonist who has stolen clients from him and bad mouthed him throughout the movie. He pauses when the player leads away from an ace and he must guess the contract to win the match and the tournament. He finally guesses, and wins tens of thousands of dollars as well as the respect of everyone. It may sound silly, but you wouldn't need to know how to play bridge to watch this movie and many would enjoy it.

Some mainstream media effort could easily be made to create an influx of juniors to the ACBL. A movie, a documentary, articles in widely read magazines about the life of a young bridge player, a TV show with a main character that is a bridge player, even a reality TV show. Trying to put an actual bridge game on TV will never achieve great success, but making the bridge world and the atmosphere a part of some bigger picture could.

The ACBL, with it's site "Bridge Is Cool," has failed miserably at understanding what will appeal to a teenage audience.

We also must wonder, what existing markets can we tap into that include young people? There are certainly some people we can advertise the game itself to. It's obvious that the millions of teenagers that play spades, a trick taking game similar to bridge, are such an easy market to attract to bridge. They devote some time to playing card games, they already understand the basic rules of bridge, and they are willing to spend some time to learn a game. As I write this there are almost 7,000 people playing spades on Yahoo. Most are teenagers. Why are we not actively trying to get these people to play bridge? It makes absolutely no sense.

Other board games, card games, and strategy games have young players who would be quite interested in learning the king of all card games. We need to make a site that we can direct those people to, and somehow make the site available to them. That was probably the goal of Bridge Is Cool, but something more appealing to this type of person is needed. The more times that prize money and huge amounts of strategy are mentioned the better.

The other market is school kids, particularly those in advanced math classes. By junior high it's too late, there are so many other interests that bridge will not be a priority. I think the ACBL is already doing a great job in teaching bridge at elementary schools so I won't expound.

In order to save the game of bridge, those in power need to understand the new generation. As a member of said generation, I will tell you with confidence that Bridge Is Cool will not appeal to ANYONE. A new game plan needs to be drawn up before it's too late.

Money Bridge Review

2006-04-28T11:49:00.000-06:00

Bridge Base Online has recently started offering a format that enables its users to play bridge for real money. This is like a dream come true for me. I missed the days when money bridge was popular, and unless you live in New York, Chicago, or London it's tough to find any club that offers any kind of rubber bridge. Even if you do, they won't be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The ability to play long sessions of bridge for money will not only satisfy my gambling needs, it will make me into a better player. All of this is great, but what about cheating?

BBO found a brilliant way to circumvent any kind of possible collusion or cheating. Instead of playing with a human partner, you play with a GIB robot against a human and another GIB. Kibitzers are also disallowed. Not only does this make it impossible to cheat, it is also very fair. Regardless of the mistakes GIB makes, long term it will average out. So if you are better than your opponent by a margin greater than the rake, you will profit.

Despite some (inevitable) complaints, GIB really plays pretty decently. Once the best computer program in the world, it is still in the top 3. Of the opponents I've faced for money so far, GIB was probably better than half. His declarer play is superb but his bidding and signaling are erratic. There are 3 speed settings and the slower he plays the better he plays. Unfortunately, the slowest setting is painfully slow. I prefer to play with GIB set to medium speed. You will never misunderstand a bid GIB makes because you can click on whatever he bids to see what it means. Figuring out GIB's strange tendencies and what bids trigger it to do costly things will be a huge part of being successful. Potentially you could do better than a player more skilled than yourself if you handle GIB better. This is true in live money bridge as well; handling partner is a very necessary skill.

If you like action, you will like the format. It is scored in total points with seating and vulnerability assigned randomly at the beginning of each hand. Basically, there is massive variance. I have already experienced swings of plus and minus 12,000 points. As the saying goes, the next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing. Do not be disillusioned; if you are a winning player you will profit long term.

I do have a few gripes. Mainly, the maximum stakes to play for right now are a penny a point. Eventually, I hope to see this maximum get higher and higher, maybe to as much as 20 times that number. Since it's still in it's infancy, I can understand keeping the stakes small for now. Also the rake, though they cut it in half from its original cost, is still relatively expensive. They rake 5 points a hand per person unless the board is passed out. They also charge you a percentage of your deposit to pay PayPal. I hope if the stakes get higher, they will rake less proportionately for the bigger games. Perhaps 3 points a hand for a 5 cent game.

Besides those two complaints, I am very excited and happy with online money bridge. The potential is endless. Currently BBO is testing money bridge tournaments complete with a leader board and everything. I have a feeling those will be extremely popular. I encourage everyone to try it out unless you are in a state that classifies bridge as a game of chance. In that case, money bridge is illegal in your state, and you should write your congressman letting him know how stupid that is.

Keep in mind if you're playing against someone who you feel plays well you should quit. Many good players are playing under aliases (including me). It's always fine to just leave and play against someone else who is worse.

What Could Have Been....

2006-04-27T08:40:00.000-06:00

The spring nationals were held recently in my hometown, Dallas. I had high hopes for the tournament given my home field advantage. The event that I really wanted to do well in was the main event, the Vanderbilt.

The Vanderbilt is a knockout held at every spring NABC that attracts the best teams in the world. It is thought by many to be a tougher event than the Bermuda Bowl mainly because of the depth of the field. Just making it into the round of 8 is a huge achievement. You need a good team to do well, obviously, but I felt that my team was particularly dangerous and capable of multiple upsets. I was playing with my father as well as John Kranyak, Melanie Tucker, Agustin Madala, and Guido Ferarro. Half of our team was made up of juniors, and also included an Italian world champion and 2 national champions.

As the 27 seed, we got a bye into the round of 64. Our whole team played well and we were able to defeat a team that included Barry Rigal and Jeff Aker along with some tough Israelis. In the round of 32 we drew the 6 seed. Their team was Steve Robinson, Peter Boyd, Kit Woolsey, and Fred Stewart. This was a great team but I really felt like we had a shot.

After the first 32 boards, we trailed by 1 imp. The third quarter was a disaster, and we lost about 50 imps. Our opponents were flawless, and the amazingly aggressive preempting style that Woolsey and Stewart are known for was really paying off in the other room. They put our teammates into some impossible positions.

Now the question, what is your strategy going to be down 50 imps to such a great team with 16 boards to play? Our team talked about it, and the general consensus was just to play normal bridge and to pick our spots. Nothing crazy because that usually leads to digging yourself into a bigger hole.

The first board out we bid a non vulnerable 3N with 23 high cards and made it with no play. The second board was uneventful. Then the critical third board...

I picked up AQ AKT62 AJT963 -- with everyone vulnerable. My first thought was that this was a great hand to hold when you need a swing. There was certain to be fireworks on this board. I opened 1 which just showed 16+ points. LHO, Kit Woolsey, bid 3. So far every single time we had opened a strong club, Woolsey or Stewart had bid. Partner Xed which showed a game force with no good suit to bid. I bid 3 and partner bid 3N. The implication here was that his clubs were not great; probably not a double stopper or he would have bid 3N directly. What should I bid now?

The correct technical bid is probably 5, showing this shape and telling partner to pick a slam. I decided to hedge with 4 to keep the auction low. Partner could now show real diamond support, suggest a major to play with 4, or perhaps retreat to 4N. He bid 4 and I decided to take a shot on 7. If it was on a hook, I wanted to be there. I felt that if we were to come back from this deficit we would need a little luck. A grand between 40-60 % would be just the luck we were hoping for. Besides, it may be cold.

LHO led a very quick A and I found myself in 7 with:

J942 QJ K87 Q932
AQ AKT62 AJT963 --

I have caught a minimum but very suitable red suit holdings. What are your thoughts, would you like to be in 7 if you were me?

I was very happy with this dummy and my contract. I thought Boyd and Robinson would play in 6, so we had a chance to pick up some much needed imps. There was still the matter of making this though.
I ruffed the club and played the jack of diamonds to the king (you never know) and led a diamond. RHO followed.

This was a very tough decision. Clearly RHO rated to have Qxx of diamonds given LHO's length in clubs, but if he did I would need a spade finesse as well. If diamonds were 2-2 I could simply pitch the spades from dummy and ruff a spade. I decided LHO would bid 3 with any hand that contained AK sixth. He could have 7, but not 7-4, and he could have the spade king. RHO also would not raise frequently with 3 from what I had seen. If LHO was 2326, 3226, 2227, 4126, or an unlikely 1426, I would need to go up. If he had 3316, 4216, 2416, 3217 or 2317 without the spade king I would need to hook. Overall, it looked like going up was the percentage play. Unfortunately RHO had Qxx of diamonds and the spade king. The rest of the match had some exciting deals but we never had much of a chance after this board.

The funny thing is, at the other table they were in four hearts! No one criticized my play, but my bidding came very much under attack. I contended that I had no way of knowing that a top pair would play in game, and that if I had made this the momentum would have been with us. I thought it was right to take a chance on a hand like this, and that bidding 6 was not the way to win the match. Even though this was a gamble, it was by no means a crazy contract. We ended up gaining 10 imps or so for the set, but losing the match. Our opponents went on to win the next day.

Reflecting on it, I still would like to be in 7 diamonds on this hand unless I knew my counterparts would be in game.

How To: Improve Your Game

2006-04-26T09:12:00.000-06:00

The most frequent question I am asked is, "What can I do to improve my game?" The truth is it's a lot of hard work. As in most areas of life, there are many more people who desire to become better than people willing to put in the work to achieve it. For those still interested, here is a guide to improving your bridge game no matter what level you are currently at.

Step 1: Play many, many, many hands. This cannot be underestimated. The more hands you see and experience you get, the better you will become without even doing anything else. While you are playing these hands, count. Count points, count shape, count winners, count losers, count everything. Form a picture of the hand, and change it with each trick that goes by until you know every card. The more you do this the more natural it will feel. Honestly, it is impossible to play good bridge without counting. Online bridge is great for this purpose.

Step 2: Evaluate. After each session you will need to objectively evaluate how you played. What boards did you lose imps on? Why did you lose imps on those boards? Could you have done anything or were you unlucky? This will be a very hard process, because you will realize that you suck. In reality, we all suck, and we just strive to suck less. After you go over the hands with yourself enough, you are going to find certain weaknesses in your game. Right now I feel like I give up the most on opening leads. I am getting into computer simulation, and forcing myself to take more time with leads. Leads are obviously not an exact science, but I'm sure I could do better. Whatever your weaknesses are that are causing you to drop imps, figure them out and don't feel embarrassed.

Step 3: Plug your leaks. You know what your weaknesses are, so fix them. This will not happen overnight. The main thing to do here is read. If your cardplay in suit contracts is a big weakness, read any declarer play problem you can find in a book or message forum that has a trump suit. Try to work it out. Really try, don't just think for a minute and then look at the answer. The other thing to do is to think. Really think about certain problems that you get wrong, like 5 level decisions. If you don't bid 5 over 5 enough, what is wrong with your evaluation? Perhaps you don't realize the power of a void in the opponents suit. Sometimes the problem is mental, and you have to fix it mentally. If you are unable to do this on your own, discuss hands with better players. Sometimes hearing their thinking process will make it clear to you what the error in your thinking was.

Step 4: So, you're now capable of analyzing every hand and not doing anything stupid. Sometimes you still do though, why? Once your game is at this level and you are technically proficient, you need to work on your head. Bridge is a mental game, and you need to be at your best all the time. Many capable players play poorly because they have problems focusing and concentrating. Sometimes they don't get enough sleep, or play distracted. Sometimes they can't get over a bad result and do something stupid after that. Don't fall into these traps. Figure out how to get your mind right, and what the best conditions are for you to be able to focus and give it everything you have. Again, this requires introspection to figure out what's going on. Only you can know, and only you can fix it.

Repeat. I guarantee if you go through these cycles many times and swallow your pride and ego and really work hard at doing these things, you will find tremendous improvements. I still go through this cycle routinely, and hopefully I always will. Nobody is too good to improve.

Sound like hard work? I'm exhausted just writing about it.

Psyches

2006-04-25T07:54:00.000-06:00

Psyching. The word alone carries such a stigma in the bridge world that most are too scared to ever try it. Those who do are often shunned and ostracized. Still, psyches and tactical bids are a big part of the game and are perfectly legal and often very effective.

If your opponents know that psyches are in your arsenal, they will often suspect that you have done it even when you've just bid normally. Even if they're not sure, there will be doubt in their minds. Having that reputation is more valuable than anything you will ever gain from your actual psyches.

I psyche in real life about twice a year (if you do not include light openers in third seat or light overcalls which are done systemically and marked on my convention card) and that is about two more times a year than most people! The fact that psychic bidding is so rare adds to the effectiveness; even most experts have little experience dealing with it and don't design their systems to cope with it.

Psyches may seem like random bids but there is certainly a logical reason behind every good psychic bid. Typically you will want to satisfy all of these criteria before considering a psyche:

Have a limited partner. You don't want to open 1N with 0 points in first seat; partner may jump to 6. Partner will need to have limited his hand in some way to make sure that things don't get completely out of control.
Have a suit to run to. Ideally you will have a fit for partner or a long suit of your own. Also ideally, this suit will be higher ranking than the one you're psyching so that if you have to run after getting doubled when partner raises you can at least stay at the same level.
An understanding partner! Psyches will not always work out and are high variance actions. If you are playing with a partner who will get very upset by a psyche gone badly, you're better off not even trying it.

Let's look at some examples where a psyche or tactical bid is most often employed. Some of these bids are known as "baby psyches" because they are so easily unmasked.

Third Seat

Most psyches are done in third seat. This is because partner has limited his hand with a pass and if you are very weak you already know the opponents can make a game (or more). Sometimes throwing up a smoke screen will deflect them from their path.

A third seat 1N is the most common psyche. Let's say you had x xx JTxxxxx Qxx and were not vulnerable with 2 passes to us. Instead of the normal 3 bid you may mix it up with a 1N opener. This is especially true if the opponents play one of the many common systems that don't allow for a penalty double, such as DONT. They will have no way to bid a strong balanced hand, or to show any hand as powerful as the one they probably have. If partner bids any kind of transfer or stayman, we will just pass (we're not doubled, and if we get doubled we can run to diamonds). Even if the opponents do have penalty doubles available, when we run what is forcing for them? What do doubles mean? Who has shown what strength? Even most expert partnerships won't know, so you will have achieved your goal of confusing them.

You may even try a 1 opener if you are really adventurous. It could work wonders if you pick off the opponents fit, but it is much more dangerous. Partner may well hang you if he has a good fit for spades, and you will be forced to run to 5 which could be disastrous.

A less common hand type for a 1N psyche is what I call a semi-bluff (taken from poker). Say you had xx xx AKJTxx Axx white/red in third seat. A 1N opener would have a number of ways to win. The opponents could be cold for 4 of a major or a major suit partial and miss it, and if partner bids 3N you may well make that with your trick source. Remember, the more imaginative the better because the opponents will not expect it.

When Partner Preempts

Most psyches that are not done in third seat are done after partner makes a preempt. Again, he has limited his hand and isn't going to go crazy no matter what you bid. Let's say partner opens 3 and you have xxxxxAxx QJxxx not vulnerable. If RHO passed, you may choose to bid 3N. This will work if the opponent's points are divided equally, in which case they will both pass. I do not recommend ever trying this psyche if RHO has Xed, it has no chance of success.

Again, you may try the more risky psyche of 3. This could pick off enemy fit and create mass confusion, but is more likely to lead to something bad happening. If you REALLY wanted to be tricky you may try jumping to 4 when partner opens 3 on a hand like xxxxx --- xxxxxxxx. Most people would treat a X of 4 as takeout (or just a strong balanced hand). LHO may really be put to a tough problem if he can't make a penalty X. The possibilities are endless.

Psychic, Cuebids, or Splinters

Psyching game tries, cuebids, and splinters are pretty well known tactics most notably employed by Zia. Say you had AKQxxx x xxx AKx. You open 1 and partner raises you to 2. Obviously you are going to 4, but you might try the effect of bidding 3 to deflect the lead. The same applies when you know you're going to jump to slam, but have a potentially dangerous lead possible. You might try cuebidding that suit first.

Hands to psyche a splinter are rare, but let's say you had AKQx --- xx AKxxxxx. You open 1 and partner surprises you by bidding 1. Although partner is not unlimited, you are going to take control of this auction. You may try splintering in diamonds and then asking for aces to try and get the heart lead.

Overcalls

If partner passes and RHO opens, you may still try a 1N or 1 of a major psyche. This will pretty much always get smoked out because LHO will always have a penalty double available, but it still creates problems. If LHO Xs and bids a new suit is it forcing, or does he need to jump? Can he make any takeout Xs? Even though they know you've psyched, it's not clear they know what to do about it.

One psyche I have made before is to psyche michaels when partner was a passed hand and RHO opened 1. The best hand type to do this with is long spades and short hearts. The opponents will never have a natural heart bid available, and you can correct hearts to spades. This is dangerous though; partner may keep correcting spades to hearts!

Also Ran...

The only other common psyche is when partner opens 1 of a minor and RHO either Xs or passes. With a big fit for the minor (7+ cards) and a very weak hand, you may try psyching your short major. I wouldn't recommend this though, because if partner raises you to game correcting back to his minor is a cuebid. Basically, partner isn't limited enough to make this psyche. Opposite a precision 1 opener, such a psyche is MUCH more attractive.

The key is creativity. Don't always make one of the psyches above, try and look for new opportunities where a psyche has a good chance of success. Keep in mind you cannot psyche any strong and artificial bids, like a strong club or game forcing stayman. Also, do not make the same psyche with the same partner in a short time period. That would create an implicit agreement. Everyone should be on fair playing ground, partner should have no more right to know that you may have psyched than the opponents. Everyone should have to figure it out on their own, using bridge logic. If you ever get to the point that you are underbidding because you know your partner tends to psyche 1N openers in third seat, you are fielding his psyche and are doing something illegal. You cannot field a psyche unless you can figure out from the auction that someone had to have psyched.

I don't recommend psyching at your local club game, or against weak players at a small tournament. The players there are mainly social players looking to have fun. If you are a seriously competitive player in one of those environments, you are a minority. It is perfectly legal to psyche but you will be ruining the fun of others, and for what gain? To win a club game that you probably would win even without psyching? Sadly, it took me a while to realize this. Against other competitive tournament players, or in a flight A regional or higher go ahead and psyche if you feel like it's right, and don't feel badly about it.

Preempting

2006-04-24T09:53:00.000-06:00

Preempting is a very important part of the modern game. Bidding is so accurate these days that if you allow your opponents to have a free run they will almost always go right. By preempting you sometimes force them to guess, and the more they have to guess the more they will go wrong.

If that were the whole story, people would be preempting randomly with all types of hands. Unfortunately there are also dangers in preempting, the main one being your pesky partner. Since partner may wake up with a good hand or want to further the preempt, they must maintain some constructive element. Also, if they are too wild you are going to risk getting doubled and going for a number every now and then. Such is life, but you don't want it to happen too often. The other big risk is that you are going to help the opponents play the hand. Remember, when you are preempting it is probably the opponent's hand and you are volunteering information to them.

The key is to find a balance between the constructive and destructive elements of preempting and between the risks and rewards associated with it. This can be very difficult and require good judgment and a lot of experience.

The main thing a preempt should say is that the hand is offensively oriented. If partner wants to save, that's great, if he wants to bid game, that's great. If the opponents want to double me that's not a complete disaster because I can take some tricks and they'll probably make something. If partner wants to double them... well he's on his own. A hand that screams a certain suit is a good candidate for a preempt.

To determine whether a hand fits with my definition of what a preempt should look like, I look at these 3 factors:

Purity. Are my honors located in my long suits or my short suits? Do I have a lot of stray values? QJTxxx x Qxxx xx is an excellent preempt. However, Axxxxx K Jxx Qxx is awful. The purer the hand is, the better it is for a preempt.

Suit Texture. Let's say the auction were to go 2-p-p-X-p-p-p. Would you rather have KQ5432 of spades, or QJT876? I would definitely prefer the latter. The texture of a suit is what makes it playable with a bad split, or when partner raises you to game with a lot of controls and a stiff trump.

Shape. 6322 and 7222 are the kiss of death. If you are 6-4 or 7-4 your trick taking potential increases and so does the opponents. This is a very overlooked factor by most people.

Let me dispel some myths while I'm at it. Voids are not a bad thing when preempting. They add to the offensive potential of your hand. Preempt MORE aggressively with a void, not less. Side aces are also not a bad thing. They're much better than say, side queens. They serve offensive purposes as well as defensive ones.

Note that high cards were never mentioned. High cards are irrelevant when it comes to preempting if the hand is less than opening bid strength.

Does this mean I would preempt with 0 points? Yes, I would consider T98765 2 T932 52 white/red in first seat to be a 2 opener. I wouldn't do this red since the playing strength of the hand is just too low, but you will note it does well on purity, suit quality(!!) and shape.

Regarding 5 card weak 2's, I will rarely do it unless in 3rd seat. If I have an extraordinary suit and 5431 or 55 then I might, but 5332 preempts are losing bridge in my opinion. The hand is balanced, not a 1 suited offensive hand. If you do open 5 card weak 2's liberally, your partner needs to know this so that he doesn't always misjudge later in the auction.

How much playing strength is required to preempt in first or second? I've never followed the rule of "2, 3, or 4" or anything like that, if it looks like a preempt just preempt. I do recommend your 3 level openers to be about a trick heavier than your 2 level openers, despite a minority style of 2 bids being constructive and 3 bids being garbage. It just seems logical to me that if you contract for 1 more trick, you are showing the same hand type except a trick (generally in the form of a trump) better. I also suggest that any hand you open at the 2 level with red/white should be opened at the 3 level white/red. That is another way of saying that red/white preempts should be a trick better than white/red ones. At equal vulnerability, just use your judgment.

Nothing is perfect, the main goal of preempting is to make life hard on the opponents. If your requirements are too rigid, you aren't preempting enough. However, the hands need to be offensive and able to take some tricks. 5332 just won't cut it.

Cooperative Slam Bidding

2006-01-18T10:34:00.000-06:00

Bridge is a partnership game.

You hear people rationalizing bids all the time with something like "partner could have had..." Well, usually partner is better informed about what he has than you. Unless he has transferred captaincy and you have to make some kind of decision, that is not a good justification for making a (mis)bid. When in a cooperative auction it can be useful to think about what you have shown and what you have in context of that.

Nothing should illustrate this more than cuebidding sequences to try for a slam. Unfortunately, many times after one player has bid their hand they then bid make the decision to drive to slam themselves instead of trusting partner to do the right thing. This mistake probably costs most players thousands of imps in the long run.

Take the uncontested auction auction 1-2-2-3-4-4-4 in a 2/1 system that does not use serious 3N. Many people would describe 4 as a signoff. That is false, partner is still in the picture and can bid on. 4 is limiting your hand and merely says that you have made 1 slam try and that was all you are worth. You probably have something like a good 14 or 15. Partner can take control with keycard or pass. He also may cuebid again if he is not sure whether or not slam will make (yes knowing how many keycards partner has is not always the answer). The point is a very basic one in bridge; don't bid your hand twice. Still, psychologically people feel like over 4 it's do or die and they must make a decision. They will see their 14, think of some hands that partner can have where slam is cold, and try keycard. What they forget is that most of the hands where slam is cold partner is not going to pass 4.

Right or Wrong?

2006-01-17T14:46:00.000-06:00

I had a very interesting play problem come up in the NAOP. It was the final day and we were playing against one of the best pairs in the room. We had a great game going and I thought we were probably qualifying at that point but there were still about 8 rounds left to play. I was in 3N with these two hands:

KJT93
82
J97
QT3

AQ2
AQJT
QT2
A42

The auction was 2N p 3N. This is a typical "insane" matchpoint auction for us. LHO leads the ace of diamonds (asking for attitude). RHO plays the 6. Now LHO returns the 8 of diamonds, I play the jack from dummy and rho plays the 4. What next?

We have 5 spades, 1 heart, 1 club and 1 diamond. The obvious thing to do would be to finesse the heart and then try finessing it again. But what was the 8 of diamonds? It was a suit preference card indicating a heart card. I honestly believe the least falsecarded signal is suit preference, even though my LHO is a very strong player I took it to probably be a true card. I was also confident that if he had 5 diamonds he certainly had a king. Good players will almost always lead small from AKxxx if they have no side entry. If LHO has 5 diamonds and the heart king he will be strip squeezed on the run of the spades.

I thought for a long time and decided to run spades. LHO started with 2 spades and pitched a low club (encouraging) followed by 2 low hearts. RHO pitched 2 low clubs (encouraging). From my hand I pitched a heart and a club. This was the end position:

---
82
9
QT3

---
AQJ
Q
A4

If LHO came down to the guarded heart king and started with 5 diamonds, that only left room for one club. In that position my winning line is to cash the club ace and get out a diamond (see why I didn't pitch a diamond from my hand?). Given that I believe the diamond 8 this is the most likely layout. However, I had a lot of extraneous things to consider.

Did LHO stiff his HK and hold on to 2 clubs? This was possible to do in tempo since I took so long to play. I didn't think it was likely because of another pattern people seem to have. When they figure out early on in the play they need to stiff their king, they do it immediately. I'm pretty sure if LHO wanted to go that route he would pitch heart, heart, club in that order.
Did LHO falsecard the D8? If he had the club king and the AK of diamonds, looking at 7 points in dummy and 20-21 in my hand he knows partner has very little. A falsecard is very possible, especially since even if his partner does have an entry like the queen of spades, LHO has a slow entry not a quick one so it's not that important. However, again few people falsecard suit preference and it's important to remember not to give your opps too much credit.
Did LHO start with 4 diamonds all along? With AK85 he might have chosen to lead a high diamond then had nothing better to do but continue. In this scenario he might have chosen a different lead (a major is preferable on this auction) and he would need the 5 to know that playing the 8 is safe.
If LHO does have xx Kxxx AKxxx xx like I think, what will happen to 4 spades? That is the field contract. LHO will lead 3 rounds of diamonds and his partner will ruff and lead back a heart. The clubs then go away on the hearts, so I'd be down one. So even if I go down 1 in 3N I will get an average.

At the table I decided the first 3 inferences were strong but not sure, maybe 80 % each. However, when combined that makes LHO having the hand I think he has to only be a 50/50 shot. If the heart hook is on or diamonds are 4-3, I'm going to get a good result for playing in 3N if I just finesse now. I decided the risk wasn't worth it and I hooked a heart and went down 1. Sure enough we got an average board, and making would have been a top. LHO did have 2452 with the HK.

Looking back on it I'm not sure if I did the right thing. Very often I will play a hand to have a guess in the end position and then back my judgment about the layout 100 %. If I was playing my A game and was feeling very confident I'm sure instead of thinking my inferences were 80 % I would have thought they were 100 % and gone for it. I felt bad for not backing up my judgment in this case because it is one of my strengths in declarer play. However, we did get an average and we did qualify for the nationals. Had I gone for it and gone down for a zero, we wouldn't have qualified. From that point of view I did the right thing.

I still don't know, I'll let you guys decide.

NAOP Report

2006-01-16T11:16:00.000-06:00

The North American Open Pairs (NAOP) is a unique event. You begin by qualifying at the club then go on to unit, district, and finally nationals. I really love the district finals because there are no weak pairs in the second day and few in the first. District 16 is notoriously tough so the scores are usually very close and the quality of bridge is high. The top 3 pairs get to go to the nationals and the top 2 pairs get their hotel and airfare paid. Usually the money is very nice but ironically the next nationals are in my hometown of Dallas so there will be no airfare or hotel fees.

The district finals were held over the weekend in San Antonio. For the first time I got my dad to go to the club and qualify and was excited about playing with him. One of my dreams is to win a national with my father, it would make it that much sweeter.

The first session of the first day started out miserably. In our first 2 boards we missed two saves and after about 5 rounds it felt like we were having a 20 % game. It's important in these situations to remember that there is a lot of boards left and just to play normally. Towards the middle of the session things finally started going our way and we were getting hot. We ended up with a 55 % game, not horrible but not great either. Considering our start, though, I would have been happy with average.

The second session was uneventful; we just made too many costly mistakes. We had opportunities and let them pass us by. We ended up with an average game. This meant we qualified in 8th position out of 14. The two pairs that were leading had big carryovers, and everyone else would have very little. There was a 2 board max carryover and we got 1/3rd of a board. This put us at a disadvantage but the main thing was we made it to day two.

In day two it is time to take a few more risks. Instead of trying to be in the top half, you're trying to be in the top 3 out of 14 in a good field. Without much carryover you need two good sessions to achieve this. Our first session started out amazingly well. We were getting gifts left and right. Towards the middle bad things started happening, and we didn't seem to be playing as well as we could. We were getting zeroes and they were killing our score. On the last round we had a misunderstanding and bid a grand on a finesse which was....on...whew. Rather be lucky than good. We ended with a 55 % game but a 70 % was literally in reach. I looked at our scores and noticed we had 5 zeroes in 26 boards. That is just way too many. There was good news and bad news with the rest of the people's scores. Jim Griffin/Ken Schutze and Georgianna Gates/Gus Plate both had huge games. They were about even and 2 boards ahead of the rest of the field. Both pairs are very good and very experienced so I didn't expect to be able to catch them. After that there were about 4 pairs very close in score fighting it out for third with everyone else being outside contenders. We were one of those 4 pairs, so if we had a good night session we would probably make it.

The mentality in the final session was just to play tough and not give anything up. Our style is very active so we're used to more bottoms than most but we knew we had been playing softly and doing things we shouldn't have. In the fourth session we finally brought our A games. Our luck was not as good as before but we had some cards and made the best of them. We ended up having a 57 % game which was surprising, it felt much better. In a good field sometimes good games are less good than they feel and bad games also less bad than they feel because there is less variance in skill and actions taken. I wasn't sure if 57 % was going to cut it, but unbelievably both of the pairs that were leading had games in the low 40's. I actually thought we might have won. We ended up second, losing by 1.4 matchpoints to Shawn and Joe Quinn.

There were a few interesting hands. One hand I had J9x AJ9 Q98xx Ax.

RHO opened 1, I passed, LHO bid 1N forcing and partner bid 3. RHO Xed for business and LHO pulled to 4. First, what do you lead? Dummy obviously has a stiff or void in clubs, likely the latter, and we have the red suits locked up. LHO will only have 3 trumps since she started with a forcing NT. I think a trump lead stands out to cut down on the club ruffs. I led one and dummy hit with:

Axx QT8xxx JTxx ---. We were right about the short clubs and 3 card spade support, but we were wrong about having the red suits locked up! Those hearts looked scary. Declarer played small from dummy, partner put in the queen and declarer won the king. Now he tried the king of hearts. At this point I stopped to consider the hand. Declarer is likely 5224, 5134 or 5125. It's possible declarer has 3 hearts as well but he might have played it differently. If declarer has stiff king of hearts it's probably not right to duck, and with Kx he may not hook later so I won immediately, partner showing even count. I now led the ace of clubs to tap the dummy. It's crucial to do this in order to avoid declarer running hearts and having an entry to dummy. Declarer now cashed the spade ace and ran the jack of diamonds to my queen. I now got out the 9 of hearts to kill the final link to dummy. Declarer correctly hooked and had the king of clubs so he was down just 1.

Another hand my partner made a good bid. He held AKQT KJxxx Axx x

I opened 1 (11-15 5+ hearts) and he bid 3 showing a game forcing heart raise. I now jumped to 4 showing 5-5 and decent suits. He tried keycard and I showed 2 with the queen. He then tried 5N and I jumped to 7. What is my hand? What do you bid?

You should know my exact high cards. I must have the AQ of hearts, A of clubs (2 with) and the KQ of diamonds (7). I'm 5-5 so there are 13 top tricks in hearts. In NT there are only 12 tricks. However if diamonds don't behave you can always fall back on the spade hook. If I don't have the ten of diamonds picking up diamonds will be 68 % and the spade hook is 50 % so 7N will be 84%. If I do have the diamond ten it's over 90%. This was from the first day and the goal is just to qualify. He correctly gave credit to the field and bid 7N which made (diamonds didn't break but the spade jack was on). We got about 80 % of the matchpoints and bidding 7 would have been slightly below average. I think the risk was worth it.

There was a very interesting 3N hand against Griffin/Schutze, but I'll leave that for tomorrow's post.

Mental Simulation

2006-01-13T11:30:00.000-06:00

Most auctions start with each partner describing their hand to the other until one of them is able to take control. Taking control sometimes involves asking specific questions (such as blackwood) and sometimes just means placing the contract. When it comes time to place the contract I find the most effective thing to do is mental hand simulation. Things like combined high card point and losing trick count are now irrelevant as you should have enough information to figure out a range of hands for partner. From that you can determine what is most likely to be the best contract.

Obviously there are time limitations and we are not computers so we can only construct a limited number of hands. To try and get the best range, I like to think of 5 hand types. Horrible minimums, perfect minimums, horrible maximums, perfect maximums and average hands. I like to try and make about 3 average hands and 1 of each of the others. This method that I use was mainly based off of something someone wrote in the Master Solvers Club. I'm fairly sure it was Jeff Rubens, but I could be wrong. Doing this you get a very good idea of where you stand.

Let's try a few hands.

You hold AQ3 AKJ2 KQ62 Q3 and open 2N 20-21. Partner bids 4N inviting a slam and denying a 4-card major. You do not have any method to show 4-4 in the minors, so that shape is possible. At this point instead of thinking "I am maximum so I will bid slam" you should start constructing hands. To do this, we must consider what partner will have. He likely has about 11 points, possibly 12 with no 5 card suit or a very good 10. His possible shapes are 4333, 5332 with a 5 card minor, or 4432 with 4-4 in the minors. With a 6 card minor or 9 minor suit cards you have the methods to bid something besides 4N. In your simulations you want to include all possible shapes.

Horrible minimum: KJx Qxx Ax Jxxxx. Here we are off the AK of clubs and have no play.

Perfect minimum: Kxx xx Axxxx Kxx. Here 6 is gin but 6N will be on a heart finesse.

Horrible maximum: KJx xxx Axx KJxx. With 2 clubs, 3 spades, 3 diamonds and 2 hearts there are 10 top tricks. If the heart hook works you need a red suit to split or have numerous squeeze chances.

Perfect maximum: xx Qxx AJxx KJxx. Here slam is very good, if diamonds split you are cold otherwise you can try a spade hook in 6 diamonds. In 6N you need spade hook or a black suit squeeze.

Average hand: Jxx Qxx Axxx AJx. In 6N we have 3 diamonds, 4 hearts, 1 club and 1 spade off the top. If the diamonds split we just need both black kings to not be offside. If diamonds don't split we likely need a spade/diamond squeeze. 6 is worse.

Conclusion: I did these simulations hands just as I would at the table. I got every shape and HCP range in, and tried to spread the honors out as evenly as possible. On reflection one error I made was always giving partner the diamond ace. Had I done 3 average hands I probably would have given pard one with the spade king and club AK or something. This seems to be a very close case. It seems to come down to whether or not partner has a diamond fit. If I had 5 diamonds available to show 4 diamonds and be forcing, I would choose it. If partner signed off in 5N I would pass, otherwise we would be going to slam. If not, I would probably bid 5N pick a slam trying to get to 6D and otherwise play 6N. Your simulations may come up with a different answer! Usually there won't be discrepancies, but in a case this close there might be.

Let's try one more. You open 1 and partner bids 3 showing a 4 card limit raise. Your hand is 2 AK532 QJ82 Q42. Partner will have about 10-12 support points and has a wide range of possible shapes.

Horrible minimum: KJx QJxx xx Kxxx. Game has no play here and even 3 is not cold.

Perfect minimum: xxx Qxxx KTx AJx. Game is just cold here barring something very bad happening.

The horrible mins and horrible maximums will be the same, all depending on how much wastage there is in spades.

Average hand: QJxx Qxxx Kx Kxx. Here is a normal 11 count with evenly distributed honors. With a loser in each side suit, we have a lot of play. To get rid of the minors we might pitch one on the spades get 2-2 hearts, get a favorable lead, or find the T9 of diamonds third.

Average hand: AQxx Qxxx x JTxx. We must think about unbalanced hands. If partner has a shortness it's likely in diamonds. We have 2 clubs and a diamond to lose and a lot of work to do. They may get a club ruff or lead trumps. They don't always defend perfectly though, and even when a ruff is available they may not find it.

Conclusion: Much depends on partner's spade holding. With the average hands we saw game was close but not cold. I would bid this game at imps and hope for the best, but at matchpoints I would pass. If it is tough to make 4 we'll get a good matchpoint score for 170, but it may just be a win 1 in imps.

Did that feel like hard work? Well it is, but it also will give you much more accurate results than thinking about whether you are minimum or maximum in your high card range. Remember, practice makes perfect and it does get easier.

Love of The Game

2006-01-12T15:09:00.000-06:00

A reporter recently asked me two questions that I had surprisingly never thought about.

1) Why did you choose to be a bridge professional?
2) Why is your goal to become the best player in the world?

Answering question #1 was easier. The main reason is simple; I love bridge. I truly think it is the greatest game in the world. No matter how long you play it never becomes boring and you never master it. Every hand and auction has a certain beauty about it. The game challenges me, stimulates me, and affects my thinking in other areas of life. I find myself completely infatuated with the game and its intricacies.

I also love to compete. Those who know me know that my main goal in pretty much everything is to win. It doesn't matter if you are my best friend or a family member, when I sit down against you I am hoping to kill you. I expect the same from others. There is something about competing that just gets my juices going and makes me feel alive.

Working a 9-5 job, I just feel like I'm going through the motions. It felt the same way in school, completely monotonous. That is not a good feeling and not the way I want to spend my life. A 9-5 job is just not for me. Sure, I could probably make much more money being a lawyer or programmer, but what good is it if I feel bored and unhappy? Money to me is just a means to live, as long as I can make enough to live playing bridge the rest is extraneous.

Some people have speculated that after playing pro for many years I will become bored or that I will look back on my life and feel like it was empty. This may be true, but this is also true of almost every profession. It's impossible to tell the future, but I do think it is unlikely that this will happen.

Question #2 was a little bit tougher to answer, but I think it is closely related to my answer in question #1. I am very competitive, and if I am going to dedicate my time and life to something I want to be the best. Not one of the best, but the best. I'm sure many lawyers want to be at the top of their field, and professional athletes want to achieve greatness. There is just some internal drive in me to reach the top. Will I feel like I have failed if I become the great player but not the best in the world? It's hard to say, but I think if I try my hardest and know that I did and someone happens to be better I will feel successful. The real failure would not be trying my hardest and having my game stagnate.

I think about, write about, talk about, read about, and play bridge every day. I try to do so with an open mind, willing to learn to things and discover that I have been wrong about certain things. I think if I keep this attitude I will be able to achieve my goal. Natural talent is necessary, but I think (hope?) that I have it. I do realize that other people probably have the same goal as me, and we can not all be the best.

I also realize that it's hard or impossible to determine who the best really is. Many would claim Jeff Meckstroth is, very reasonably so, even though circumstances have not permitted him to hold the number one ranking in the world. It is hard to measure, and I will never really know so perhaps being "one of the best" is a more measurable thing to attain.

I think this is a good question for everyone to think about. To make it more applicable to most people I would ask what are your goals in bridge and why? Are you doing everything you can to achieve them?

More Transfers

2006-01-11T09:15:00.000-06:00

I've really jumped on the transfers-in-many-weird-situations bandwagon. Here are two common problem auctions where transfers are better than anything else that I've seen.

1) 1M-(p)-1N-(p)-2N-(p)-?

Before I played transfers I played bids as natural and forcing and with a terrible hand you're just out of luck. Transfers are a big improvement, though, here's how they work after a 1 opener:

3=Diamonds. Over 3, responder can pass, bid 3 to show Hx of hearts to go with his diamonds, bid a black suit as a cuebid, or bid 3N to show a generic slam try in diamonds.

3=Hearts. Over 3 responder can pass with a weak raise, cue with a 3 card limit and slam interest, or bid 3N with a shape like 3334 to offer a choice of games.

3=Clubs. Opener can say he likes clubs by bidding 3 or otherwise bid 3N. Responder can now sign off in 4 or cue.

3=Both minors. Opener can bid a minor with slam interest or a hand that doesn't want to play NT, or signoff in 3N.

Note there is no transfer to spades because 1N denied spades. After a 1 opener things are slightly different. There is no bid to show the minors and a 3 bid is a transfer to clubs. Opener either bids 3N or 4 depending on his hand type.

This method essentially loses room whenever responder has clubs but gains by being able to signoff in 3 of any suit other than clubs, offer choices of games, show some 2-suiters below 3N, and investigate slam below 3N.

2) 1-p-1N-p-2-p-?

This is a weird auction for transfers, but Lebensohl doesn't get the job done. For starters, over a 2N leb bid if opener is 4513 and partner has clubs he may not want to just play 3. Secondly, if opener has extras he will have a hard time showing it and may be forced to punt out 3N knowing nothing about partners hand. With transfers responder can start describing his hand and opener can judge what to do. Here's how transfers work in this auction:

2N=5+ clubs. With a minimum, opener bids 3. Responder can pass, bid 3N showing a concern about diamonds, bid 3 with a minor 2-suiter, bid 3H on Hx or 3 with 3 good spades. Opener will be well placed to know what to do. If opener has extras he can bid something other than 3 and will be better placed to know what that something is since he knows partner's suit.

3=5+ diamonds. Again, opener accepts with a minimum and bids something else otherwise. Responder can pass or further describe his hand.

3=2+ hearts. This is either to signoff in 3, or a 3-card limit raise that would like to start cuebidding, or a balanced hand with 2 card heart support. Opener signs off with a minimum or tries 3N or 4 or a cue bid with extras and 6 hearts.

3=3+ spades. This would show an interest in the 4-3 and no good 5 card minor to mention. Opener bids 3 with a minimum or tries 3N or a pattern bid otherwise.

3=both minors. If opener happens to have a minor suit fragment he will bid it.

3N=to play, denies a doubleton heart.

This method isn't perfect but it makes for much more accurate auctions than Lebensohl.

The Lead's The Thing

2006-01-10T08:46:00.000-06:00

As declarer, the clue that helps me figure out the hand the most is the opening lead. There is a wealth of reliable information available from it, especially when the opponents lead count (which is very common in North America). People rarely falsecard the lead because it is also the card that helps their partner figure out the hand the most, and presumably are trying to make the most effective lead possible. There are many leads that "everyone" makes, so when they don't you can take negative inferences as well. Here are a few common inferences to take that many people fail to think about:

Playing NT

When the opponents lead from a 4 card suit, they will not have a 5 card unbid suit. The reason is simple; people generally lead from their longest unbid suit. There are a few exceptions, the most obvious being if they led from a sequence like KQJT. This inference, especially if there are no unbid suits, can help you guess the distribution very accurately.
When an opponent leads from xxx, he is trying to make a passive lead. This generally means all of his other leads are "unsafe" and he will usually have honors in every suit. If you have to guess a side queen for instance, definitely finesse through this player. If you have bid 1 or more suits he probably has length in those suits.
When an opponent leads from xx against an auction like 1N-3N then one of two things is happening. He either has nothing and is trying to hit his partner, or he has everything and is trying to be safe. You should be able to figure this out very early on.
Many opponents will tend to lead majors on an auction like 1N-3N. If an opponent leads a 4 card minor against this auction, it's likely that he does not have a 4 card major.
If an opponent leads Ace from what later turns out to be AKxxx(x), he thinks he has a side entry. If he leads low, he does not think he has a sure side entry. If you need to guess how to play the hand this inference can be useful.

Playing Suits

If a player leads a stiff, he does not have a trump holding like Qxx, JTxx or Kx. Qx is unlikely. If you have to guess the queen of trumps after they led a stiff, hook through their partner.
If you are off AK in a side suit and opening leader led a different suit, he does not have both the ace and the king. This can help you count the high cards in many cases.
There are some auctions where a trump lead is automatic. For instance after a 2 diamond opener showing a 3 suiter with short diamonds and then a jump to 4 hearts people will almost always lead a trump. If they do not, they have some kind of vulnerable trump holding. This is true on all "auto trump lead" auctions.
If a player leads an ace against a slam, he thinks he has another trick. This inference is much stronger at imps than MP (where they may be trying to hold you to 6). Tempo is an important factor here too, the quicker the ace lead the more likely the opponent is to have a side trick like the trump queen.
If a player underleads an ace against a partscore or game, they had no other attractive lead. Play accordingly.
If a player leads a trump when declarer has shown a second suit, opening leader probably holds a strong holding in that suit.
A trump lead is often an attempt to be passive with honors in every other suit.
If a player underleads an AK(QJ) at trick 1, they have a void and are trying to get partner to get in to give them a ruff.

I think you get the idea. Here are two example hands to help illustrate some of these clues.

Hand 1

A52
843
AJT2
J76

K83
K97
K984
AK4

You are in 3N on the auction 1N p 3N. You get the 2 of hearts lead to the Q and King. The opponents play 4th best. How do you tackle diamonds?

LHO has 4 hearts and RHO has 3. The rule of empty spaces makes RHO a 10:9 favorite to hold the queen of diamonds. However, there is a stronger clue. Remember that we are going to assume LHO has no other 5 card suit since he led from a 4 card suit. His possible shapes are 4423, 4432, 4441, 4414, 3433, 3442, 3424, 2443, 2434, 1444. With other 4 card suits, especially spades, he may have led that instead. It also appears he led from an unattractive holding like AJxx, but RHO could have AQx of hearts still. Overall 3433 is his most likely shape, but even if all shapes are equal there are 7 shapes where he has 3+ diamonds and only 3 where he has 1 or 2 diamonds. This makes finessing through LHO a strong favorite despite the rule of empty spaces.

Hand 2

K42
KJT3
A532
87

AJ983
Q9762
64
3

This comes from a national team game. The bidding may scare you, but north opened 1, south bid 1, north bid 2, and south jumped to 4. West thought for a long time and led a low heart. I put in the jack and RHO immediately played low. How do you play?

Clearly, LHO had underled his ace of hearts. He must have had a terrible hand to lead from because that is a very strange lead and not the slightest bit attractive. I decided that my LHO must have the queen of trumps. Accordingly, I won the queen of hearts in my hand and advanced the jack of spades. LHO shrugged and covered so I did not think he had QT doubleton and finessed the spade ten on the way back. LHO did have the Q6 of spades.

That was a spectacular hand, but not a very hard play to come up with if you are in tune with the vast information available from the opening lead.

Inverted Minors

2006-01-09T08:54:00.000-06:00

Inverted minors are a great idea. The ability to establish a low level force and investigate level and strain is always a good thing if it doesn't come at too high a cost. Sadly, the standard followup structure is woefully inadequate. Valuable space is wasted showing stoppers instead of degree of fit, shape, hand orientation or concentration of values. The fact is, stoppers matter very little when compared to the rest of the things mentioned. Even if you have no stopper in a suit they don't always lead it (unless you tell them to with your auction). Here is a different suggested followup scheme that I think is a big improvement:

1-2= invitational or better raise
............-2=minimum (note all weak NT hand types are considered minimum)
..................-2=GF relay
.........................-2=5+ trumps balanced or semi-balanced
................................-2N=relay
.......................................-3=some 5332
.......................................-3//=5422 with 4 of the suit bid
.......................................-3N= 6322 or 7222
.........................-2N=4 trumps balanced
.........................-3=3 trumps balanced
................................-3 relay
......................................-3/3 are 3433 and 4333, 3N is 4423
.........................-3/3/3=shortness
..................-2=shortness
..................-2N=to play (opener can raise with 14 balanced)
..................-3=to play
..................-3x=shortness
..................-3N=to play
............-2=suit, unbalanced/semi-balanced GF
............-2=suit, unbalanced/semi-balanced GF
............-2N=18-19 balanced, 4-5 clubs
...................-3=waiting, start cuebids
...................-3x=shorntess
............-3=diamond suit, unbalanced/semi-balanced GF
............-3higher=shortness
............-3N=18-19 balanced 3 clubs

1-2=invitational or better raise
............-2=minimum (note all weak NT hands are considered minimum)
...................-2=GF relay
..........................-2N=5+ trumps semi-balanced or unbalanced.
................................-3=relay
.......................................-3= 5332, 6322 or 7222
.............................................-3=relay
...................................................-3=5332, 3N=6322/7222
.......................................-3/3=5422 with 4 of suit bid. 3N=2254.
...........................-3=4 trumps balanced.
...........................-3=short clubs
...........................-3/3=shortness
...........................-3N=4432
...................-2N=to play (opener can raise with a balanced 14)
...................-3=to play
...................-3x=shortness
...................-3N=to play
............-2=good suit, unbalanced/semi balanced
............-2N=good heart suit, unbalanced/semi-balanced
............-3=18-19 balanced 4-5 diamonds
...................-3=waiting, start cuebids.
...................-3M=shortness
............-3=good club suit, unbalanced/semi-balanced
............-3M=shortness
............-3N=18-19 4432

Advantages: Minimum and non-minimum hands are sorted out immediately. Sometimes if opener is minimum responder can just sign off or jump to 3N which will make the defense harder as they are in the dark. After strength is shown it is clarified immediately whether a hand is unbalanced/semi-balanced or balanced. Balanced hands can clarify if they have 3,4, or 5 trumps, and semi-balanced hands can show exact shape. With unbalanced hands opener can choose to emphasize a side suit or splinter with shortness and scattered values or no side 4 card suit. Responder always has the option of showing his own shortness. This follows more fundamental bidding, strength, shape, trumps, and shortness/concentration as opposed to stoppers. In my opinion, it is a much better use of the space gained by inverted minors.

Disadvantages: Sometimes the contract is wrongsided (no emphasis whatsoever is put on rightsiding the contract), and sometimes you get to a 3N contract with no stopper in a suit. Stoppers are not addressed when opener is balanced (unless responder has a shortness that he can show). Unbalanced hands do not necessarily guarantee 5+ trumps as 4441 is always possible. The main disadvantage is the memory work required, this system is not recommended with a casual partner.

Interfering Over Strong Club

2006-01-08T12:53:00.000-06:00

Many people feel compelled to bid whenever they have thirteen cards and the opponents open with a strong club. Having played a strong club for several years with my main partner, I can say I definitely love when these people sit down to play against us.

The main disadvantage of this active style comes in the play. The opponents will probably end up playing the contract and will probably play it double dummy. This is especially true if you have come in with a two-suited bid. Even if you came in with a Suction or CRASH bid and never disclosed the nature of your hand it is generally trivial to figure out which hand type you were bidding with.

Another thing that happens frequently is that these players go for numbers when we couldn't make anything. For instance, recently an opponent overcalled 2 with K4 QJ872 T973 52 at favorable vulnerability. It went pass pass X all pass and he went for 500 against air. It is important to remember that when the opponents open a strong club they do not automatically have a game. This may seem obvious but people who overcall 2 with a hand like this seem to forget it. It is even easier to get people for numbers when they play Suction because responder can pass then X or X then X again. Suction is highly ineffective as a preempt because the responder to the strong club will almost always get two shots to bid.

Sometimes when the opponents interfere they actually give you MORE room than you would have had had they passed. For instance, if it goes 1 X now responder has pass and XX available as options. If RHO bids 1 now, opener also can pass or X and has a much easier time defining his shape and strength. Similarly a 1 overcall increases the number of bids responder can make. Since these are the least dangerous bids some systems make them the most frequent. If your goal is to be a nuisance and screw up the opponent's auctions then these bids are in general counter productive.

Sometimes when you overcall on a 4-card suit or make a two-suited bid with 4-4 shape you will induce the opponents to bid 3N instead of 4 of a major since they know the suit will be breaking badly. This happens more often than you would imagine. It's true that occasionally 3N will go set when 4M would have made despite the bad break, but this is much less common.

Finally, we must remember that bridge is a partnership game. How can partner bid accurately when you are prone to making two-suited bids with 4-4, 4-5 and 5-5? When you do actually have a profitable save or partscore, or even a game yourself, it will be much harder to work out because partner won't be able to judge correctly. One possible remedy to this problem is to bid more when you are 5-5, for instance overcalling 3 in suction instead of 2. While this will help partner bid more accurately, it is also much more dangerous and will lead to some ridiculous results. There is no good remedy to this. Likewise, if you preempt at the 2 level with 5-card suits, you may bid to the 3 level with 6-card suits and the 4 level with 7-card suits but this will just lead you to go for more numbers.

So, we have a lot of potential downsides to showing the majors with a hand like KQ42 Q532 Q4 732 and overcalling 1 with a hand like KQT2 K42 Q432 82, so what are the advantages? Well, if partner is able to jump you may create some tough problems for your opponents. They are less likely to get to the right contract with you always getting in their way. You also may get a good lead from partner on the second hand even though you are likely to be on lead yourself. You may be able to push them up a level when otherwise you would have passed throughout. These are all pretty minor gains for some huge risks.

My advice would be to have more upside when you do decide to overcall against their strong club. With an offensive hand a save or a partscore may be a very realistic goal, and then you would want to bid. The same rules to making normal overcalls should apply to overcalling a strong club. Typically you want a good suit or a good hand, or if you are making a two-suited bid then you will want decent shape and decent suits. With bad hands or balanced hands just pass.

San Antonio: Resolution

2006-01-07T12:38:00.000-06:00

Many readers have pointed out that I left them hanging about what ended up happening in San Antonio. Not wanting to leave you guys hanging, I have decided to give some belated resolution to this regional. Keep in mind it was played in July so it will be hard for me to remember exact hands.

Morning Knockouts: After playing for three straight mornings we had made it to the finals. We faced the Kornegay team that we had already beaten in a previous round robin of this event. Greg and I played the first set and had an absolutely nightmare card. Some unfortunate leads and some bad judgment caused this, and we knew we would be stuck at half time. Sure enough, we were down about 30. I thought we should sit out the second set given our results in the first half but for some reason we played. We played well but so did they and we only picked up about 10 imps to lose by 20. Not a good way to start the day, but you can't win them all.

Knockout 2 Session 3: In the semifinal of this knockout we faced yet another team captained by Colby Vernay. Some tournaments it seems like you play the same people every day, and we had certainly seen Colby many times already. After one set we built a small lead of about 14. In the second set my dad and I had a great card and felt like we had no chance of losing. Mentally, after the set was over I checked out and was thinking about what we would have for dinner. I was also exhausted; the 4 session days followed by staying up at night were taking their toll. When we went to compare, our teammates said we had no chance to win. We actually lost another 14 and it was a tie! Now I had to get focused again because we would have to play a 4 board playoff. The playoff started poorly when we doubled a game that made on very good play. After that we avoided a bad game that would go down, and then I made a very tricky 3 spades which I took a long time to play. The opponents could make 3 hearts so I knew making 3 spades would be a big board. After that I was mentally drained, and managed to get pseudo squeezed on the last board to let in an overtrick! Oh well....only 1 imp. When we went back to compare we had lost big on the first board but won on the next 2. With 1 board to go we were leading by an imp... and we lost one on the last board. A tie again, and I felt horrible. Now we had to play a two board playoff. The first board seemed like we might win an imp when I chose a good lead. On the second board I misguessed a 3N and it seemed like we might lose an imp. In actuality the first board was a push, but the second board was a lose 1. We had lost. I have never played a match that went into double overtime, but it is not a good feeling to lose when you do. I ended up skipping dinner and going to sleep.

One session pairs: I was not going to play the night session, but while I was wandering around at game time Norman Beck asked me to play in the pair game. I never get a chance to play with Norman and he is a good friend, so I agreed on one condition. We cannot play serious bridge, we just have to have fun. He agreed, and some insanities definitely ensued. Somehow they were all working, and we ended with a 60 % or so. We had 68 % with 2 rounds to go but fell a lot. This session was extremely fun, and I was glad I played.

Swiss teams: The next day was the Swiss teams. I was still in the hunt to win the tournament, competing with Nagy Kamel. The first session did not go well for us as we lost early to Nagy's team and later tied with none other than Colby Vernay. I was getting tired of having ties with these guys! We then started getting a bunch of blitzes, and with one match to go we were in third. At this point my teammate Bob Hamman informed the director we were withdrawing so we could catch our flight! Not so fast, I wanted to finish the event so we played the last round very quickly and got a win. We rushed off to the airport but I learned later we ended up second in the event. Was this enough to win the tournament? No, Nagy won the Swiss and beat me out by 4 masterpoints.

I was very disappointed by the second to last day of the tournament. I felt like we could have played much better in the morning knockouts, and I could have not dropped 1 imp each on those two boards in the playoff. If we had won that match I would have won the tournament. On reflection I still had a good tournament overall. Next year I'm going to win it though so watch out Nagy ;)

Fundamental Theorem

2006-01-06T08:39:00.000-06:00

Often I would wonder what to do in tactical competitive situations that would arise. Do I want to risk pushing them into game/slam, do I want to psyche to throw out some confusion, do I want to walk to the dog? Taking things case-by-case just left me frustrated by every new situation that arose. I started thinking about basic principles, and then it came to me. The less room we give the opponents, the less likely they are to get to the right contract. That is the Fundamental Theorem of Competitive Bidding.

Ok, maybe that is not a groundbreaking realization. After all, that's why preempts exist. However in many situations even experts will out think themselves and make bids that violate the Fundamental Theorem. Here are a few example situations.

5 KQ9742 83 9632. White/Red, partner opens 3 and RHO bids 4 . What call do you make?

The opponents probably have a grand. How do we best stop them from bidding it? Well, we could try a 4N bid to cause some confusion. We may try a pass, hoping LHO will misjudge and pass not knowing that his opponents have a big fit. We could try a 6 bid hoping this pushes the opponents into bidding only 6 and not 7. We could just bid 7 and hope for the best. You would get support for each bid among experts, and probably even some more creative choices. However, I feel that your best chance of getting the opponents to go wrong is to bid 7 immediately. This is in accordance with the Fundamental Theorem; we are giving the opponents the least room possible and thus less of a chance to get to the best contract.

If we bid 4N, we give LHO a 5 cue. The opponents can then probe all they want before deciding what to do. If we pass, we give LHO keycard and cuebidding. If we bid 6 we allow LHO to pass and pull to 6 to suggest a grand. By bidding 7, we limit LHO's options to making a forcing pass, Xing, or bidding a grand. Some may suggest that this 7 bid will goad them into bidding a grand. The thing to remember is that that is not a bad thing. True, they will probably make, but what about when we hold 5 KQ9742 A3 9632 next time? If they are easily goaded into bidding grands, they may do it when we have this hand. Sometimes partner will produce a trick with a Qx, Kx, or even a side ace. With the opponent's options limited and you bidding 7 with hands that include a defensive tricks and ones that don't, they will simply be forced to get it wrong sometimes.

I took some heat for a bid I made in the nationals in Denver recently. I thought it was in accordance with the Fundamental Theorem, but I will let you decide. I held something like (I don't remember exactly) --- AKQ7432 AKT932 --- red/white at MP. It was 2 passes to RHO who opened 1. The trick on this hand is obviously to avoid your opponents bidding 7 whenever you decide to bid 7. I chose to bid 7 immediately. I thought this would put enormous pressure on LHO, who as a passed hand would probably not have 6+ spades. Bidding 7 on a 4-card suit would be impossible, so he would need to have a 5-card suit and just bid 7 without hearing support from his partner. However, if I start with 1 or 2N, LHO gets the opportunity to bid 3. Now his partner might get a chance to raise, and it will be easier to find the save.

A possible counter-argument is that I will never mix it up with a red/white 7 overcall. I will always have it made, or very close to having it made. However, I think this is true of all red/white 7 bids no matter when they are bid. They might be mild gambles, indeed on this hand I'm not necessarily cold for 7, and if the opponents always bid 7 they will be doing so some of the time that I am going to go down.

At the table my LHO did actually bid 7 on a 5-card suit. I felt ok with that since I feel that someone who bids 7 there will very likely do it if I overcall 2N and he bids 3 and hears a raise followed by me then bidding 7. I gave him the least possible chance to get it right, or so I think.

So whenever you feel stuck about what to do in situations like these, just remember the Fundamental Theorem. It will serve you well, and has a very sound basis.

Light Openings?

2006-01-05T08:41:00.000-06:00

Times have changed a lot. Opening bids are getting lighter and lighter amongst experts. Some people have asked me why I hold strong to my belief in soundish openings, so I will try to explain.

First, what is the purpose of light openers? Getting in early has a lot of merit in putting the opponents on the defensive and not getting shut out yourself. If you pass on too many hands you will force yourself into nasty guesses later. However, the line must be drawn somewhere when it comes to light initial action. Opening ALL hands, for example, would obviously be silly as it would be impossible to ever limit your hand. It seems to me like many modern experts and theories are crossing this line.

The main problem of super light openers comes in competition. If you would open a hand like A8432 52 A9652 6 (which is recommended by ZAR) then what is partner to do with his balanced 13 count if the opponents were to preempt 3? If he passes, he also misses game when you have 13 or 14, but if he bids he gets to game opposite this hand. This is not uncommon either because when you have a light, shapely hand the opponents are very likely to have some shape of their own.

In a standard system your range is simply too wide to cope if you open very light, even if they don't interfere. Some seem to think light openers are inherent to systems like precision, but the fact is you still become extremely susceptible to preemption. Even if your range is 9-15 instead of 12-20, it is not the same. When they preempt and you have a maximum standard range you can safely bid at a high level because your hand is so good. If you have a maximum limited opener that is not the case. This leads to more guesswork by your side than the opponents.

It is true you will find many thin games by opening light when you have a fit. This does not mean that you will MISS these games if you start with a pass. By passing you are able re-evaluate your hand later when a fit comes into play. For instance, with the example hand if it goes p p 1 p 1 p 2 you can always now bid 4 . However if partner had rebid 2 you will be able to stop low. Many advocates of light openings will claim that if the opponents don't bid they are able to stop low on misfit deals. In practice, this is hard to do, and often will mean giving up on establishing low-level game forces. This is a big price to pay. Being able to start with a game forcing response with most 12 and all 13 counts facilitates getting to the best game and finding slams. To give up on this in order to stop in partscore when partner has opened with nothing is detrimental to constructive bidding. If you keep 2/1's as game forcing and just bid a forcing NT a lot that is no better. If you do discover a fit, you will never be able to investigate slam intelligently. When you have your 11 counts you will be fearful of inviting, and may miss a game. Basically, you will have more guesswork.

Light two and three suiters are also best described by passing and then Xing or making some two-suited bid later. Most of the time when you pass it doesn't come back to you at the 3 or 4 level and you will get your chance. It's true you could get blasted out of a fit by passing, but equally true is partner may have been forced to X them had you opened and he had no fit. If you go the other way and don't X, you may be getting stolen from quite often. All of these problems leave no solution other than guessing well.

Are all these negatives worth the price of putting the opponents on the defensive more often, and finding your fits early on when there is a slim chance of getting preempted out of them later? I don't think so.

A Missed Opportunity

2006-01-04T08:30:00.000-06:00

Knowing how to execute rare squeezes is not vital to the long-term success of a bridge player for that very reason; they are rare. Still, they are fun when they do come up and sometimes can win you a lot of imps. See if you can do better than my partner did on this tricky hand.

Q4
AK942
Q3
AK43

AKJT72
T63
K7
T5

After partner opens 1 you respond 1. Partner rebids 2 and you bid 2 to establish a game force. Lefty Xs and this is passed back to you. You choose to suppress the heart fit and bid 2. Partner raises to 3, and you having done a lot already simply sign off in 4. Partner has other plans and bids 5 to ask for a diamond control. Since you have one you must bid 6.

LHO leads the 9 of clubs. Plan your play then read on.

One possible line is a simple squeeze. For this to execute against RHO, LHO will need a stiff club or else he can kill your entry to the board. You will not be able to cash the AK of hearts effectively after that as you will have no board entry so the squeeze will not operate against RHO. You also need RHO to have 5+ clubs for this line to work if he guards both suits.

Another line is just to try for the QJ of hearts onside. This is only 25 % though, and we can do better.

The best line is what's known as a trump squeeze. We need to be careful in preparation, though. The ending we need to reach is:

--
AK
--
43

2
T63
--
--

It does not matter if 1 less round of clubs has been played or not. If one hand has the club guard and the heart guard, they will have to unguard one suit. If they throw a club, play a heart to the ace, ruff a club, heart to dummy and cash your good club. If they throw a heart, cash the AK of hearts and ruff a club to cash your good heart.

Say we were to just pull trumps and then play a diamond. The defense can foil us by ducking. The count is not rectified, so we are forced to play another diamond. Now the defense can win the ace and play a club or heart locking us in dummy. The only way we can get off the board is ruffing a club which destroys the squeeze against RHO. So we must play a diamond immediately while we can still get off the board with a trump. The risk of a club ruff is negligible. LHO doubled 2 so is a huge favorite to have the ace of diamonds. He is the only one who can have a stiff given the lead, so a ruff is very unlikely.

Did you find this line of play? If not, don't feel too bad. You won't see this again for another 5 years.

Defining Moments

2006-01-03T08:47:00.000-06:00

There are moments throughout every bridge player's career that will define him as a player and competitor. Some will remain "percentage players," some will become heroes, and some will become goats.

Making a bid or play that is anti-percentage during a critical match with your whole team counting on you can be a very scary thing to do. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of confidence in your own judgment. If you are wrong and it costs the match you will take heat from your captain, your partner, your teammates, the press, and the world.

Such a moment arose for Giorgio Duboin in the 2004 Olympiad in Istanbul. His strong Italian squad met the US squad in the round of 16. Many considered this to be the match that would decide the event. With 16 boards to play, Italy was down by 26 imps. This was not insurmountable, but against such a quality team it was significant.

Halfway through the segment, Giorgio estimated that they had lost another 15 imps. Little did he know that in the other room his teammates were having a very good set. Then this deal arose:

KT6
QT7
984
AKJ4

AJ8
63
AK532
Q83

Duboin arrived in a normal 3N with no bidding by the opponents. A heart was led to the ten and jack, and the opponents proceeded to cash 4 rounds of hearts. Duboin pitched 2 diamonds from his hand and a diamond from dummy. He cashed the AK of diamonds and Zia on his right played Jack then low, and Rosenberg played small then queen. It looked strongly like Zia had 3 diamonds to go with his 4 hearts. On the run of the clubs Zia followed twice then discarded 2 spades. So his shape was 4432. Duboin knew that his percentage play was to play Zia for the queen of spades by a margin of 4 to 3. However, after long thought he finessed Rosenberg for it and scored up his game. At this point Italy took the lead in the match and never lost it, winning by 11. They went on to win the event.

Duboin later said that he was essentially swinging, feeling like the American declarer would make the percentage play at the other table. His estimate of the match was actually wrong, but it took a lot of guts to back up his judgment.

I have only had one such moment so far in my career. In the finals of the World Youth Teams Championship in Australia. Our team faced Poland and with 3 sets to go we were down 45 imps. There were a lot of boards to go so we were certainly not swinging yet, but opportunities to gain imps were definitely welcome. The first hand I picked up was:

A872
T
AKQJ542
9

After 2 passes to me, I opened 1. LHO overcalled 1 and partner made a negative X. RHO now bid 2. At this point 3N is certainly the "normal" bid with my hand. I have 8 tricks and just need partner to contribute one. However, I knew partner had a stiff spade given the auction. He might have 10 round suit cards, but there was also a good likelihood he would have 3 diamonds. His values were probably outside of spades, so they would probably be working. The bid I really wanted to make was 4N, and drive to slam opposite an ace! This could work out ridiculously, but slam could also be cold. At this moment, the words my captain often uses echoed in my ears... "Keep the ball in play." Such a unilateral flight of fancy certainly violated that. If slam went down, I would be digging a deeper hole for my team. In the end I decided I'd take responsibility if it went poorly, but that I was going to back my judgment. Partner showed 1 ace and I bid the slam. I got the expected spade lead and saw a mixed dummy:

T
A942
93
KJ8765

A872
T
AKQJ542
9

There were only 2 trumps, but the clubs offered some potential. Ruffing spades was not an option as that would leave me with a spade and club loser, so I had to try to set up the clubs. I won the spade lead and led a club immediately, LHO ducking smoothly. Not knowing the location of the heart honors, I could not gather any clues from the bidding. I did have one huge factor to base my play on, though. If I played the king and it won, I would be cold. If I played the jack and it lost to the ace, RHO would surely return a trump. Now I would need 3-3 clubs to make my contract. Accordingly, I took a deep breath and went up with the king. When that held I had 12 tricks and 11 imps. We ended up making 40 imps that set, and were right back in the match. It actually went into overtime, and we ended up winning. I still wonder what would have happened if I had gone down in that slam...

Remember when your moment comes up to back your judgment, that's what got you to that point in the first place.

A Few Hands With Vince

2006-01-02T11:16:00.000-06:00

Last night I had the pleasure of playing with Vince Demuy. I have never been his partner, but we have been teammates and opponents on several occasions before. Vince is a great player so I was hoping to make a good impression on him, but I screwed up two hands. See if you can do any better.

All vul at imps you get to 3N with these cards:

KJ52
JT97
9
KJ82

AT7
AK2
K752
T93

RHO opened 1 which is passed around to partner who X's. You try 2N, not wanting to hang partner for just balancing, and he bids 3N. The lead is the five of clubs, ducked to RHO's ace. Back comes the queen of diamonds which you win immediately with the king. You finesse the club and when it wins, repeat the finesse. RHO discards a spade. You cash another club pitching a diamond from your hand as RHO pitches a heart. Also relevant is that RHO is Josh Donn, a defender capable of deception.

So, we are at the crossroads. We are clearly going to cash the AK of one major and then try and finesse in the other. We know the queens are split as the opps play 14-16 NT and RHO didn't open 1N. If RHO started with the 2, 3, or 4 small hearts and the spade queen would he be likely to pitch a heart first then a spade? Or would he be likely to pitch a spade first and then a heart? I judged that Josh was probably trying to mess with my head by pitching from the suit he had the queen in first, followed by the one he didn't have the queen in. So I tried the AK of hearts and everyone followed, but the queen didn't drop. Now I had RHO narrowed down to xx Qxxx AQJTx Ax or Qxx xxx AQJTx Ax or Qxxx xxx AQJT Ax as possible holdings. With the first one LHO may have led a spade from Qxxx instead of a club from the same holding, so I chose to play josh for the spade queen. Wrong! He had the first hand and I was down 1. Josh later commented he thought I might play him for Qxx if he pitched a spade first! It was actually a triple cross. Oh well.

The other hand I got wrong was a defensive problem. I held:

KJ9532
JT54
2
A4.

LHO opened 1N (14-16) and RHO bid 2N which showed diamonds. I wasn't going to come into a live auction, but I probably would have balanced so I chose to pass. LHO bid 3D showing a good hand for diamonds, and RHO bid 3N. I passed and partner led the 7, fourth best. Dummy was:

87
Q6
KQJT94
862.

Declarer won the queen at trick one, contributing the 2, and led a club from dummy. Quickly, what do you do? I chose to rise with the ace. If declarer had Kx of hearts, and the pointed aces and KQ, KJ, or just K of clubs this was necessary as we had 5 fast tricks and he was stealing his ninth. This is a bad play if declarer has KJ of clubs and Kxx of hearts as it eliminates the guess for him, which is exactly what the position was. Oh well.

I'm not sure if I made a "clear" error on either of these hands, but I still felt bad to get them both wrong as a lot of imps were on the line. Despite these hands and a very decent grand we bid going down 2, we still managed to pull out a last minute win. Hopefully I'll get another chance to play with Vince again as I cannot think of any errors that he made.

Predictable People

2005-12-31T21:16:00.000-06:00

Humans are creatures of habit. This shows up in bridge all the time, most notably when discarding from many small "useless" cards. For instance, if your shape is 2335 and you have to discard on the third round of spades and no pitch will cost, what would you choose to discard? Unless you are an exception to a very strong rule, you are going to discard a club.

Very often you will find the first discard an opponent makes will be from his five card or longer suit. Unless declarer or dummy also have five of this suit, it is almost always a safe discard. Similarly, your opponents will almost never discard from a four card suit first unless they are sure that declarer can't have four himself. It would be dangerous and may enable declarer to set up the suit when he otherwise wouldn't have been able to. A pitch from a 3 card suit or a 5 card suit would almost always be preferable.

How can you take advantage of this at the table? Well, recently I had K943 of clubs in dummy, and AQT in my hand. When I ran a side suit, RHO was forced to pitch on the third round and chose to pitch a club (looking at the 4 clubs in dummy). I found this to be unusual as with three small he would worry about picking up his partner's queen if I had something like AJT, and he would also probably have a better pitch available. With 4 clubs he would be worried that the pitch might cost a trick. I had a strong opinion that RHO had just made a normal "lazy" pitch from his five card suit, so I cashed the ace and then led small to the ten. I was gratified when LHO showed out.

Another interesting pattern people have is pitching down to equal lengths in two suits whenver possible. For instance, in a 4 card ending with only small cards people are much more likely to come down to 2-2 than 3-1. I'm not sure why this is, but it happens very often. If you don't believe me, try watching what your opponents do or even what you do yourself. You might be surprised. It's not immediately clear how this knowledge will help you, but I once had a spectacular hand that I guessed correctly using this inference.

---
QJT87
QJT
KQJT6

QJ9
A3
A832
A972

RHO opens 2 and you overcall 2N. LHO bids 3, and partner raises you to 3N which is pretty ludicrous but there's nothing you can do about it now. You have to make 3N.

LHO leads a spade to his partner's ace, and RHO plays a spade to LHO's king. A spade comes back and you win the queen, having pitched 3 hearts from dummy. You know your opponents and they are not sophisticated enough to have given any suit preference signals with their spades so there is no inference there. When you run the clubs RHO pitches a low heart, a low diamond, and a spade. LHO pitches 2 low hearts followed by a low diamond. We have 8 tricks and need to guess which suit to finesse in order to make our contract.

If LHO has both kings we are doomed, and if RHO has both then we are cold. So we assume the kings are split. RHO probably would not stiff his king, even though it's free that would be very deceptive and would violate another pattern people have; keeping guarded honors unless they have to unguard them. So we can assume RHO is 6232 or 6322 and kept Kx in his 3 card suit and a stiff in his other suit. If RHO was 6322 that would give LHO 4342. Pitching 2 hearts and then a diamond would be very much against the pattern I described earlier. Much more likely is that he came down to 2-2 in the red suits. That would give him 4432, and RHO 6232. That means RHO started with the K, so you take the diamond finesse. When that works we have 10 tricks.

Had LHO pitched 2 diamonds and a heart he would have gotten me. Remember randomness in these situations is critical, so defy your human impulses and don't discard with auto-pilot on. Especially when you know you will have to make more than one pitch, figure out what ALL of them will be and throw your shorter suit first every now and then.

The Blog is Back!

2005-12-31T18:34:00.000-06:00

That's right, Squeezing The Dummy has returned. I'm not one for resolutions, but in '06 I will promise my readers no more than two six month sabbaticals.

I will try to post daily as I did before (other than when I am at tournaments), but am not willing to compromise quality for quantity. If I have nothing interesting to post on any given day, I simply won't post.

Enjoy the reading, and remember that useful comments are always welcome and appreciated. Happy new year.

San Antonio: Part 5

2005-07-03T02:43:00.000-06:00

Morning Knockouts: Today was the semi-finals of the morning knockouts. We met a team captained by Colby Vernay again, and were in the first half. Colby impressed me again, this time with his ethics. I opened 1N 14-16, and he overcalled 2 which his partner alerted as showing both majors. When his partner bid 2 he passed when it got doubled. They actually played 2 showed one major. They went -1100 when Colby actually held hearts and moved on to the next board. Some players may try to correct to 3, but this would be wrong. Without the alert the 2 bid would be a long suit and almost always get passed. Greg and I also doubled a 4 contract and beat it when declarer misguessed trumps. Our only bad board was my fault. I held: K42 5 Q63 AKJ872. Partner opened 1 which could be as few as 2. I responded 2 and partner bid 2N, 14-16. I tried 3 and partner bid 3. Now I should just bid 3N because we could still be worried about diamonds as 1 might be short. Instead I bid 3 and we got to an inferior 5 game that went down. I don't like the 3 bid at all in retrospect. We were up 12 at the half and sat out, and our team picked up another 40 or so with us out. Tomorrow is the final.
Knockout 2 Session 1: Today a new knockout started. I was playing with my father and Bob and Petra Hamman. My dad is a great player and I was excited he came in. We are almost always on the same wavelength because he was my main bridge teacher. We spent an hour reviewing our system notes, and then had to play. We drew a decent team from Dallas and a team that included Derrell Childs and Alan Copeland. In the first set against the Dallas team we bid a fair slam that made, and had solid but flat results otherwise. In the second set I pushed the opponents into a slam by overcalling 3 with T987532 T8 -- T942 with nobody vulnerable. The slam happened to make, but otherwise we had some solid plus positions. We went to compare, and both slam hands were swings. We were up 10 in the first match and 4 in the second match. Nothing eventful happened and we picked up another 4 in the second match and pushed in the first match. We won both matches, one by 8 and one by 10. I thought we played very well but there wasn't much in the cards.

Knockout 2 Session 2: In the second session we had another round robin. We drew a team that included Darlene Riely, my partner in crime from the Thursday midnight game, and a fair team captained by Mike Miller. The deals were very swingy, and everything we seemed to do was right. This is what Zia calls heat 1. After 12 boards we were up 49 in one match and 38 in the other. The exceptional thing was that we didn't give up an imp. The second set was more of the same, with an inordinate amount of slam deals. One hand was particularly brutal for my partner, but he did very well. He held: T84 AJ A74 J9862. After my strong club, his RHO interfered with a 3 bid. In our system, X is negative and GF, and pass is non forcing. This hand really shows the weakness of our system, but he still had to choose a bid. He started with X, hoping for a 3N bid. When I bid 4 I could have anywhere from 4 to 9 hearts. He might well pass here, but he made a winning bid of 5. I lifted it to 6 and made it. My hand was 2 KQ92 KT42 AKQ7. We bid a few more slams, and our final margins of victory were 60 and 71. Hopefully things go this well tomorrow, but it seems doubtful.

Midnight Knockout 2: I got on a 5 man team for the late night knockouts. I know, I'm crazy. My team was Patty, Alan Copeland, Derrell Childs, and Kathryn Locke. I sat out the first match, then played with Alan in the second. He is one of the few people I have played with that is faster than I am. He would actually claim BEFORE he saw dummy, and was right every time. I played with Patty in the semi-final match against a team that included Jeff Ford. Jeff was our teammate in Thursday's midnight game, but now he was the enemy. The match was decided on a 32 point slam that patty and I bid and the other table didn't. The heart suit was KQ92 opposite J53. This needed to come home for 3 winners, and there was also a squeeze possible. It's about even money, and this time it went down. We ended up losing by about 13.

On a side note, I am in contention for winning the whole tournament. The "winner" of a tournament is the person who wins the most masterpoints. Though I don't care about masterpoints, winning a tournament is a good achievement. I was happy with the way I played today and this is added incentive for me to keep it up. I'm going to give it all I've got.

San Antonio: Part 4

2005-07-02T01:30:00.000-06:00

Morning Knockouts: Having survived the first round of the morning knockouts, our team was set to play another round robin. We drew a strong team from Dallas captained by Steve Kornegay that I was very familiar with and an inexperienced team that I didn't know. We were spotting the inexperienced team 11 imps and getting 1 from the Kornegay team. Greg and I played the first half and easily made up the handicap. I kind of felt bad, I opened an extremely light third seat hand and the opponents missed a game. In bracket one regionals, though, I tend to do whatever I feel is right no matter who the opponents are. It is a high enough level that the opponents should be able to deal with it. We had a decent set against Kornegay; getting to a slam with a strong club auction that is very hard to manage in a standard system and beating a light game two tricks. We did miss a 50 % slam that makes and my partner chose an unfortunate opening lead against a game. He had KT93 of hearts and QJ82 of diamonds. The opponents got to 3N, and he chose a diamond lead. Only a heart lead sets the contract. When we compared we were up 4 (after handicap) to the weaker team and up 8 or so to Kornegay. Our counterparts missed both slams, but we lost a game swing on the hand where Greg led a diamond. In the second set we crushed the weak team and had a solid said against the Kornegay team. I should have beaten a game that they misplayed but didn't, but I knew that would be a push. We also defeated a game that might have been made, and we ended up winning both matches by around 20 imps. We finally advanced from a round robin actually winning all of our matches. Hopefully that's a good sign.

Open Pairs Session 1: For the afternoon and evening sessions I played with Derrell Childs. The event was a 2 session open pair game. I have only played with Derrell once or twice in my life and was looking forward to this event. I have can't even remember the last time I played a regional pair game. We filled out a simple card and were ready to play. I was glad we didn't play many conventions, I strongly believe people that never play together should keep it simple. We started out horribly, playing unlucky and poorly. I had a massive brain fart and wasn't making winning decisions, and he misdefended a doubled contract. We finally got some momentum going with 3 rounds to go, and on the second to last round I picked up a crucial hand. I held: K KT842 AK3 Q843. Partner opened 1 and I responded 2. He splintered with 4 and I bid keycard, loving my hand. Partner bid 5 showing 2 without the queen. Now something strange happened. RHO asked me what 5 meant. I knew we were off 1 keycard and the queen of trumps, but decided to hope partner had the jack or for a 2-2 split. I didn't think RHO had the queen after the question, so I figured I could pick up the queen for a good board. After bidding 6, LHO quickly led the ace of clubs. Dummy was:

AQT832
AJ9
J87
T

LHO now shifted to a diamond, again immediately. The tempo of her plays suggested strongly that she had the queen of trumps, but the fact that she made no effort to tap the dummy meant she did not have it. I decided to just play her to have made a bad play. I won the diamond in hand, cashed the spade king, and led a heart to the jack. When that held, I ruffed a spade and pulled trumps to make my slam. Obviously LHO should have continued clubs. We had good boards on the last round and managed a 54.5% game, not bad considering.

Open Pairs Session 2: We were not out of the hunt after our afternoon game, but needed at least a 65% to have a shot. Derrell really played great this whole session, and the opponents played terribly. Again, I felt like every decision I was making was working out poorly. I'm not sure if I was just unlucky or making poor decisions, but I was definitely dropping a lot of matchpoints. Despite Derrell playing perfectly and our enormous luck, we only managed a 63 % game. I felt badly about this result but it was good enough to come in second. Derrell really deserved to win, and I wish I had played better. He is having a great tournament, he has won a knockout, a swiss, and been second in a 2 session pair game. He did lose in the finals of the premier event, the midnight KOs, though. He was part of Alan Copeland's team from part 3.

Overall I was unhappy with my play today. I know I could have done better, and think I was just tired. Bad decisions happen, but there were two boards today where I made costly no-win plays. These are just unacceptable. I'm glad I had partners good enough to carry me in, and am going to refocus tomorrow. No more sloppy play.

San Antonio: Part 3

2005-07-01T02:37:00.000-06:00

Morning Knockouts: Today was the first session of the morning knockouts. This is an event that goes on for four morning sessions (beginning at 9:00) instead of being played continuously. I was playing with Greg Hinze on a team with Ira Hessel, Alex Kolesnik, Nagy Kamel, and Derrell Childs. Greg is one of my favorite partners and it was exciting to play with him. We sat out the first set since I had to give a lecture for the novice/intermediates, but came in during the second set. We were in a round robin and came in down 14 and down 1. The team we came in down 14 against was pretty weak. After beating them 500 in 1 doubled, we kept pouring it on. At one point I held: 4 J8632 T82 A652. RHO started with 1, LHO bid 2 and partner Xed. RHO bid 4 and I had to decide what to bid. As we were favorable, and the opponents seemed likely to take the push I tried 5. RHO did take the push, and got Xed by partner. The contract was cold but she went down 1. We knew we had made up the margin plus another 20 most likely. We played a strong team in the second match and had the worst of it. The boards were fairly flat but they missed a good game that went down, and we bid a close game that might have been made but didn't. Predictably we lost the second match by about 10, and won the first match by about 30. It seems to be a trend, but we advanced with a 1-1 record.

Swiss Session 1: After the morning KOs was a one day swiss. I was playing with Patty again as well as Vinh Tran and Ed Groner. The format in Texas swiss team events is 6 matches on a VP 30 scale. I really don't like this format as it seems to randomize things the most, but there's not much I can do about it. We lost to a decent team from Austin in the first round by 2 imps. In the second match we got a good draw and scored a near blitz. We didn't really have anything to do, but the opponents just played poorly. An example would be RHO transferring and passing opposite partners 1N opener. RHO had 9 points and 5 hearts and missed a cold game. This big win was not earned, it was handed to us. In the third match we lost to another good team by 8 imps. There was one swing board where our teammates bid a vul game, down 2, and our opponents stopped in 2. That was lose 9, and the match. Again, there were few decisions or swing boards, and after 3 matches we were a little over average. This was surprising given that we were 1-2.

Swiss Session 2: I was determined to do well in the second session. We started out with another set that had very few swings. We got the best of this one and won by 6 imps. In the second match we played an experienced team that I have known for a long time. There were finally some swings and we seemed to be getting the better of it. Although we had no sure hands where we won imps, we had quite a few plus positions. Plus positions are boards that can only be good or a push. If you have enough of these, some will convert into imps. One of our plus positions was actually a lose 12. We found a good save against the opponents 5 contract and managed to go down 1. At the other table the save was found but our teammates let it in. Oops. Despite this we won by 21 and were in the hunt. We were fourth with one round to go, and although first was unlikely a win would probably get us second. This was no easy task as the team we faced included one of the greatest in the world, Mark Lair. We had a flat set except for partner letting in a red game. This was partially due to fatigue and partially playing too fast in order to keep up with the tempo. Everyone else at the table was extremely fast, and I should have slowed down the tempo in order to be a good partner. I was pretty sure we lost this match, and our partners did not have a good set either so we got blitzed. There was an amusing hand where I was in 1N making one. My hand was: T9 QT62 QT86 AQ7. Partner opened 1 and I responded 1. Partner bid 1 and I chose to just bid 1N. After the best lead and a misguess I was held to 1. At the other table Mark bid 2N with my hand and made FOUR in 3N. The defense didn't get off to the best start and Mark played perfectly thereafter, go figure. I think after getting blitzed we missed the overalls. This was a disappointing finish but you can't win 'em all.

Midnight KOs: I played on a six man team in the midnight KOs (which started at 10:30). My teammates were Darlene Riely, Nancy and Steve Kornegay, and Patty Lozano and Jeff Ford. We brought the Kornegays in as ringers since we were challenged by Alan Copeland to form a team that could beat his. The Kornegays are excellent players and it showed in the matches that Darlene and I were in. They were awesome. I thought we had lost both times but they always had a +50 card it seemed like. We met Alan's team in the final and pulled off the win. The whole point was pride, so it was very nice to beat him in the final.

Sorry, not a lot of hands but I'm tired from the four session day. Four session days are really not recommended.

San Antonio: Part 2

2005-06-30T01:23:00.000-06:00

After winning our first match of the knockouts , we arrive the next day just before the 9:00 game time. We are going to play a round robin with one inexperienced but dangerous team and another very experienced team captained by Colby Vernay.

It is decided that Patty and I will play the first half and sit out the second. We start against the Vernay team and have an uneventful set. I went for 800 against their 660 or 690, and had a few plus positions on partscore hands. Nothing eventful. The match against the weaker team was much the same. We bid a poor game that went down, and had a potential partscore swing. When we compared we were down 15 (after handicap) to the weaker team and up 4 against the stronger team. We sat out and our teammates managed to win the match that we were losing by 15 and lose the other one. For the second session we advanced with one win and one loss.

In the semi-finals Patty and I played the whole time. We were playing against a team of tough locals that were very experienced. We had a solid first set with some plus positions. One of my weaknesses is perhaps not doubling enough partscores at imps. The upside of this is that when I do make a penalty double, my partner knows they can safely sit. Patty had KQ54 8642 A973 8. She opened 1 in third seat (anything goes...) and heard it go X, 2(drury)-p to her. She retreated to 2-p-p-3-p-p-X. She had no qualms about sitting and we collected 500. My trumps were AKT94. We compared at half and were up 36 or so. In the second half the boards were pretty dull other than a pushed grand, and despite a few soft boards we picked up another 3 imps to advance.

In the finals we once again met the Vernay team. Patty and I played the first set and there were two interesting slam deals. The first one I had: KQ AKT82 AT943 3. I opened 1 and partner responded 2, GF. I bid 2 and partner bid 2. I showed my 5-5 with a 3 call and partner bid 4. I have a great hand now and an easy keycard bid. Partner replied 5 showing 1 or 4. I didn't want to risk a disaster with 5 so I just bid 6 to offer a choice. It went all pass and a spade was led. This is what I saw:

J52
Q73
KQ2
KQJT

Oops! What happened? Partner apparently answered keycard in diamonds even though this is not our agreement. The important thing here is to keep your cool. I said "Thank you partner," and followed suit while keeping my poker face. RHO won the ace, and assuming we knew what we were doing continued spades. When nothing bad happened in the red suits I had made six. I was also impressed with my opponents who didn't say a word; they just pulled the cards for the next board.

The other slam hand we had was when I picked up: K632 852 AK3 972. Partner opened 1 and I had to decide what to do. Usually with three small trumps and 4333 10 counts I just bid 2. I liked the controls in this hand, though, and tried 1N planning on giving a 3-card limit raise. Pard surpised me with a jump to three clubs. I do not think a jump to 4 should just show any 3 card limit raise as you are just preempting your own auction. There are many hands that need to hear another bid from partner. Those of you who read this know what I mean. Accordingly, I bid 3 and partner bid 4. I hated my round suit holdings, and the spade king was dubious so I chose to pass. Perhaps wrong, but probably not as wrong as partners 4 bid with T AKQ32 J5 AKQ93. Slam is not cold by any means but had partner bid 4 you would bid 4 and probably get there. Both suits broke, so slam makes. We went back to compare and our teammates have had a good set. We were up 33 at the half, pushing the second board. We went on to win 39 more in the second set to win by a total of 72.

Our teammates played well throughout, and it was very satisfying to win. Next, to do it again.

San Antonio: Part 1

2005-06-29T01:49:00.000-06:00

The San Antonio regional started today. I flew in a few hours early and my partner, Patty Lozano, picked me up. The first session of the knockout was scheduled to start at 7:00 PM. It then continues for 3 sessions on Wednesday if we keep winning our matches.

As we were on a 6-person team we didn't know if we were going to play the first set of 12 boards or not. As I used to live in San Antonio I was eager to catch up with people. We got to the playing area an hour early and were able to mingle and scout the competition. We found our teammates and it was decided Patty and I would play the first set with Derrell Childs and Nagy Kamel.

The first match was a round robin meaning we played two 12-board matches and could advance even if we lost a match. As I pulled the cards for the first board I totally went into a different world. There is something about pulling the cards from the board and touching them that really makes me change. The opponents are no longer friends or people; they are an obstacle in my way of winning.

The first opponents were fairly inexperienced players and I was worried when they had a very strange auction to reach a reasonable vulnerable slam that made. I knew it would be very tough for our teammates to bid, and expected a 13-imp loss. Combine this with the fact that we were giving them a handicap of 8.5 imps, and we had a lot of ground to make up. The rest of the match went well, including going +110 on a hand where they had a vulnerable game, and I was expecting to be stuck a little.

The second match was against familiar opponents that I knew would be tougher than the first. There was action again on the very first board. I picked up: AJ 5 AQ532 AQT84. With nobody vulnerable my RHO opened 2. What should I bid? I saw three options; double, 3, or 4N. Each had glaring flaws.

Double could get us to a notrump contract successfully, or enable us to find spades. The downside is if LHO bids something, we haven't described anything about our shape yet. We must bid diamonds and then clubs or things may get very confusing. If partner bids spades, it is even harder to know what to do. We may miss a club fit with this plan, or be forced into a tough guess later.

3 has safety on its side, we will probably never go for a number. We are also well placed if LHO bids 3 as we can bid 4. If partner bids spades or notrump, we will know she means it rather than having been forced to take a call because of a X. The downside is that this is a distinct underbid and may cause us to miss a game or lose the club suit.

4N will always get us to the right minor suit, but it may simply be too high. Worse, we may get doubled and go for a big number.

When all was said and done I decided on 4N, partially because I felt bad about bidding 3 after a 1-minute pause, and partially because I felt the need to get to the correct minor to be very strong. I rejected a X because the hand is just too complicated to start with a X. It could easily be the winning bid though.

Partner had 52 AJ43 J984 972. A 3 bid would get passed out for +110. 4N gets you -100 in 5. Double would get you Lebensohl, then you would bid 3 and it would be hard for partner to ever stop short of game, so call it -100 as well. -100 was a push.

We had solid results on all of the boards, and had made up the handicap (and the 13-imp loss) in the first match and were up 16 in the second. We sat out while our teammates Ellen and Ira Hessel played, and ended up advancing. They won the first match and lost the second. The second round will be another round robin, and then heads up play for the semi-finals and finals. Hopefully I will be able to wake up to play at 9:00 AM.

Back to Basics

2005-06-28T19:54:00.000-06:00

Every time a big tournament is coming up, I really try to focus and get into the zone. It is not enough to have the capacity to play well, you need to actually bring your A game. If I am not completely concentrating and ready to kill, I can't do this. As mental preparation I usually get my mind prepared for war. I review books on squeezes or deceptive play or system notes. For this upcoming regional though, I am going back to basics.

The only time I ever really review the fundamentals is when I am teaching them. It is always good to have a refresher course on beginning declarer play. All too often we get ahead of ourselves and fail to think about the most basic elements of the game because we are planning our next squeeze. The following will probably not be news to anyone as it is in most major beginner textbooks, but it will be useful to take a look at again.

In suit play:

Count your losers
Figure out how do eliminate the losers. This can be done by ruffing, finessing, or discarding.

In notrump:

Count your winners
Figure out which suits can promote the most tricks and play them immediately.

Yeah, I really meant basic. We all do step 1 consciously, but often step 2 is done subconsciously. I think this causes us, or at least me, to overlook some very basic things. So during the regional I am going to go over this list before I ever play a card on every single hand. Sound silly? Maybe it is, but if nothing else it will help my focus and concentration level and cut down on any blind spots I may have. I will modify the list slightly as well.

In suit play:

Count your losers and winners. Sometimes for cross ruffing or dummy reversals, counting winners is more beneficial. Also for squeezes.
Figure out how to eliminate the losers. This can be done by ruffing, discarding, finessing, endplaying, or squeezing. In cross ruffing cases, figure out how to get 10 winners (I assume I will be in game, lol).

In notrump it will be the same except counting losers as well.

It will be interesting to see whether or not this makes a difference in my game. It could have an adverse effect on my game, in which case I will revert to letting my subconscious take over.

Also, in accordance with my theme I will be following some great advice Mike Passell gave me once. I played with him in a sectional and he told me to always have a reason for every card that I played. This advice is absolutely wonderful, but consciously I still do not do this. So I will be thinking before every card "why am I playing this?" If I can actually do this it will force me to really focus and not be lazy or make any careless mistakes.

The last basic I will remember to follow is non-stop counting. Luckily I am used to this one so it won't be a problem. Counting is like breathing; even if I'm being lazy I count. I will still focus intently on doing this as it is easily the most important thing to do in bridge.

Some people have new years resolutions, I have regional resolutions. I am going to hold myself to these and hopefully will be able to see and think clearly. I have a good feeling about this one.

Breaks in Tempo

2005-06-27T19:42:00.000-06:00

One of the most misunderstood aspects of the law is unauthorized information (UI), and more specifically breaks in tempo (BIT). There are so many myths about such a straightforward subject it is laughable.

Myth 1: If your partner breaks tempo you are barred from bidding. This is certainly not true. If your partner breaks tempo, usually you can take your normal action. The only time you cannot is if partner's hesitation demonstrably suggests your normal action and there is a logical alternative. These terms are very important, and you will be seeing a lot of them.

Sometimes a hesitation can be made that doesn't really suggest anything. For instance if the opponents bid went 1-2-4(1)-6 where the 4 bid was slow, this would not suggest bidding a slam. The 4 bidder could have been considering a game try, trying for 3N, trying for 4, or a slam try. If 6 happens to make, chalk it up to bad luck. The 4 bid didn't demonstrably suggest any action.

A logical alternative is an action that at least 1 out of 4 of your peers would make. Note, a logical alternative for a player of one skill level is not necessarily an LA for another player of a different skill level.

Myth 2: You are entitled to redress after the opponents commit an infraction. No way, you still have to play bridge. You do not have to play perfectly, but if you make any errors too egregious you could lose your right to an adjustment. This is not to say that the offending side will get off, but a split score could be awarded. For instance, they could get +170 while you get -420. Don't think you can just check out because your opponents have damaged you.

Myth 3: A break in tempo is grounds for an adjustment. A break in tempo by the opponents, if they are ethical, is actually a good thing for your side. You are able to take advantage of the information while they cannot, and their options are now restricted. The problem is not when a break in tempo occurs, it's when a player acts on that unauthorized information. Many times you will see people getting a bad board after a BIT and screaming for the director when there has been no damage.

Myth 4: All BITs were created equal. Sometimes 7 seconds is a break in tempo, and sometimes it is too fast. Different auctions have different standards for a break in tempo. If there is a skip bid 10 seconds is the correct tempo. Some people think that if a stop card is not used one does not have to wait 10 seconds, but that is not true. In high level auctions as well, I would say 10 seconds is appropriate. High level decisions are very tough and time is often needed. Doubling a partscore should probably be a 5 second tempo. Accepting a transfer should be about a 2 second tempo. If it takes longer than that, the player is marked with 4 trumps as he wanted to super accept.

Now that these myths have been dispelled, let's have a look at the process used behind figuring out if an adjustment should be made in a BIT case.

Was there actually a BIT? Sometimes one side feels there was a hesitation and the other side feels there is not. Humans are notoriously bad at gauging how long multiple seconds are. When this is in dispute, a committee will look at the hands and actions taken. If nothing unusual happened, they will deem there to be no BIT. If it looks like the player may have had a problem, a BIT will generally be assumed.
Did the BIT demonstrably suggest an action, and if so what? Most breaks in tempo do suggest something. The committee tries to figure out what action or actions it suggested, and whether the player at the table took one of those actions. If he did not, there is no damage.
Was there a logical alternative to the action taken? If the bid was clear cut, it does not matter if there was a 20 minute hesitation, the bid is allowed. If there was a logical alternative, the player must be forced to take that action if it leads to a worse result than he got. If there are numerous LAs, he must take the most unfavorable.

Hopefully this clears up some common misconceptions, for more examples the ACBL publishes NABC casebooks.

Consistency

2005-06-26T12:31:00.000-06:00

Constructive bidding is all about describing your hand until somebody can place the contract. You start with a very general description, like a 1 opener showing 5+ spades, 11-21 HCP, and then refine that description with each bid. Since you are refining your hand based on previous bids, you are stuck with your prior judgment of the hand. You cannot change your mind.

How often do you see people feeling guilty about having an exceptionally strong or weak hand for their bidding and trying to compensate? Often if someone has opened a 5-5 9 count they will refuse to cuebid later, even if the auction makes it mandatory. If you are guilty of this, you shouldn't be opening these hands. Once you have decided your hand is an opening bid, you cannot later change your mind. It must be bid exactly as all minimum openers would be.

Similarly, if someone has a very good hand for their prior bidding he may feel compelled to bid again even if he was not invited to the party. There was an example of this on vugraph last night. A player who will remain anonymous held: K87 AJT93 4 9732 (spots approximated). His partner opened 1, and he chose to give a simple raise to 2. Not my choice, I think the hand is too good, but 2 was the bid he chose. His LHO competed to 3 and partner bid 3. This bid is not invitational at all, it is purely competitive. It is anyone's best guess what he has, but it doesn't matter as you should always pass. Having bid 2, you must simply consider this hand a maximum. It will forever be considered a 2 bid (well, for this hand anyways). If partner wanted to be in game opposite a maximum hand, he could invite. When he doesn't then a pass is in order.

You also see this when a player preempts an exceptionally good hand. Sure, if you are 6-6 and started with a preempt planning to bid again, that is different. Your plan all along was to operate (and if there is ever a time to do it, freak distribution is the best). But let's say you have chosen a 2 opener with KQT942 2 AT83 54 with nobody vulnerable. Maybe not your choice, certainly not mine. Partner raises to 3 and RHO bids 4. Are you tempted to bid on? You should resist that temptation. Having opened with a preempt, you must simply consider this a maximum preempt. Partner is in control and you can not bid again (unless that was your plan the whole time with a wildly distributional hand). He may have a doubleton spade and good defense, hoping to push them too high. He may have 4 small spades and out, hoping to keep them out of slam. He may have anything. You have shown a preempt and are stuck with that evaluation.

The point of all this is that you must bid your hand in a consistent manner. If you do not, intelligent partnership bidding will simply be impossible.

Lead Problem

2005-06-25T13:37:00.000-06:00

Opening leads are arguably the toughest part of the game. Many contracts hinge on what what the defense chooses as its opening blow, and you have to do it without the benefit of seeing dummy. All you have to work with is the bidding, which against some opponents is of little value anyways. If the opponents have given you enough information, you can try and construct their hands to find the best lead. If they have had an auction like 1-2-4 you are left with trying to make the percentage lead.

Here is an extreme example of where the opening leader had a lot of information if he reasoned it out. Playing against Farfie and Ritong, two excellent French players who can be relied upon to not be insane, you are dealt 64 Q 8754 KQJ875. The auction starts with partner who opens 1. RHO overcalls 3, you pass, and LHO bids 5! This bid asks partner if they have a first or second round control in hearts for slam. RHO bids 6 indicating a second round control. With a first round control she would have cuebid 6 in case of a grand slam. This is passed around to partner who doubles. LHO chooses to redouble, ending the auction.

Wow, on lead against 6XX. So, lets reason this out. Partner has doubled to suggest an unusual lead. Partner wouldn't do this with an AK or 2 aces because surely one of them will be ruffed. Dummy must have a void. We have 6 clubs, so obviously a club lead stands out, right?

Let's go a little deeper. Instead of thinking about what partner is asking us to do, let's think about what the opponents are doing. The five spade bid would indicate two or more losing hearts, and the six spade bid is probably the king. So partner must have the ace, and we can get one and lead a ruff. Well, the problem is RHO might have a stiff instead of the king. Thats fine, then partner has the AK and will let us stay on lead while giving suit preference. The problem now is that LHO might have realized the king might be useless since we will be on lead and chose to ask for a control with Kx in his hand. No, partner has asked for an unusual lead and we should try to reason this out.

Let's think about what type of hand LHO could have to make this five spade bid. His hand must be solid minus the heart suit. He obviously doesnt expect to have a club loser, despite our KQJ. This means he has a singleton ace or void. If he has at most 3 spades (partner needs one to ruff) then he is left with a lot of running diamonds. If he has the singleton ace of clubs RHO would need to have 6 for partner to be able to ruff. Given the spade preempt, a diamond ruff is much more likely. So you lead a diamond.

Partner's hand was: 5 A875432 -- AT432. Wow, 6 clubs makes! The player at the table actually led a heart, which worked out fine, but is inferior. Beating 6XX 2 tricks is a good score.
Ritong's hand for the 5 bid was pretty much what we expected. He had AQ8 J6 AKJT9632 ---. We correctly reasoned out his hand. Had we not taken the time to do this, we would have probably led a club and the contract would make 7. Now that is a large swing.

Spec Doubles

2005-06-24T19:50:00.000-06:00

Bridge is a different game than it once was. Games are being bid extremely aggressively, and most experts want to be in a 24 HCP 3N contract. Four of a major requires even less. These games often make when there is a little bit of luck, but if finesses are off and suits break badly they will go down more than 1 usually. No big deal, down 3 NV is only 150. No big deal unless they are doubled anyways.

The only defense to these extremely aggressive modern experts is to double their games if they are going down multiple tricks. Often you can tell when they have stretched to reach a thin game and a key suit is breaking badly. Don't hesitate to double them if this is the case.

There are a few important guidelines before issuing a speculative double:

Make sure the opponents have had an invitational auction. This ensures that they were stretching and do not have full values. If they power into game, they may have extra values and redouble. Without full values it is impossible for them to redouble.
It is preferable to make spec Xs at imps or rubber bridge. At imps if you double 3N and it makes, you are only losing 4 imps. At rubber bridge, it is only 150 points. If it is matchpoints, you are risking a bottom board which is much more costly. You also don't need to double a game that is overbid in matchpoints; you already stand to get a good board if it goes down. The exception is if it is a normal game that everyone will bid, now the upside is much greater.
Make sure you have quick values as opposed to slow values if you are doubling 4 of a major. Aces and kings are much better than queens and jacks. Also, having quick tricks in short suits is even better; it means they are less likely to get ruffed.
If it would normally indicate a certain lead, make sure that lead is ok. If you want a different lead you'll be better off just passing.
Having short trumps is much better than having long trumps. You don't want to give away your trump holding, and by doubling with short trumps you may induce them to misplay the hand.
If they accept a game try slowly, they are even more likely to be overbidding. Sometimes you can figure out they are stretching a lot just based on tempo.

Now that we've got that out of the way, lets look at some examples.

You hold: 5 9742 AQT8 AKT3 playing imps. Your RHO starts with 1 and you hear this auction from the opponents: 1-1-2-2N-3N. Here we know our diamonds lie favorably over the diamond bidder. There is no way they can use diamonds as a source of tricks. Partner must be holding spades over the spade bidder, as the opponents have not tried to get to 4. Neither of the opponents can have 5 hearts, and only RHO could even have 4 as LHO didn't try a 2 bid. So they have at most 4 tricks there. We have the clubs locked up. The opponents had an invitational auction where they might both be stretching. The situation is great for a speculative double; make them pay when the suits don't break well for them.

Ready for another one?

You hold: -- AKJ A832 T87532. The bidding start with your LHO and your side stays quiet. 1N-2-2-2-3-4. Here you should double. Since the opponents are not playing transfer extensions or anything else, RHO has shown a hand with 4 spades and 5 hearts with invitational values. Partner probably has 5 spades, potentially 4 if LHO has 5. You are 100 % sure your 2 hearts will cash, and on a good day 3 of them will. Your ace of diamonds is also a big favorite to survive. The opponents are obviously bidding a low high card game, and you've got to punish them.

This last one comes from an online BBO match.

I held: JT76 AK875 972 7. I passed and LHO opened 1N 11+-14. RHO invited with 2N, and LHO thought for a few seconds before bidding 3N. This was passed around to me and I doubled! Most people I have talked to about this hand think I am nuts, so I will try to argue my case here. We know from experience when we pass this out our partner always leads a small club. OK, not always, but it sure feels that way. He does rate to lead our stiff when we have one. LHO probably has a good 12 or 13 because he thought for a few seconds before bidding game, so they have at most 25 and probably less. A double asks for partner to lead his weaker major. RHO did not bid stayman, so he does not have 4 hearts. If we do get our heart lead and LHO doesn't have 4 of them, we are in great shape. Partner will probably get in with a minor suit entry and continue hearts. If LHO does happen to have 4 hearts, we can change plans and attack spades. If partner guesses the wrong major to lead, a spade lead is still much better for us than a club. On the actual deal partner did lead a spade from 953. He got in with the ace of diamonds and found the heart shift from Q94 so we got +500. His normal lead was a club, which wouldn't have cost if he won the diamond ace and played a heart. I'll leave it up to you to decide if I was lucky or good.

After doubling your opponents a few times like this, they may be scared to ever bid a close game against you. That's when you've got them.

Master Solvers at The Table

2005-06-23T19:52:00.000-06:00

We all know him. Perhaps we have even played with him. He is known for confusing his partner at the table and then explaining his brilliance in the post mortem. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the master solver.

The master solver reads a lot of books and columns. His name is derived from reading the Master Solvers Club in The Bridge World. In MSC a panel of experts are given extremely difficult bidding problems and are asked to explain what they would bid and why. The winning bid is very often doubling, cuebidding, or bidding a 3 card suit. These bids generally do not describe the hand very well but induce partner to give us some useful information (hopefully) so that we can better solve the problem.

The master solver absorbs all of these textbook bids that the expert players frequently make. He is pleased with his sophistication and scores in bidding challenges. What he fails to remember is that these challenging hands represent a very small portion of all hands. Since he reads more than he plays he sees a completely disproportionate number of impossible bidding problems. To him, when the auction goes 1-1-2 a 3 card club holding is common. The exceptions are the rules.

Why, with all of his talent (as they usually have) and sophistication can he not seem to win? It must be his idiot partners, passing his cooperative X's and raising him with only 4 trumps. Or perhaps it is because on the 99% of the hands where the master solver should be describing his hand or taking a stand in a competitive auction he is making his usual masterminding bids. He will hold: KQT942 AQ3 6 AJ2 and after opening 1 will rebid 2 over partner's 1N bid. He will explain in the post mortem after he plays 2 unsuccessfully why it was such a good bid. If we have a heart fit, we will miss it by bidding 3. If partner has diamond values, we can stop at the 2 level which we can't do if we bid 3. If partner raises clubs, we might find a club slam. Partner will rarely pass 2 so it is the perfect bid. It is a very convincing argument except that the 2 bid has nothing to do with the hand. His spade suit is good enough to jump to 3 spades, and his values are perfect. These bids are what make him a losing player.

In practice, the master solver's brilliance consistently costs him on nothing deals. He may even cater to his partner making some master bid and place the contract incorrectly. Mental hand simulation, indispensable to accurate bidding, becomes useless when partner could hold anything. The master solvers win the post mortem. The old-fashioned players who bid what they have win the tournaments.

Another reason the master solver is a losing player is because bids always mean what he wants them to mean. A double or a cuebid shows exactly what he has and his partner must work it out. He is unwilling to commit one way or another and is always trying to be "flexible." Unfortunately, their partners never know what to do and sometimes go wrong.

I am not implying that you should not read or learn from the Master Solvers Club. Actually, I read a lot about bridge and love MSC. When the situation comes up for a sophisticated bid or play I want to be able to make it. The trick is to realize on a majority of deals you just need to bid what you have. Nothing fancy, just try to describe your hand as well as you can. It is only on a few select deals that you should be using your "expert" bidding. Alter the previous hand to Q87532 AK4 6 AK2 and I completely agree with a 2 rebid. Your suit is terrible, and your hand is too good for a 2 rebid. Be cautious with overusing a bid like this though, or you might be as feared by your partners as the master solver is.

A Tricky Slam

2005-06-22T19:15:00.000-06:00

Last night I played a long imp pair match against two tough players from California, Howie Einberg and Jim Glickman. I was, as usual these days, playing with Josh Donn. In the middle of the match a crucial hand came up.

I was dealt: KT72 Q AK3 AK853. In fourth seat after 3 passes to me, I open 1. Partner responds 2N, and it is our style to pass most balanced 11 counts and open most balanced 12s. Points aren't really what's important here, it's more about where his honors are located and the degree of fit he has. I bid 3 in an effort to start describing my hand, and partner signs off in 3N. I have a close call here and pass, 4, and 4N are all reasonable bids. I have not shown this good of a hand, and think that 4N will probably be safe so I choose 4 in an effort to give partner a good idea about my shape. He cooperates now with 4 and as I have said my piece, I sign off in 4N. He is free to bid on if he wants. He does, and answers aces along the way with 5 and my 6 bid ends the auction.

The lead was the 7 and this is what I saw:

AJ
AT8
J9874
T42

KT72
Q
AK3
AK853

Not the greatest slam but I've seen worse. I asked the opponents about their leads and they told me 3rd and 5th. Trick 1 posed a difficult problem. I obviously have a club loser, barring some unlikely miracle, and need to take the rest of the tricks. I have numerous lines of plays available including:

Duck at trick one planning on ruffing 2 spades and pitching my diamond on the heart. This will work when Jim has the king of hearts and either the spade queen drops third or doubleton or the hand with 3 spades has 3 clubs (or xx). If spades are 5-2 you will survive if the short spade has long clubs (likely) and the diamond queen drops.
Duck at trick 1 planning to play the AK of clubs followed by AK of diamonds, if no queen drops spade to the ace, heart ace pitching a diamond, ruff a diamond, spade king, spade ruff. This will work when the diamond queen drops or the diamonds and spades both break. If spades are 4-3 and rho has the long club and short diamond (we know he has 5 hearts from the lead so 3-5-2-3 is not unlikely) he will be able to pitch his 3rd spade on the 3rd diamond and then overruff dummy.
Win the first trick and play for the diamond queen to drop.

All of these trumps need 3-2 trumps, some catering to 4-1 with a stiff honor on right. The hand is very complicated to analyze. At the table, I felt like the opening leader was very likely to have the king of hearts. He can have K97, KJ7, or J97 of hearts from the lead (third and fifth). He knows I have a stiff heart so is eager to lead one to eliminate an option for me. It also seems like the safest lead. After ducking successfully to my queen I chose to adopt the first line. I play 3 rounds of spades cashing a heart and pitching a diamond along the way and the queen ruffs out (LHO starting with 3). Great, I'm flying high, I can just pull trumps and claim right?

Mike Lawrence wrote a great BOLS tip called ecstasy. Everyone knows not to start steaming after a bad board, but it is equally important to keep your eye on the ball after something very GOOD happens. I lost my focus and played a club to my ace. RHO followed with the queen and I realized I had messed it up if trumps were 4-1. LHO said "down 1" so I knew they were 4-1 after all. I tried by playing AK of diamonds, and the spade ten but lho did not trump. I ruffed in dummy, ruffed a heart to my hand, and got out with the 5 of clubs with K85 of clubs left, but LHO had J97. Down 1.

Let's go back. I was in dummy and this was the position:

--
T
J9874
T4

T
--
AK
AK853

My spade ten is high, so my only danger is a 4-1 trump split. If it is not stiff honor on my right nothing can be done. It can cost nothing to ruff a heart to my hand right now. Now when RHO follows with the queen of clubs under my ace, I am in control. I will cash my AK of diamonds and lead the spade ten, as before. If LHO ruffs high or low, I have the rest. He must pitch a heart. Now I duck a club and LHO wins with the jack, but is endplayed into leading a small club away from his 9x into my K8. This small slip cost me the slam. This error is very common and there is a very sound fundamental principle that will eliminate it from your game. Whenver you can shorten yourself and it cannot cost, go ahead and do it.

By the way, LHO had Qx of diamonds to go with his spade queen so every line works. A potential improvement to my actual line is to cash one round of clubs first. If RHO follows with an honor, I can lead a small trump from my hand and fall back on line 2 with a spade finesse instead of ruff as the second entry. This will fail if RHO has made a nice falsecard from QJx and actually has the queen of spades, or if RHO has QJ tight of clubs and the spade queen. To further complicate things LHO could follow with an honor. I am not sure what the correct percentage line is, but I suspect in retrospect that it is line 2. I am sure that the two lines are reasonably close, and figuring out at the table which line may be a few percentage points better or worse is not as important as other things like keeping your focus. I will leave it up to the mathematicians to figure it out. That ain't me.

Ira Chorush

2005-06-21T19:36:00.000-06:00

Ira Chorush is known and feared by almost every top expert player, yet few others know him. For most of his life he was predominately a rubber bridge player in Houston, going to few tournaments. He did manage to win a few nationals in his spare time. Let's take a look at why Ira is so feared.

You hold: KQJT6 Q52 Q84 Q3. Playing rubber bridge, the auction starts on your left and you hear the opponents bid 1-2-2N-3-4. The 2N bid showed extra values. Your partner leads the 5 of spades playing fourth best and dummy comes down with 984 KJ7 AJT3 KJ2. What's your plan? Decide before reading on.

We can place partner with a doubleton spade from the lead (declarer would likely have bid spades with 4 of them) and declarer with all the high cards. Declarer's shape will be 3-5-2-3 or 3-5-3-2. This pretty much means he has either Axx Axxxx Kxx Ax or Axx Axxxx Kx Axx. We need the declarer to take his finesses into us, and to do that we must let him think our hand is the safe hand. Since declarer cannot read the spades, we can make it look like partner has the five card spade suit. So we win the first spade with the king, and return the jack. Note if we played the ten and then the jack declarer would figure out the position as partner wouldn't be underleading the KQ of spades. The queen followed by the ten or the jack followed by the queen would also work. Declarer, taken in, runs the heart ten into you. Now the key moment, you must NOT cash your spade. Just exit another trump keeping up the image that you have a doubleton spade. Remember, partner led the 5 and then played the 2 so it is a very believable ruse. Declarer will pull trumps, ending in his hand. If he has the first hand we are sunk as he can test clubs before finessing a diamond into us. But if he has the second hand, with 2-3 in the minors, we have him. Declarer will confidently play the king of diamonds and a diamond to the jack planning on discarding both black suit losers even if this finesse loses.

This is exactly how events unfolded at the table, declarer's hand being A63 AT984 K2 A75. Who can blame declarer for falling victim to this great deceptive defense by Ira? Ira is known as a great technician, but his deceptive game matches up with the very best.

Transfer Extensions

2005-06-20T19:39:00.001-06:00

Transfers are a funny thing, almost everybody plays them yet few know why. A widely believed theory is that the main advantage of Jacoby transfers is right siding the contract. While it is true that this is advantageous, it is not that great a gain. The best part about transfers is the ability to transfer and then bid again. Jeff Rubens wrote on the Useful Space Principle in 1981 giving a sound theoretical argument for transfers in a variety of auctions including advancing to partners overcall.

Consider playing no system at all over a 1N opener. The only way to force in hearts is to jump to 3. Playing this way, if you have a two-suiter you can never show it below the 3N level, and if you have an invitational hand you can never show that. With transfers, you can show almost every hand type because you can transfer and then define your hand better with a second bid at a low level. Even two-way stayman can have problems with the timing of some auctions if you hold a two-suiter. For instance: 1N-2-2-3. Now if you have say, hearts and clubs, you are never able to show the clubs.

One problem I have found in transfer sequences is bidding after the second suit is shown. If the auction starts 1N-2-2-3 and opener does not have 3 hearts he may have some problems. He may not want to go past 3N to show a club fit, especially at matchpoints. He might try a punt with 3 as a cooperative noise, or may just bid 3N discouraging partner. These leaves ambiguity about all bids that are not a raise of a major. They could be a 5 card suit, a NT probe with weakness in the other suit, or an advanced cue for clubs. The auctions lack the necessary clarity responder needs to be able to make an intelligent decision about strain and level. This is why I have come up with transfer extensions.

With transfer extensions, the second bid after a Jacoby transfer is another transfer. So:

1N-2
2-2=invitational with 5 hearts (like a 2N rebid)

1N-2
2-2N=4+ clubs GF

1N-2
2-3=4+diamonds GF

1N-2
2-3=6+ hearts invite

1N-2
2-3=5-5 majors invite

Higher=Splinters.

You may be wondering what the gain of the second round transfers is. It solves the ambiguity of the auctions because opener can now support the minor below 3N. He never has to worry about going past 3N to raise partner. Over 2N or 3 he can bid 3 of partners minor with 4 card or longer support, or 3 of partners major with 3 card support there. This means if opener bids one of the other suits it denies support for both of responder's suits and would usually indicate a 5 card or longer suit. The only time it could be a 4 card suit is if opener was specifically 4-4 in the unbid suits with weakness in the 4th suit. If opener completes the second "transfer" responder has room to pattern out economically. The auctions will time out much better if a minor suit fit is found. All you give up to play transfer extensions after a transfer to hearts is transferring and then bidding 2 spades. This is usually played as 5 hearts and 4+ spades with invitational values. Usually with that shape and 8 points you can afford to force to game, and with less than that you can bid garbage stayman. It is not perfect, but the invite is of limited use and the gains definitely outweigh the loss.

For spades things are a little bit trickier. You must free up this auction:

1N-2
2x-2

In transfer extensions, this auction would show any hand with 5 or more spades and invitational values. I actually consider this a gain, as you are able to stop in 2 on a lot of hands where the field will get to 2N or 3. Note, in this auction a raise to 3 would be a choice of games. Re-invites have no use at all. With 5 spades and 4 hearts and a weak hand you just have to transfer to spades and pass. The structure after a spade transfer would be:

1N-2
2-2N=4+ clubs GF

1N-2
2-3=4+diamonds GF

1N-2
2-3=5-5 majors GF

1N-2
2-3=6+ spades 1 suited slam try.

1N-2
2-3=6+ spades invite.

Higher=Splinters.

Note that here 3 spades has the normal meaning and 3 hearts is a 1 suited slam try. This way you don't have to go through Jacoby then jump to game to show the hand and gain room to explore for slam.

If you are willing to give up being able to bid stayman with 5 spades, 4 hearts, and a weak hand and having the ability to show 5 hearts and 4 spades then you can play transfer extensions. To summarize, you gain the following:

The ability to locate minor suit fits below 3N after a transfer sequence.
The ability to stop in 2 spades with an invitational spade after a 1N opener
Clarity of all bids after responder shows his second suit.
The ability to show a 1 suited slam try in spades and still have room to explore below the game level.
More economical auctions after the second suit is shown.

I think the gains clearly outweigh the losses, but I'll let the readers decide.

Update: It has been called to my attention that this convention had already been thought of/used by other people, notably Danny Kleinman and possibly many others. It was negligent to imply that I was the first to invent this convention without checking to see if that was true. Though I thought of it independently, I was definitely not the first one to have thought of it.

Midnight Tourney With Josh: Part 3

2005-06-19T13:47:00.000-06:00

In Part 1 and Part 2 Josh and I had successfully gone eight boards in an ACBL tournament without a below average board. Our running average was at 75.37 % as we entered the home stretch. Unfortunately, in 12 board tournaments each board counts for quite a bit towards your total score so anything could still happen. After our customary 10 minute wait between rounds (we play too fast) we are ready to start.

Board 9: I pick up AK432 AJ9 6 AQ73. I open with 1 and get a raise to 2 from partner. I used to be the type to just bid 4 with this hand. I really love that auction for concealment purposes, but I found I just missed too many slams (especially if partner has a fit in my second suit). So, I bid 3 and partner retreated to 3. Now I have an easy 4 bid and am not worried about missing any slams. They lead the Q and dummy hits with J87 T6543K974 J. So much for slam, it looks like game will be difficult to make. I duck the diamond and when they continue with the jack I duck again and ruff in my hand. I have 2 heart losers, 1 spade loser, and a diamond loser off the top. That's not to mention the clubs I have to deal with. One possibility is trying to sneak a club to the jack so I can double finesse hearts while ruffing 2 clubs. If they do win the K I will be down off the top, possibly 2. The answer on this hand is to count winners, not losers. I have 1 club and 1 heart winner. If I can take eight trump tricks I will make my contract. I will need some good splits but I like this line. I am able to ruff 3 clubs in dummy and 3 diamonds in my hand while taking the ace of hearts along the way. I then have the AK of spades as my 9th and 10th tricks. This line was remarkably simple but is relatively hard to spot for most people.

Result: 84.78 %
Running Average: 76.42 %

Board 10: I pick up this lovely collection: 98632 982 -- 87642. I know, I can't complain, I've been hit with the deck this whole tournament. LHO opens 1 and partner overcalls 1N. I have an easy bid of 2 which is a transfer to spades. LHO has not said his piece and is there with 3. Partner bids 3 which ends the auction. He receives a diamond lead and his hand is QJT5 KQ3 AQ32 A3. Wow, what a great hand. Perhaps in this auction a 3 bid should show a maximum with 4 trumps, and 3 should just be competitive. On a diamond lead partner plays carefully and just loses 1 club, 1 heart, and 2 spades. He never touched trumps until the very end.

Result: 84.78 %
Running Average: 77.25 %

Board 11: I pick up Q854 82 KT976 Q9. Partner opens 1 and RHO makes a takeout X. Josh and I play transfers here starting with a 1N bid. Most top players are playing this treatment lately and I highly recommend it. Anyways, I can bid 2 showing a constructive raise or 2 showing either diamonds or a diamond lead directional raise. I could also bid 3, a fit jump. A fit jump shows an invitational hand so I reject that bid. If the Q had been in diamonds I would like the fit jump. 2 looks superficially best but I am worried about never being able to show the 4th trump. If I bid 2 and then 3 later in competition partner will have no inference about my 4th trump. I choose 2 to show the constructive raise and LHO doubles. This is the downside of transfers here. If I had been able to bid 2 LHO could not double to show hearts. Partner bids 2 showing no game interest and RHO competes to 3. I bid 3 with 4 trumps and a side 5 card suit which is passed around to RHO. He surprises everyone by doubling, ending the auction. We are not vulnerable so even down 1 should be ok. Partner actually has a great hand in context; AKT93 76 A8 J874. Diamonds are 3-3 and spades are 2-2 so partner has no trouble making this, losing 2 hearts and 2 clubs.

Result: 100.00 %
Running Average: 79.32 %

Board 12: Wow, last board and we have a shot for a rare 80 % game. I am dealt T A7 872 AKT9842. I open 1 and partner responds 1. 3 could work out very well if clubs run, but I opt for a simple 2 rebid. Partner bids 2, natural and non forcing. I have exceptional clubs so I bid 3 ending the auction. A heart is led and dummy is KJ963 K864 K63 6. This is not a typical dummy for this auction, but I agree with Josh's bidding. I win the heart lead in my hand and immediately lead a spade. When they duck, I infer from the lack of diamond lead on this auction that the opening leader had the ace of that suit. Also, he may have flown with the ace of spades if he had it. With only these two minor clues to go on, I let my ten ride and it loses to the queen. I win the heart return in dummy and lead the spade king, pitching a diamond when they play small. This loses to the ace, ouch! They cash the ace of diamonds and eventually get a club, so I am held to three. The diamond ace was onside as I had thought. Many on this hand actually bid and made 3N, and many in 3 made an overtrick.

Result: 26.09 %
Final Average: 74.88 %

So, we ended up right around 75 %. Not bad, although the last board was a disappointing way to finish. We took a lot of risks, got lucky a few times and got all the cards. These things on top of playing well can lead to huge games, as evidenced by this tournament. A lot of the decisions made in the bidding would probably have been different in a two-session event. I think in a half-session event (12 boards) the risks taken were very reasonable even if they do not always work out. We actually won by 12 % so even if something had gone wrong we would still have been able to hold on.

Midnight Tourney With Josh: Part 2

2005-06-18T10:21:00.000-06:00

In Part 1 Josh and I got off to a good start in the midnight ACBL tournament. Our running average was 78.99% after 4 boards. Josh and I have a habit of starting well and ending well, but in the middle it is usually shaky. I always yell at him for jinxing us because at this point he has usually mentioned how well we're doing. This time he wisely says nothing. We move for the next round and start with...

Board 5: I pick up Q8 QT84 9532 KJ6 at unfavorable vulnerability. I pass and hear my LHO open 1N and complete the 2 transfer with 2 which is passed around to me. I am a big fan of balancing, but vulnerable and with Qx of spades against what might be a misfit deal I must let sanity prevail. My partner leads the Q and dummy hits with KJ9632 53 T6 952. So I could have pushed him up a level, oh well. Declarer eventually guesses spades (he started with AT4) and has to guess the heart (he has KJ). My partner had led out the Q-K-A of diamonds, so declarer plays him to not have the ace of hearts and plays small to the king. Josh had 75 A762 AKQ8 874 and did not make a takeout X in a live auction. I guessed we got a good board for this reason, and sure enough many guessed the heart to make 4.

Result: 76.09 %
Running Average: 78.41 %

Board 6: I pick up AKT3 A5 KT743 A5 at favorable vulnerability. Ahh, that's more like it, back to the type of hand I was getting in Part 1. I am in fourth seat and it goes P-P-1 to me. Many would X with this prime 18 and 5-4 shape. I am not saying this is wrong, but in my opinion to start with a double on an off shape hand you must be able to control the subsequent auction. My anchor suit is quite weak, and if the auction were to go something like 1-X-3-3-P I would be in a world of trouble. Notrump would not appeal with only 1 club stopper and no source of tricks. For this reason, I choose to simply overcall 1. LHO bids 1 which is passed back to me. I choose X instead of 1 as 1 would generally be based more on distribution than high cards. LHO is in there again, this time with 2, and once again this is passed back to me. I'm not going to sell out to 2, so I try another X. My pard thinks this over and eventually bids 2, ending the auction. Dummy is 6542 98742 85 J7. Diamonds are 3-3 with the ace offside and spades are 3-2 so I have to play it carefully for down 1. Perhaps partner didn't bid 2 because he expected only 3 from your X as with 4 you could have bid 1. It is possible to make 2 spades so our only hope is that the field gets too high. I was expecting below average but...

Result: 58.70%
Running Average: 75.13%

Board 7: I pick up AJT7654 T3 A732 -- with everybody vul. Partner passes and RHO opens 1. I have 3 options here. I can try 1 planning on not preempting because I have the boss suit. With this approach I will have to guess a lot later. I prefer them to guess instead of me, so this approach is really not my style. After that, it's between 3 and 4 spades. With 7-4 I don't need much for game or for a save to be profitable. I just blast to 4 and apply the pressure. They choose to X and it goes all pass. A trump is led and partner comments that he hates his hand. Dummy is -- 9862 KT54 T8754. Boy was he ever wrong! His diamond holding is gold and the trump lead does not cause us any pain. They are 3-3 with the honors split, and diamonds are breaking so I go down 1. They are cold for 3N of course, and could get me 500 on a different lead.

Result: 76.09 %
Running Average: 75.27 %

Board 8: I had nothing to do on this hand so we will switch around to Josh's seat. He held 6 KJ74 QT865 Q74. In fourth chair LHO and partner passed, and RHO opened 4 (hey it worked for us, why not for them?). Everyone passed and he had to lead. A black suit is obviously out, so he could opt for the aggressive heart lead, or the passive diamond lead that still might set up a trick. He went with standard operating procedure of the most aggressive possible lead on this auction and was rewarded with setting the contract. A club would also have worked. Declarer had opened 4 in third seat with AKQ8753 Q5 A3 JT. He bought KJxxx of diamonds, the ace of clubs, and a stiff trump. So on a diamond lead he can win the ace, play off 3 rounds of trumps and finesse the diamond to be able to get rid of his club loser. After a heart lead, though, we had the timing to shift to a club after cashing our hearts. Now since I could ruff the second diamond, declarer had to lose a club.

Result: 76.09 %
Running Average: 75.37 %

We managed to overcome the middle part of the tournament with some solid results. Tomorrow we'll see how Josh and I ended up

Midnight Tourney With Josh: Part 1

2005-06-17T19:50:00.000-06:00

Confession time. I have a hidden love for ACBL tournaments on Bridge Base. These tournaments are run daily and cost a $1 entry fee. They are 12 boards long and in general attract weak fields with some exceptions. For some reason, I just can't get enough of them.

I play a few of these tournaments every week with my partner in crime, Josh Donn. Josh is a good junior player and a friend of mine. We have an amazing record in these tournaments considering how much luck is involved. Our strategy in general is to shoot for a 70 %. In a twelve- board matchpoint tournament that usually attracts 25 or so tables, you really need a big game to win. A lot of risks that you wouldn't take in a four-session tournament need to be taken. We don't take absurd risks, though, just things like playing 3N often with a major suit fit and doubling more frequently. We almost always end up with 1 zero.

Last night we played in the midnight tournament and I decided to document it. I am going to go over every board and show the world how crazy we actually are. Shocking, I know.

Board 1: I picked up AQ87 AJ KJ7652 7 with nobody vulnerable. Not too shabby. I deal and open 1, LHO overcalls 1 and partners X is passed back to me. Being the crazy matchpoint player I am, I really want to bid some amount of NT. Unfortunately, my hand is way too good for 1N, and way too weak for 2N! It falls right between those ranges. My suit is too weak for 3 and I know my spade queen is positioned poorly, so I settle for an uncharacteristic 2. It goes all pass, and I eagerly await dummy. I am happy to see my partner has 92 K964 84 QJ632. Unfortunately, the opponents take all of their tricks so I just make 2.

Result: 54.35 %
Running Average: 54.35%

Board 2: I pick up KQJ3 AJ AQ852 A4 in fourth chair. I get three passes to me and have some options. I can try 1 planning on jump shifting to 2 to try and get my suits in. This could work very well if we have a diamond slam. Otherwise, I could treat my hand as balanced and open 2N or 2 planning on rebidding 2N. I immediately rule out a 2N opener, as my hand is much too good. I have 21 with 5-4 and extremely good honor location. I generally treat these hand types as balanced so I settled on 2 planning on rebbiding 2N after my partners 2 bid. Sure enough he does bid 2 and then follows with 3, a transfer to hearts. After I complete the transfer, he bids 3N offering a choice of games. There is some merit in correcting to 4 despite my doubleton. I have a suit oriented hand, a very strong doubleton, and a weak club holding. I decide against it as partner's hearts may be very weak and NT is where the matchpoints are at after all. I receive the 7 lead and see: 98 QT972 KT73 97. So 4 was better after all, but I have dodged a club lead. The bad guys win the spade lead with the ace and continue with the jack of clubs. How should I continue? Well, first lets test the diamonds. So I cash the A and all follow. I know I'm in a great matchpoint position after that extremely favorable lead so there is no need to finesse the heart. I cross to dummy with the K to lead the Q from dummy trying to induce a cover. When they play small I go up with the ace and make 4. The finesse was indeed off.

Result: 93.48 %
Running Average: 73.92 %

Board 3: I pick up 854 AKJT K86 K95 at favorable vulnerability. In third seat I get 2 passes to me and decide to open 1N. This is not a bid I would usually make but in third seat favorable there are a lot of tactical advantages to this bid. If they want to compete, they have to do it at a higher level than over 1 or 1 . They can be shutout of the auction, and in my experience 1N all pass is the hardest auction to defend against. Besides, my 14 is pretty respectable so it's not too far off. Partner transfers to spades with a 2 bid and follows it with 3N offering you a choice of games. Partner will generally have 5332, 52(42) not concentrated, or 5431 with a stiff honor. Again, 3N is where the money is at so you choose to pass with your 4333. A diamond is led and dummy is pretty shocking to you: AKJT9 874 2 Q832. I really don't care for 3N instead of 3. 3 leaves all possible strains in play and should be able to pinpoint the values needed to play 3N, 4, or even 5. Perhaps partner got caught up in the matchpoint swing of things. Anyways, a very important thing for declarer to do is focus on the task at hand. If you are in a silly contract or don't agree with partners bidding it is not at all relevant to the play. Here there is not much you can do except start finessing. You can afford to check on singleton queens too. So after winning the K, I played a spade to the ace and a heart to the ace. Then spade finesse, heart finesse. Both won! Up to 10 tricks, I cashed major suit winners and the opponents kept too many clubs so I was able to take a club trick as well. Making 5. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good I guess.

Result: 89.13 %
Running Average: 78.99%

Board 4: I pick up AK84 Q754 AK5 A9 in second seat. Man, why don't I get all these hands in rubber bridge? I get to open 2N and partner bids 3. Most people always bid first but I think a better treatment is bidding the stronger major with 4-4. This way if you have 2 4-4 fits you can find the stronger one and be able to sustain bad splits better and maybe pitch losers from your weaker fit on another suit. This is especially true if you have a slam. The only argument for bidding hearts first is that if partner is about to try for slam, his slam try over 3 is 3, while over 3 he would have to bid 4. Obviously the former is more economical. I do not think this argument is nearly as compelling as getting to the stronger trump fit though. So, I reply with 3 and get raised to 4. The A is led and dummy is: QT53 83 Q83 J643. This is one of those junky hands that is routine to bid with over a 2N opener but you don't really love doing it. The opponents continue with the K followed by the J. You noticed your RHO echoed in hearts, and when you ask their carding they tell you it's standard. So it looks like there is a doubleton on your right. You ruff with the ten, hoping the jack is onside. When they can't overruff you know it is. Trumps broke so making 4 was easy from there.

Result: 80.43 %
Running Average: 79.35 %

Part 2 tomorrow.

Fast Arrival

2005-06-16T19:04:00.000-06:00

Perhaps the most misused principle in bridge is fast arrival. Fast arrival means that if you are in a game forcing auction a jump to game would not be as strong as bidding slower. For instance:

1: 2
3 = extra values
4 = minimum values.

Perfect, you have more room to explore when you have extra values, right? No, unfortunately everything is not so cut and dried.

The first problem with using fast arrival in this sequence is that it commits to a strain prematurely. Spades or notrump could easily be better strains here. If opener had 6322 with a minimum would he bid 4 or 2? If he chose to rebid spades and later raised hearts it would sound like honor doubleton. If he jumps in hearts he could easily lose out on a superior 6-3 spade fit. If opener is 5332 it's not hard to imagine layouts where 3N or 4 will play better. You may be thinking partner could correct a jump to 4 to 4 if he has 3 of them, but for all he knows you are 5-4 in the majors. Sure, on many deals hearts will be the best strain, but if you were able to bid 3 you could use your judgment and hand evaluation to figure out what the right strain is instead of blindly hoping that it is hearts.

The second problem arises with preempting partner when they are unlimited. Sometimes responder has xxx in a side suit and a great hand otherwise. The tricks are there for a slam if you have the side suit controlled, but you may have 3 fast losers. He is forced into a nasty guess that he would not have otherwise faced. Sometimes responder will have a great hand opposite 4 card trump support, but it will be greatly diminished opposite only 3 trumps. Again, he will be forced to guess at the 5 level instead of being able to bid cooperatively 1 level lower.

Lastly, hand values are dynamic not static. This is very important. If opener had a 5341 11 count he would obviously consider that a minimum hand. However, if he had bid 3H and his partner bid 4D he would now love his hand. There is no club wastage and partner has values in diamonds. Many decent 14 counts are unsolvable as well because if partner's honors are located well, the hand would be good enough for a simple 3H bid, but if not then opener would need to rebid 4H. Opener will not always know how much his hand is worth until he knows how well the hands mesh.

So, we know the losses of fast arrival, what are the gains? You are able to distinguish between better hands and weaker hands (even though you will often not have enough information to know what your hand is really worth). The thing is, you can always sort that out later. Say opener raises to 3 with both minimums and extra values. If he judges to go past game after he hears another bid from partner, then he will have extras. If he does not go past game he just has a minimum. The same principle applies for responder. The point is, both players will be much better informed to make a decision about both strain and level if the auction has gone slower and more descriptive bids have been made. They are limited once they judge not to go beyond the game level, but their partner still can if HE has extras. The only real advantage of fast arrival is concealment; unfortunately this also includes concealment from partner.

I am not suggesting that a jump to game should never be made. I do, however, believe that the more room a bid takes up in a game forcing auction the more descriptive it should be. I recommend picture jumps; usually indicating concentrated values and an ability to commit to a specific trump suit while denying controls in other unbid suits. In the example auction 4 would show 5422 with concentrated values in the majors. This is highly descriptive, as a jump should be in a forcing auction.

Fast arrival does have its place. It can be applied when partner is a limited hand and you are in a strong position to place the contract. If you already know what strain and level you should play go ahead and just bid it. The point is that if partner is unlimited, then you never know what level should be played. So let's stop abusing and misapplying a very valid principle and only use fast arrival opposite a limited hand.

Card Combo Fun

2005-06-15T17:08:00.000-06:00

I recently came across an article by Fred Gitelman on suit combinations. Fred is a great player and shares my love for complex suit combos. One from this article really caught my attention as I had never seen it before.

T543 opposite
AQ82

I set out on a quest to find both the best theoretical and practical plays. The best method to do this is figure out all the possible combinations a certain play caters to, and the probability of each one happening. At the table the latter is not possible past an approximation, but here we can figure it out more precisely.

Before doing this we must consider what possible plays we have.

Cash the ace and then lead towards the queen trying to guess the suit.
Lead small towards the queen like everyone would do at the local bridge club.
Lead small towards the 8 planning on leading small towards the queen next.
Lead the ten planning to run it.

Line 1, cashing the ace first caters to these holdings with left hand opponent:

K
J
9
Jx(2)
xx
K9
KJ
9xx
Jxx
J9x(2)
Kxx
K9x(2)
KJx(2)
J9xx

You may wonder why I left out J9. The reason is, if you cash the ace and the 9 drops on your left you will cross to dummy and the ten planning to let it run. This will cater to stiff 9 or K9 on your left, while leading low to the queen would cater only to J9. Also, if there is a (2) by a combination that means there are 2 of those combinations possible. For instance, J9x can be J97 or J96.

Line 2, low to the queen, caters to these holdings with LHO:

J
9
Jx(2)
xx
J9
KJ
9xx
Jxx
J9x(2)
Kxx
K9x(2)
KJx(2)
J9xx

Line 3, small to the 8, caters to these holdings:

void
x(2)
Jx(2)
J9
xx
Kx(2)
9xx
Jxx
J9x(2)
Kxx
KJx(2)
J9xx

Line 4, leading the ten from dummy caters to the same holdings as line 3 except instead of winning against J9xx on the left, it wins against stiff 9. Some interesting things happen if you lead the ten from dummy. Assume with J9x they will always cover, otherwise they give up the suit. So when you play the queen and it loses to the king, you will next lead small to the 8. That means you cannot pickup K9 on your right since with Jxx they can also cover. Again you will hook the 8 on the next round, but this time it loses to the 9. Now, let's say they had J976. If they did not cover the ten, you would know they must have J976 because with Jxx or J9x they must cover, so you could take a deep finesse of the 8 on the next round! To stop this, they need to cover with the jack again. If you play the queen you must lose 2 tricks. You may be thinking that once they play the jack you should play the ace next and then cross to dummy and lead small to the 8. However if you do THAT, you lose to KJx onside. This means, theoretically, it can never go ten low low king.

Summary: ok, ok you have no interest in the raw data. You want some numbers. Fine.

Line 1 wins against 14 3-2 splits and 4 4-1 splits
Line 2 wins against 14 3-2 splits and 3 4-1 splits
Lines 3 and 4 win against 13 3-2 splits but pick up 3 4-1 splits and a 5-0 split.

This makes line one close to 58.78 %, line two 55.95 %, lines three and four 54.52 %. So the theoretical best play is cashing the ace first, planning to lead small to the queen next if nothing eventful happens, or running the ten on the next round if LHO drops the 9.

This leaves one question unsolved; the best practical play. Well in practice if your opponent led the ten from dummy with Txxx, would you cover with Jxx? I would guess no expert would ever cover. Declarer could have KQ98 for instance, and you solve his guess. He could also have A98x and be trying to crash some honors (which you would let him do by covering). He may even have K98x and you again solve a guess for him. If you accept that Jxx would never cover, that can now be picked up by leading the ten first. This brings the percentage up to 57.91, within one percent of line 1. This means that if the opponents would ever fail to cover with either Jx or J9x, playing the ten from dummy is probably the best practical line. Jx is a clear cover, but some weaker opponents may fail to do it. J9x is also a good cover, though it could lose if declarer has AK8xx and figures out the position. Given that, some players may not cover. This suggests that the best practical line is actually the worst theoretical one.

Knowing your basic suit combinations is not essential to becoming a winning player as it has limited practical use. At the table you usually have some clues or information that changes the percentages. It is important to remember that these isolated combinations are all in a vacuum. That being said, I think all serious players should know how to work combinations out at the table, and have studied basic ones that come up fairly frequently. Even though it isn't essential to know them it certainly can't hurt.