Watching the Vanderbilt
On the weekend Ray usually has a viewing plan. He knows exactly which sporting events he will watch and when. Ray is not a hoops fan but he loves soccer which he calls football. HIs beloved Manchester United are always involved in a number of events including the Premier League. He has other loves and curling is one of them. (I confess I like watching top flight curling too). This is the season for curling championships and we have seen some great curling in the last while. There is also tennis and golf of course in their time. So what about me, sports widow. This weekend I got to watch so very good bridge online. It would be fun if bridge was on TV with commentators and background about the players and all that good stuff. But BBO is a pretty good substitute and has the advantage that I can chat online with some friends who are watching too.
The Vanderbilt was the highlight of the BBO weekend. There were so many interesting deals it is hard to pick a few to write about. Here is one from the first round where Greco and Hampson played North-South for the purple team (Diamond) taking on Jacobs and Katz, East-West for the blue team (Katz).
You get to be Geoff Hampson playing Board 6 in the Closed Room. Geoff along with team-mate Fred Gitleman are originally from my home town, Toronto.
Sitting South in second chair at favorable vulnerability he held:
| ♠ AQ753 |
| ♥ AJ862 |
| ◊ — |
| ♣ Q93 |
George Jacobs opens 1◊. How do you play Michaels? For years I have played it is any range. I have always been told that is theoretically unsound since it is difficult for partner to judge what to do. I have always considered the shape and fit more important than the high cards. Apparently some others have swung that way too. In any case Geoff bid 2◊ Michaels. West, Ralph Katz bid 2♥. Unfortunately I am not sure how they play this bid but I think it showed at least a limit raise in diamonds. Your partner, Eric Greco bids 4♠ which you pass to Katz in the balancing chair. He now bids 4NT. This is clearly lots of clubs to go with his diamonds and a good hand at this vulnerability. Jacobs picks 5◊ and you are now in the hot seat. What do you do?
Here is the auction so far
| Katz | Greco | Jacobs | Hampson |
| 1◊ | 2◊ | ||
| 2♥ | 4♠ | pass | pass |
| 4NT | pass | 5◊ | ? |
Geoff doubled which I guess showed a good hand in high cards. If you are a doubler or a passer what do you lead? There is only one lead to set the contract and it is not one that anyone is likely to find. It would seem normal to lead the ♠A but this is wrong on the hand. You have to lead a club. Can you think of any logic to get to that lead? I can come up with some twisted logic but it isn’t convincing.
Here is the whole deal
| Greco | ||
| ♠ 10986 | ||
| ♥ Q1073 | ||
| ◊ J943 | ||
| Katz | ♣ J | Jacobs |
| ♠ 4 | ♠ KJ2 | |
| ♥ 5 | ♥ K94 | |
| ◊ A872 | ◊ KQ1065 | |
| ♣ AK76542 | Hampson | ♣ 108 |
| ♠ AQ753 | ||
| ♥ AJ862 | ||
| ◊ — | ||
| ♣ Q93 |
I think it is better to just bid one more at this vulnerability. It is unlikely to cost much and it could save a bundle. Do you think Hampson should bid on or should Greco?
What I particularly like about this deal is the play after a spade lead. Here is the whole deal:
| Greco | ||
| ♠ 10986 | ||
| ♥ Q1073 | ||
| ◊ J943 | ||
| Katz | ♣ J | Jacobs |
| ♠ 4 | ♠ KJ2 | |
| ♥ 5 | ♥ K94 | |
| ◊ A872 | ◊ KQ1065 | |
| ♣ AK76542 | Hampson | ♣ 108 |
| ♠ AQ753 | ||
| ♥ AJ862 | ||
| ◊ — | ||
| ♣ Q93 |
On a club lead declarer can’t set up up clubs and get back to them with the bad diamond break. You can try it yourself but there is no defense. But on a spade lead Hampson has a problem. If he doesn’t take the ♥A his heart winner will go away on the ♠K and Jacobs will be able to make the hand by setting up dlubs and allowing Greco to make a trump trick (or just ducking a club to Greco). Anyway he cashed the ♥A. At the table he continued a spade and the hand was completely over. If he plays a club at trick three Jacobs will win and try a diamond to his king, getting the bad news in diamonds. He can now ruff a heart draw trump and there will be a show-in squeeze on Hampson. It is the easy kind because when Jacobs cashes the ♠K Geoff has to hold the ♠Q and on the run of the trump he has to bare his ♣Q. I like these kind of squeezes because I only have to watch for a couple of high cards.
At the other table the auction actually started out the same, more or less except that Levin (North) bid 4♥ rather than 4♠ and Moss(East) bid 5♣ at his second bid rather than 4NT. Maybe that emphasizes the clubs even more. In any case Weinstein bid on to 5♥ which Katz doubled. There is a funny thing about this save. It makes. The cards lie in a very favorable way for North-South. With the spades onside and the heart finesse working the defense can only take two major suit tricks. Weinstein has to lose a spade even if he wanted to try the double finesse because he doesn’t have enough entries to dummy to do everything. This was a huge swing of 16 imps. There were five double digit swings in the first 16 deals but this was the biggest.
There was one more deal in the first set that I would like to mention. Here are the hands. When I read Bridge World, Challenge the Champs, I always like to think about how I would have bid them. I did give it a whirl with Ray as my partner. Here are the two hands so you can try them. North is dealer with nobody vulnerable.
| East |
| ♠ Q10953 |
| ♥ A9 |
| ◊ Q632 |
| ♣ 54 |
| West |
| ♠ — |
| ♥ K53 |
| ◊ AKJ5 |
| ♣ AK10763 |
The bidding is similar at both tables to a point (and similar to what I bid with Ray). This was the auction at the Moss-Gitleman table.
| West | North | East | South |
| pass | pass | pass | |
| 1♣ | pass | 1♠ | pass |
| 2◊ | pass | 3◊ | pass |
| 3♥ | pass | 3NT | pass |
| ? |
Katz-Jacobs had a slightly different auction with Jacobs bidding 2♠ showing five and the auction continuing 3♣-3◊-3♥ –3NT. In any case you are at the first decision point. Moss decided that with partner showing not much extra and wasted spade cards he would just place the contract and bid 6◊. While Katz slowed the auction with 4◊. The scientist in my likes this sequence better but I wonder if he can find out what he needs to know. When Jacobs cuebid the ♥A, Katz thought that was enough for a grand and used keycard to basically find out about the trump queen before bidding the grand. How good a grand is it. Well it is as they say a Hammon slam (it makes!). But how good? Katz has to ruff a heart and a club in dummy. To make it he needs a 3-2 break in both minors pretty well. That makes it less than 50%. Ray had a pretty good auction although he admitted it was unlikely I could have enough to make the grand a good proposition. He bid keycard and then when I showed the queen of trump with no side kings he bid 6♣ hoping that I would understand that I needed the ♣Q to bid the grand. Although he did say that at the table he might have just bid 6◊ after I cuebid the ♥K.
In any case this was a very helpful 12 imps to the Katz team.
I am not done reliving the Vanderbilt, more in a future blog.
Subscribe to our feed
Bridge-related
A funny thing with the last deal is that the small slam could also go down with 4-1 in one of the minors. So even though the grand small is less than 50% it could be the right contract to be in.
Part of the decision to bid a grand slam is based on whether you are fairly certain your opponents will bid the small slam since you have almost nothing to gain if they are not in slam. I think on this hand and against these opponents you have a high level of certainty. So assuming that 7 is about 45% or a little less how good is 6. Now we get into different lines but you should be able to handle 4-1 club breaks and 3-2 diamond breaks most of the time. You have a few chances when diamonds break 4-1, like the QJ of clubs doubleton. So as a quick guess call this 67%. Assuming your opponents are in the small slam, bidding the grand wins 11 imps 45 % of the time and loses 14 imps 22% of the time (when the small slam makes and it doesn’t). So you are making an excellent point even if I don’t have the mathematics done perfectly. This only works at times like this though, it seems when I bid a grand the opponents are almost always in game!
Did I do the analysis/math more or less right?
Hi Linda,
The basic methodology you used is correct, but you need to be a lot more careful with the numbers in order to draw meaningful conclusions. Quick guesses don’t really work.
To even come close to solving a problem like this you really need to specify the lines of play in both contracts and enumerate the cases in which they win (or lose). For example, you can make 6D easily enough if your LHO has 4 diamonds and clubs break via a line like this: ruff the spade lead, draw a round of trump, play 3 rounds of clubs, ruffing low, cash the Ace of hearts, return to your hand in trump, and run clubs. I have no idea if this is the right line of play, but if it is then your 67% number gets a nice boost.
Furthermore, dependent probabilities are involved (the break in one minor has an impact on the odds of how the other minor will break) so (for example) the odds of both minors breaking 3-2 is not the odds of a 3-2 break squared.
You also need to take into consideration what will happen if both contracts fail (2 IMPs for bidding 6 diamonds?).
Finally, it is really impossible to draw any firm conclusions because so much depends on the odds of the opponents finding the spade lead (which is obviously something you can’t really quantify).
I agree that Kristian made an excellent point. If I have the time and inclination to try to do the math properly at some point (minus the part about the odds of the spade opening lead), I will post my conclusions.
Fred Gitelman
Thanks Fred. I did work out a couple of lines and I only intended my numbers to be approximate. I just did it to get a feel for whether Kristian was on the right track. Your point about how the spade lead is well taken and I didn’t consider it.
I would be interested in your methodology as much as your numbers.
An interesting point is when is it right to bid a grand versus a small slam. Is there any way to create a general rule? My personal rule is don’t bid grands unless you can count 13 tricks but I am not playing in games of this caliber.