Yesterday
Some days I do feel like I am cursed and other days blessed. Yesterday I felt cursed. We played the first set of the Women’s Life Master Pairs and we played very well. When the sheets came out with one round to go we had 55%. That was somewhat disappointing. I would have expected to have around 58%, But this score wasn’t unreasonable. When we came back from dinner we had slightly under 50% which unbelievably was the second best score in our section of 13 pairs (we had a good final round, actually). The hands were matchpointed across two sections. All but one of the East-West pairs in our section was below average and vice versa in the other section. We were using for the first time I am aware of at an NABC a data entry device rather than score slips. There were many problems (corrections, server resets, etc.) all through the set. I wonder if that had anything to do with it. Also, although I would be surprised if this happened yesterday I wonder if this opens up any new cheating possibilities — certainly I don’t think everyone was as careful checking the score their opponents entered as they would have been with pickup slips.
Still maybe it was just bad seeding and bad luck. The reason for the big late drop in our score may have been a raft of score corrections by other pairs. Who knows? Still I have never seen such an incredible set of scores as in our section. This is not an excuse just a social commentary.
I also ran into Lynn Baker playing with Karen McCallum in the same event. Lynn was upset with the article I wrote about her during the World Championship. I reread it and I am going to provide you with a link to it
Blog About Womens Final In Sao Paulo
Let me start by saying that I personally did not make it to the Women’s championship in Sao Paulo. In fact, I didn’t even make it to the final of the Canadian Team trials. I know that it takes a great deal of effort and determination to be part of a team which wins a place in the championships and then makes it to the final ending in second place. This is indeed a great honor for all team members. I also did say that I personally know that it is hard to play your very best on Vugraph. I have played like a complete moron on the one or two occasions where I was the featured show. It is much easier being on BBO somehow. I did say that in the blog.
I do believe that the professional bridge players who play on sponsored teams are usually going to be better players than the sponsor. It only makes sense. The sponsor has selected the best players he or she can find and is paying them to play. A lot of what I said in the blog was about women’s bridge. I think it is worthwhile to have women’s bridge and I think that the quality is clearly inferior to open bridge. Again that only makes sense. So I agree with the organizers that it is best for the audience to see the very best bridge, the open event. And that is what they focus on – not the seniors and not the women’s. Yes I know that the seniors event is strong but the open event should be stronger.
When Women’s bridge is shown I think it makes sense to avoid putting most sponsors on Vugraph. It creates extra pressure for them and in most cases the audience will not see women’s bridge at its best . This is a logical argument and is not directed at a specific person.
I did discuss one deal Lynn played. It was misplayed at both tables — in 4S by the Chinese lady who was a professional and in 3NT by Lynn. Both of them should have got it right. Was some of it the challenge of playing under the lights? I don’t know. I will make one final comment. My experience is that many women bridge players are much better bidders than card players. Perhaps this is because they spend much more time practicing bidding. Most of them, clients and pros, are probably better bidders than I am and most of them have spent hours learning and practicing their system. More and more I am convinced that a lot of card play can be taught and learned. Maybe it is not getting the right percentage of training time. Of course there are some women who are great card players, but I am talking about the majority.
So Lynn, I congratulate you on your determination and the time and effort I know you put into the game. I congratulate you on your silver medal. I know you earned it. But sorry — you did misplay that deal. Maybe it was pressure, maybe it was being tired, maybe it was being on Vugraph. It is all understandable. Barry Rigal and others who did the commentary in the Vugraph room that day said the same thing. So did Mark Horton, who wrote up the match in the Daily Bulletin. As I too have learned, when you play in a public forum you are going to get criticized. Sorry.
If you still think I have been unfair to you or to women’s bridge, send me an email and I will publish what you say — or just add a comment to this blog.
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Hooray for Rose Meltzer! And it looks like Lou Ann O’Rourke is venturing into the open events too! I’ve always said we should have women’s, open, and men’s events, or just open events.
Linda:
I sympathize with your Friday fate, but there must have been some VERY EGGREGIOUSLY SERIOUS ‘MIS-SEEDING” to emerge with only one pair in your direction over average. I don’t know what type of scoring apparatus the League is using, but at the outset, Bridgemate presented lots of problems, resulting in tons of errors that allegedly were rectified over time.
It takes people a while to get adjusted to them and I assume, just as at local clubs, North is the scorer. Many players because of infirmities (hopefully physical only) are assigned North-Souths and it is imperative that ALL FOUR players verify the score North has entered before the button is pushed to okay the final result. The process is great for the directors — because of the automatic electronic scoring which requires less work on their behalf. However, the burden of getting accustomed to the gadgets figures to get worse before it gets perfected — or even improves.
As far as sponsors, you know how strongly I feel about their ilk at the Trials and World Championship Levels. I don’t know Lynn very well nor do I know the hand to which you are referring, but I do know that Lynn has always held up her end quite well and has a rather successful track record over an extended period of time.
Just like there are DIRECTORS and directors; there are SPONSORS and sponsors. Nick Nickell is the perfect example. His string of victories speak for themselves. You can’t get lucky all the time! And, with some of the very weakest ones who enter the current fray, it figures to get more embarrassing as time goes on — unless those at the helm (getting paid) keep them off of the vugraph for the world to witness in horror. In fact, the WBF does not even mandate that the sponsors play one half of the time. And, as Bobby always says, ‘the beat goes on.’
The bizarre scoring actually happened in another section of the same event too — Bob MacKinnon tells me the odds against it happening at random in one section are 435 to 1, so that would make the odds against it occurring in two sections 160,000 to 1. We think it was bad seeding related to (a) the directors not knowing who various strong European pairs were and (b) strong pros with very weak customers being given high seeds anyway. You might argue the reasonability of the latter, but in fact several such pairs failed to qualify, so this is just more fallout resulting from the whole pro-client situation.
Re Lynn Baker — I actually think (and thought so at the time she wrote the piece) that Linda bent too far over the other way to be nice to Lynn in the write-up. The VuGraph commentators were not as kind, and Horton’s account in the DB is brilliantly subtle as it describes the poor play in that particular session. He wrote it because someone had complained that there wasn’t enough coverage of the wonmen’s event in the DB, and it actually is very funny when you realize what he is doing. For example, he comments drily on the 3NT contract in question (which Baker failed to make): ‘This is a deal that might be found in many elementary textbooks on the game…’ and those goes on to describe the play in a very matter of fact manner. On VuGraph, one commentator started by stating that ‘3NT cannot go down’, but Barry Rigal soon corrected him, and was proved right.
Sorry — if you play in a world championship, you are going to be wrtten about and (if it is appropriate) criticized. Being from the Howard Cosell school of journalism, I refuse to treat sponsors any differently than I would any other player — I tell it like it is. I don’t go out of my way to make players look bad, but I’m not going to pretend they’re something they’re not either. So far I don’t think I’ll be getting greeting cards from anyone in the Jacobs family, and probably not from Baker either now. But I can live with that.
Linda;
While I fully agree with the Lee philosophy that clients have to expect to have commentators call’em as they see’em, it seems to me that Lynn B. has some cause to feel hard done by.
I have set out my views in a long post that the site doesn’t seem to want to take so I’ll break it down into 2 parts:
part 1
Let’s start with the bidding.
For reasons that aren’t clear the article suggests that she should have bid 2S with her 4-3-3-3 10 count, at her first turn to speak, after it has gone (p)-1c-(2d) to her.
Assuming they play essentially standard methods, double seems routine, while 2s, promising 5+ spades and a better hand than she held looks like a significant distortion.
part 2 (it’s going to be three parts because part 2 is too long for the machine to take).
Let’s move on to the play.
I’ll agree that there was a better line available than the one Lynn B. chose. Having said that, from where I sit it seems that Lynn B.’s line may well have had better chances of success than the one that you and Mark H. suggest (the ”safety play’of Ace and a spade at tricks 3 and 4).
Your article implies that declarer should have played on spades in the manner Mark suggests because LHO was “known to have the heart length”.
That seems a bit unfair. Lynn’s RHO was marked with *at least* 6Ds and likely had 3 hearts given (a) LHO’s initial pass and (b) RHO’s play to the first 2 heart tricks.
Since RHO had stuck her neck out, both red, opposite a passed hand partner, with a moth-eaten diamond suit and apparently 3 small hearts, she was quite unlikely to be 2-3-6-2.
If RHO was 1-3-6-3 or 1-3-7-2 she might well be inclined to stick her neck out to disrupt her opps undisclosed spade fit. It’s not so clear that she’d be in a hurry to bid if she was 3-3-6-1.
More importantly, from Lynn’s perspective RHO had very little reason to pre-empt holding 4-3-6-0 since RHO would want her opps to have all the bidding room necessary to find their badly-breaking spade fit (the open room result shows why).
So there were some fairly strong inferences that RHO had black-suit shortness, quite likely in the spade suit.
If so, the line suggested by Horton/Lee (playing A and a spade) seems ill-conceived. When declarer makes the “book” safety play of A and a spade, LHO, holding four spades including the QJ(spot), simply wins cheaply and continues the suit, breaking up the communication for the black suit squeeze.
part 3
The article implies that Lynn B’s actual play-ducking a low diamond-was clearly unsound because she was “knocking out the entry to the wrong hand”. The implication that Lynn had made a clear error might have been accurate had it been obvious that spades were 3-2, but, for the reasons I’ve suggested, there were many indications that spades were 4-1 the wrong way.
And if spades were 4-1 the wrong way ducking the diamond would have worked if LHO had 3-5-1-4 (she’ll be squeezed when declarer plays the third round of diamonds) or, more likely, if RHO had a 7th diamond (a live possibility given the vul, RHO’s de minimis red-suit holdings and her pard’s passed-hand status) and LHO had either 4-5-0-4 or 3-6-0-4 (less likely given her initial pass)
I’ll agree that ducking a club at trick 3 looks better since it allows declarer to take advantage of clubs 3-3 (catering to LHO being 4-5-1-3) or a black suit squeeze (catering to LHO being 4-5-0-4 and the squeeze will also work when LHO is 3-5-1-4 or 3-6-0-4).
But from where I sit, ducking a diamond at trick 3 seemed a better play than the recommended line, which has no play when LHO has 4 spades QJ(spot).
So maybe Lynn B. has a legitimate gripe.
Which is where I came in.
Cheers.
p.s. I’m guessing that Lynn B went after spades when the heart came back because she failed to see, until it was too late, the need to jettison the Ace of diamonds rather than a low one from the dummy.