Birthday Bridge

Today was my birthday and all in all it was a nice day.  It was certainly a bridge filled day.  I spent some time working on bridge hands and stories for our new bridge website which will be up and running this fall.  It is for bridge students and bridge teachers and is called MasteringBridge.com.  (like the name?)

We talked about the books we are planning to publish this year.  Believe it or not we know all of the books for a whole year, although perhaps we might slot one more in between now and this time next year, you never know.  One of my favourite books for the fall is a collection of Frank Vine stories.  Frank Vine lived near here, in Hamilton and he was a fine player but he also was a great writer and his stories (some published in Bridge World) are very funny. 

I started my first bridge blog for learners.  This one was supposed to be for beginners.  It started out with the most simple finessing position there is, the AQ and talked about what a finesse was.  But somehow I got carried away and I went out of beginner land.  Becky, our new electronic publishing intern who does not play bridge (but is learning) told me I had gone much too far. 

Here is what happened.  I started to talk about this finesse from the point of view of the defenders.  Fourth hand shouldn’t lead into the AQ away from the King (okay so far) but then I talked about making a trick when the king was onside by a) locking declarer in dummy or b) second hand making a deceptive play of second hand leading from the King.  In the example, declarer had two chances and this play took away one of them.  Okay I agree … this is a bridge too far.

Now that I think about it there is a lot more one could do with this simple position.  Endplays to start.  Show-in squeeze anyone?

Colin and I have now decided that we are playing at the Boston Nationals which means that we do need to write up our system, pronto.  I am also playing in a senior event (I suppose I will have to admit to being 55) but not with Colin of course.

We did manage to get in a few hands tonight after my birthday dinner.

Here is one favourite.  Colin opened 1S (limited) and I held

S xx H 9 D AQ9xxxx C AJ9

I bid 2D game forcing and Colin bid 3D.  I bid 3H and Colin bid 3S and basically I just bid 6 using keycard along the way.  Colin had a yummy hand.

S AKJ84 H K103 D K1084 C 8

It was one of those great nights where your card is full of pluses and the bridge is fun.