DAY 13 – Bridge on the Internet – I love you too Claire

I started today by reading Stacy Jacoby’s blog http://stacyjacobs.com/ in response to Ray’s blog (right here on bridgeblogging) handicapping the women’s division in the World Mind Games and adding a response.  I am handicapping the Open Division which is quite tough but I have a lot of help from the Oracle occasionally, Paul Gibson with his excellent critiques and various fortune telling devices.  Pauls’ own blog is at http://thebeercard.blogspot.com/.

 

Anyway, I was having so much fun looking at blogs I went to Clairebridge  http://clairebridge.blogspot.com/.  Claire hasn’t blogged in a while but there is a lot of good stuff on her site including a tribute page to Paul Soloway

http://www.clairebridge.com/soloway.htm.  It is a wonderful page.  But Claire has a lot more than just her blog.  Go to her page www.clairebridge.com.  You love the “what’s new” page.  Don’t miss the link to a tribute to Bobby Wolff.  There is a review of his great book The Lone Wolff by David bird and lots and lots of picture too.  There is so much here I could spend the week on this site.  I am lost in the practice hands, deals.  Back in a bit while I learn on this site.  In fact Claire may have the best collection of bridge links on the web.  This includes  has a great roll of bloggers too. 

From here I went to http://moot.typepad.com/minnesota_bridge/ Peggy Kaplan’s blog.

I copied her picture of the winning European team.  Since this journey is designed to help my bridge game I download my favourite hands written by Paul Meerschaert.

The first hand is amazing.  Paul makes 6c redoubled missing all forces aces (yes there are some voids but not enough!)  But there are interesting lessons from this hand and it has nothing to do with the result.   Here is the hand.  I will leave it to your imagination to work out how Paul made 6C redoubled (or read his article).

Here is the bidding North-South vulnerable at matchpoints

West	North	East	South
2H	pass	4H	pass
pass	4NT	pass	`5C
pass	pass	5H	DBL
6C	DBL	RDBL	all pass

 

4NT must be a distributional takeout.  I wouldn’t expect it to be strong with the initial pass over 2H.  The double of 5H is for penalty.  The redouble was punishing partner mainly.

Here is the whole hand

	S X
	H void
	D KJ10XXX
	C Q10XXXX
xxx		AJxxx
AJxxxx		Qxx
Qxx		Axxx
x		A
	KQ109
	K109x
	void
	KJxxx

 

Do you think that North’s pull of 5C doubled is reasonable?  I don’t.  This is what I would expect him to have at this vulnerability for the auction.  Besides its matchpoints and defending must be our best chance of a reasonable score.  Responder hasn’t promised any fit at all and if we go down two in 5C it is likely to be a bottom.  It’s quite likely on this auction that partner has a heart surprise for declarer.  As Paul says North wasn’t thinking three dimensionally.  He was only thinking about his hand not about the whole deal and the auction so far.

What do you think about East’s bid of 5H, by the way?

I have found this to my an amazing day with lots of things to learn and think about.  Next I go to

http://rfrick.info/bridge/ Robert Frick’s website. 

I try a play problem.  (The defender’s hands are played for you and you can try variations which make the play harder.)  I have no problem with them at all.  I think my main problems when playing a hand is concentration, especially on BBO so this isn’t that much of a surprise.  There is a lot more to do on the site including a section on squeezes and pyschology bot of which I find interesting.

One thing I notice while roaming today is another interesting thing on the ACBL website.  Its the appeals from the NABC’s.   So if you want to see what happened in Las Vegas 2008 you just click on it and read.

http://www.acbl.org/play/casebooks.html

I don’t know why I find appeals so interesting.  Ray and I play a game with them.  One of us reads the case and the other makes the ruling, sometimes guessing if the committee will match them or not.  The rulings are often unexpected.  I don’t think this will make me a better bridge player but it will provide some evening entertainment.

I also wander over to a website belonging to Marvin French.  http://www.marvinfrench.com/

His title: luck comes and goes, skill comes and stays

I like that.  I realize that there are a lot of personal bridge websites like this one.  Marvin has a number of interesting articles.  You won’t agree with all his ideas.  I find the article on how to beat the experts interesting.  See what you think.

I go to Graeme Williams’s site http://www.gwilliams.org.uk/index.html briefly. 

It is called Bridge Conventions and the focus is definitely on system.  It is really just a survey site  since all explanations are very brief.  There are descriptions of some of the more popular systems (not Polish here though). Conventions are divided into categories with drop down menus.  The explanations are quite terse though and there is as expected a British flavour.  I find a few interesting things under signals like VInje Signal.  I still don’t know what it is though so I do a search.  I find at the bridgeguys.

http://homepage.mac.com/bridgeguys/JGlossary/JournalistLeads.html

that this is another name for journalist leads (I actually play a variations with Ray against notrump).  By coincidence looking up journalist leads takes me back to Marvin French’s website.  Marvin has his own system of leads and he compares his system “marvin” to “journalist.