Watching just a little bridge in beautiful British Columbia

I have been having a great time visiting with my daughter and her family in the beautiful country around Maple Ridge/Mission.  From time to time though over the last while I logged onto BBO for a few minutes to see what was happening in the CNTC and USBF Finals.  Yesterday I watched a small number of hands from the last round of the match to pick US2.  At this point Nickell had regained the lead from Fleisher and led by 23 imps but it was still very close with 16 hands to play.  Then Fleisher got a nightmare result.  I was pondering how even top experts can have disasters.  Let’s look at this one.

Rubin (West) was white on red in first chair and passed.  In third chair Granovetter opened a forcing club and Zia (South) overcalled one spade.  In their methods Rubin passed to show 0-4 (or a trap pass of spades.)  Hamman sitting North preempted three spades and Granovetter bid 3NT which had to show a big balanced hand.  Zia bid four spades and it was Rubin’s turn.  Given that you have shown 0-4 you sort of have a maximum and partner seems likely to have a fit with one of your red suits.  In this auction I think double would suggest that you have some values but are willing to play here and that doesn’t seem all bad to me with a partner with oodles of high card points, and something in spades, against vulnerable opponents.  If double is takeout then I would pass.  It just doesn’t seem worth it to me to shoot the dice at this vulnerability.   I don’t hate Rubin’s action: he bid 4NT.  Now Granovetter not surprisingly bid five clubs and Zia doubled.  The moment that Rubin wants back is about to occur.  He redoubled. 

Depending on your understandings, most of the time when the opponents make a penalty double of a possible contract, redouble is for rescue.  Some players like to play that redouble of a voluntarily bid game is penalty.  In any case here redouble is, to say the least, risky.  If you don’t have clubs you can always bid five diamonds so the redouble really ought to mean something different.  It ought to suggest playing here.  Even if there is an argument for using redouble for another purpose, unless it was underlined in my system notes I wouldn’t bid it.  I think he bid it too quickly without thinking the whole auction through.  But of course I don’t know that.  All I know is that bidding five diamonds would have got them to five hearts which would have gone down one.  Redoubling put a lot of pressure on Granovetter who held:

Could he figure out that partner meant this to be for rescue?  Without being party to their system notes and system discussions it is impossible to know.  I do know that if you go through the thought process that says that partner could have bid five diamonds with the reds then you have to pass.  You have to trust partner.  Almost always when I don’t it is wrong.

Would you have pulled?   Not me and not Matt Granovetter.

The result was minus 1600 and 19 imps.  The margin of eventual loss was greater than that but perhaps if Rubin had bid five diamonds than they would be going to Brazil.  We will never know.  As it turns out the winning action was doubling four spades.

We can all take some comfort in knowing that these things happen even to the great players and all of us who compete can feel sympathy for Rubin, for what did happen and for what might have been.