Public Disasters and what Michael Rosenberg said

Bridge is a game of mistakes, it has been said (perhaps too frequently).  We all make mistakes and perhaps the most annoying is misunderstandings in the auction.  I was doing commentary on the Camrose match yesterday between Scotland and Wales.  I was in the Closed Room and the great Michael Rosenberg was doing commentary in the Open Room.  Needless to say our table had only a small number of kibbitzers.  Ray said they were all the immediate family of the players.

At out table Board 23 was a flat looking 3NT.  You might argue about the best line but on the lie of the cards all lines led to the +600 range.  Later on the result from the other table came in win 14 imps!  What could have gone wrong?

This morning I decided to have a look at the deal and the comments and see if I could figure it out.  When the deal was started Michael looking at the result in the other room was giving a profound discussion about how the play should go.  The bidding started out the same in both rooms.  Here was the East hand and the auction to the point that diverted from the Closed Room

AKJ
Q107 
Q432 
AQ7

West passed in second chair with all vulnerable:

Gary Jones	Dafydd Jones
pass	1
1	2NT
3	3
3	?

While it wasn’t alerted it appeared that at least initially both partners understood that 3 was not natural but some sort of “new minor forcing” asking opener about majors.  It is hard to imagine that up to that point the partnership was confused since even relatively inexperienced pairs would agree that they played that convention (or not).  

After the 3 bid in most of my partnership if I know bid 3NT partner knows that I have four hearts and four spades.   I use the bid of 3 as a slam try in hearts.  But in some partnerships perhaps if you now bid 3NT it would suggest that you had five hearts and deny spades and give partner a choice of the 5-3 in hearts or 3NT.  In those partnerships to check if opener has four spades you need to continue with 3.  

My guess is that Dafydd was “playing’ the former.  So she thought that Gary had made a slam try and that they had found a 5-3 heart fit.  As a result she cuebid 4.  Now over to Gary.

10652
AK85 
1097 
104

He was playing 3 using the second approach and only showing 4-4.  Therefore he thought that 4 was a cuebid in support of spades and since he had a minimum he signed off in 4.   Perhaps Dafydd should have wondered about this bid.  Partner was denying controls in diamonds by bypassing that suit but in any case partner had (from her perspective) forced to the five level.  Was partner worried about heart quality or just diamonds?  She might have signed off in 5 but instead she decided to emphasize the quality of her clubs, deny diamonds and see where partner was heading.   So she bid 5.  Now Gary knew that things had gone off the rails and decided to just bail out before things got worse.  If either of them had bid 5 (the other one would surely have passed) they actually had some chance of making it.  5 had no chance and went 3 down.  5 would have been play from the same side and had it received the same diamond lead as 5 would have made.

Here is the whole deal and an very interesting comment by Michael Rosenberg

	Q983 J97  J85  K63
G. Jones 10652 AK85  1097  104		D. Jones AKJ Q107  Q432  AQ7
	74 643  AK6  J9852

At the end of this deal Michael said:

“By the way, these kinds of disasters typically only occur behind screens,  Which is why I tend to rule against pairs who “extricate” themselves when there are no screens.”

Let’s think about this deal a bit more.  Clearly Gary knew when Dafydd bid 5 that something very bad had happened.  I kind of think he might (and I emphasize the word might) have figured out that Dayfdd thought that he was making a slam try in heats.  Similarly Dafydd might (and this is much harder) have worked out that the 4 bid didn’t make a whole lot of sense in the auction and have passed or gotten out in 5.  But behind screens they didn’t couldn’t handle it.  Suppose that Gary had heard Dafydd explain the meaning of the 3 bid to his opponent.  How much easier it would have been to get out in 5 over 5 and how easy it would have been to explain to the director or the committee how he had been “awoken” by the bid.  And so on… you can see how in those cases… with the best of intentions the offending side is helped by hearing the explanation.  And that is Michael’s point.

But, how can you handle it when bad things happen on your side of the table.  Its not your fault that your hearing the explanation and you do your best to ignore it.  Some times you have been awakened by the bidding and you do what you think is reasonable under the circumstances.  Is the committee supposed to think, “just shoot them, they had a misunderstanding.”  Somehow there must be a place for working things out at the table.

Still I think Michael has a point.  A strong point I never really thought of before.  And I will be more understanding of committee rulings which are very harsh on convention breaks even when they rule against me (well maybe not when it happens but when I calm down a few hours later).

And my sympathies and congratulations to the Jones’ who went on to play good bridge on the remaining boards and did their best when they got confused.  It is bad to have a disaster on one board but it is much worse to have one on the next board as well.