Julie and Julia

On the plane home from San Diego I watched a cute movie called Julie and Julia.  It was a true story about a women who started a blog.  Her goal was to cook all of the recipes in Julie Child’s book the Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (both volumes) in a year and describe her experiences during this adventure.

At the same time we watched the story of Julia Child played brilliantly by Meryl Streep during her days in Paris learning to cook, the years spent writing the cookbook and then the effort of getting the book published.  I had a lot of empathy with Julie, the blogger.  At one point she says; “Is there anyone out there reading this” “Is there someone, anyone?”  Every blogger feels that way at times.  Well maybe the ones that get hundreds of comments don’t feel like that.  Eventually if you blog non-professionally you just have to decide that you are doing it to please yourself and not worry too much about your audience.  Finally Julie gets her first comment and well it’s from her mother. 

I also empathized with Julia Child especially as she tried to get her book published and a bit from the publishers side.  She submits this huge manuscript and talks about the need for 6 or 7 volumes.  The poor publisher says he thoughts it was a cookbook not an encyclopedia.

This led my to thinking about the idea of having a blog that would go on for a period of time and where it would be my goal to do something, learn something.  Everyone keeps telling me I am a really good dummy player.  Now you would think that would be nice but all I hear is that they are not saying that I am NOT a really good bidder.  So I thought maybe I should do something to improve my bidding.  I am definitely NOT going to try to cook (sorry Ray).

This whole thing requires more thought.  I could look at hand I have bid in the last while and study them.  I could get Ray to watch me and tell me what he thinks.  I could read bridge books on various bidding topics.  Let me know if you have any ideas.

So then I looked at

AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes

Here are some from the top 15

"Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn."

I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.

"You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.

"Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore."

"Here’s looking at you, kid."

"Go ahead, make my day."

"May the Force be with you."

"Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night."

"You talkin’ to me?"

"What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

"Love means never having to say you’re sorry."

Maybe I could find a bridge hand that would illustrate each of them.  Actually that sounds like a cool idea for a bridge book.  Some quotes of course are perfect like the one from the Godfather or the quote about not communicating and of course Clyde Love could be used for the last one.  

Somehow this all brought me back to another idea.  How would you bid or play a particular deal at different types of scoring.  I played in two events, matchpoints and board a match.  In the last few years I have played mostly imps and I sort of understand the strategy there but I am not at all sure about board a match and maybe even a bit hazy about matchpoints. 

Here is a hand from the BAM.  When I tried to think about the best line and then the best line at all scoring I gave myself a bit of a headache.

	108 AKQ8 AK10975 9
	AK942 754 2 Q1042

North is dealer and opens 1.  South bids 1.  I reversed into 2.  Perhaps some of you will feel that this is a bit of a push and I am open to your ideas (see above about bidding) but I do have a couple of spades, my points are well placed and not quacky and the spots on this hand take it over the top.  Partner bids 2 game forcing and you end up in 3NT from the South hand.

What is the best way to play this hand on the lead of J at imps?

You have seven top tricks and need two more which could come from diamonds or spades (and even a heart is a possibility).  Diamonds look promising. 

If diamonds are 3-3 then unless the opponents can take four clubs all is well.  If West gains the lead in diamonds I can’t think of a failing club position.  If East gains the lead then assuming you are a good guesser West would need something like the AJxx or KJxx but not the AKJx to beat me.  The order you play diamonds doesn’t matter either unless West the Q and J the defense can always arrange for East to win the diamond loser. 

My quick analysis says that cashing the top diamond honors is more likely than the finesse to produce five tricks and it seems to me that cashing the top diamonds is clearly the right line at imps.

At matchpoints I would expect most of the field to be in 3NT with me.  There might be one or two who don’t get there.  I think the imps line is still right.

Now in board a match you could play to win the board especially if you thought you needed it and you were certain your opponents were in 3NT.  It seems that things work out the same (more or less) when diamonds are 3-3 and if diamonds are 4-2 finessing wins in 6 cashing and playing for the drop in 9 cases of the 4-2’s.  You might have some chances on the 5-1’s and the finesse is a bit better since it handles stiff small (more common) than stiff Q or J.  But this is not worth considering in the scheme of things.  So I think that cashing the top diamonds is the right line at any scoring.  The situation changes quite a bit when you have more than one diamond in the short hand.

Did I learn anything from this exercise other than the best way to play this suit combination (I hope)?  Yes, I still don’t really understand the thought process in different scoring methods and while I think such a book would be interesting, I will not be the author.