Back!

My back still hurts from sleeping with Ray on a teeny tiny hard bed on the car train from Orlando.  All in all the car train was a good experience and one that would be very nice if you live near Washington and are visting near Orlando.  When we got off the train and got our car which was almost last, we still had a nine hour drive home.

The best news when we got home was that it had snowed all last week, we missed it and that the service we hired this year to shovel the snow actually came.  It always makes me feel good when we travel to warm places and it is cold at home.

While I didn’t actually play in Orlando the tournament seemed to be very good.  I liked the free orange juice and coffee, free parking (provided by the organizers not the hotel), the beautiful hotel and very good space.  Although I didn’t attend any the tours looked great, I have been to all of the places visited and enjoyed them and the prices wouldn’t have covered the gas.

But, the hotel is near nothing.  You would have to drive a car to go anywhere.  The food which did have a subsidy in the food court was expensive.  And I did hear a few complaints about that.  Mostly I saw a lot of friends having a good time.

I had a terrific time with my family in Disney.  The Hollywood Studio park and Magic Kingdom were both well suited to young children.  So it was a good holiday and I stayed away from the computer, no blogging, no writing, editing, emailing, no anything.  Bliss.  It’s not that I don’t like those activities, its just that it is good to have a break.

Lots of interesting results at the NABC.  Congratulations to Brad Moss on winning Player of the Year.  I see that Jimmy Cayne won the Reisinger with Michael Seamon and four great Italian players:  Versace-Lauria and Duboin-Sementa.

I had a look at some of the boards on BBO.  It is hard to follow since you don’t have the names of the players or teams as they move around after 3 boards.  But it is interesting to look at some of the boards still and see what happened on them.

Sementa-Duboin were sitting East-West and Garner-Weinstein North-South on this board played by the eventual winners, Caybe against the runners-up.  Team Cayne had the best of this board against Smirnov.

Personally I think the bidding East-West on this board is not Board a Match thinking.  But then I have very little experience playing board-a-match.   It is certainly a total tricks hand.

Here is the deal.

West ♠ KJ1043 ♥ KQ52 ♦ 76 ♣ 87

East ♠ Q976 ♥ 1098 ♦ AK53 ♣ K4

East, Sementa opened 1♦ with all vulnerable.  The East hand is a borderline opener.  But the good spots and the nature of the high cards I believe most players today would open.  West, Duboin, bid 1♠ and East had a normal raise to 2♠ .  So now what?  Do you think West, Duboin, has a game try?  Would you bid again at imps?  matchpoints?  Board-a-match?.  It seems to me that the only game that it is right to think about bidding is imps.  Here vulnerable the payout is so great that you only need about a 33% chance to make game.  At the table, Duboin made a game try with 3♥ .  Should East go?  I don’t think so.  Do you?   Apparently Sementa always accepts!

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ 2 ♥ J4 ♦ QJ984 ♣ AJ1093
West ♠ KJ1043 ♥ KQ52 ♦ 76 ♣ 87		East ♠ Q976 ♥ 1098 ♦ AK53 ♣ K4
	South ♠ A85 ♥ A763 ♦ 102 ♣ Q652

If the ♣ A is offside your chances are slim to none.  So that puts the contact at 50%.  Even then you have to play hearts for one loser.  Even at imps this is borderline at best.   But guess what, luck is an important factor in winning and here all was fine.  The ♣ A was onside.  Declarer had to guess hearts but he could play that suit last.  By the time he had a heart guess North, Garner had shown up with the club ace,  diamond queen and diamonds jack, club jack and a singleton spade.  If he had the ♥A too he likely would have bid something.   In the Open Room, West was prepared to pass out two spades.  But North came back in with 2NT asking for a minor.  South chose clubs and when West competed with 3♠ bid 4♣ .  This was doubled.  This went down one when the ♣ K was offside.  So had the ♣ K been switched around, East-West (with all else the same) then 4♠ would have failed and 4♣ doubled would have made.  Either way one team was going to have a good result in both rooms, just a different one.

Maybe another argument for making a game try on the West hand is to keep the opponents out of the auction.  Suppose that Sementa had not accepted the 3♥ bid (as would be the case for most of us).  Then North would have had to balance at the four level and East-West would probably have bought the hand.  Now wherever the ♣ K was East-West might well have had a decent result.

And what if East had passed in first chair.  Could it have been passed out?  I can imagine all sorts of results.

Anyway, this all proves several things: a) luck is very important b) bridge is a bidders game (well we all knew that) c) I don’t know squat about board-a-match

If I made any mistakes in the analysis just remember that my head is still in Disney; “It’s a small world after all”.