Philly Twitters and BBO Vugraph starts today (Tuesday)

October 5th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

There were various requests of twitter to know about the Vugraph schedule.  I was surprised to see it starts TODAY 2PM EST with Round 2 and Round 3 of the Rosenblum tea,s..  Check here for the schedule of BBO broadcasts.  Woohoo.

I thought it would be interested to check out some current twitters about the bridge World Championships.  These are mostly non-bridge players.  Some don’t represent the kind of thinking we would like…

BaconEggnChase: Geriatric groupies galore! Better put my mommom on lockdown…      RT@PhillyInquirer: World Bridge Series Championship comes to Philadelphia

Then perhaps some sour grapes AliciaTerrance: World Bridge Series Championship comes to Philadelphia: The choice came down to Las Vegas and Philadelphia. “Truth…

The Philly tourist industry is happy though

4PhillyJobs: World Bridge Series Championship comes to Philadelphia More than 4,000 bridge players from the United State

and they wonder how you can make money are bridge…

mailtohayden: World Bridge Series Championship comes to Philadelphia: Some will be paid to play by sponsors, but in large-scale …

and don’t miss BRIDGE TOUR (JADE BARRETT)  twittering from the World Championships.  You can also see his twitters on the facebook page:  Here is some of the news:

We visited tonight after Anne and Jade had a 3/4 overall (tied with Karen and Ellis, of course) in the pair game and a 2nd overall in the BAM at the regional. Laurie is looking well and is expected to remain at Jefferson Hospital for 2 weeks of rehab.

Another bridge Tweeter is TREBOEF.  He is picking up a lot of bridge tweets from other sources on his ABOUT PHILLY section and was just itching to see vugraph.

Some folks en route…

ashekhter: So, it’s 5 pm and I am on my way to Philly. Our team has registered for Main event in World Bridge Series which starts tomorrow 10:30am.

Jenny’s tournament is over it appears..  If you want an almost minute by minute story of her tournament …

Mixed Pair Winners!

October 5th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

The winner of the Mixed Pairs was Donna Compton of the USA and Fulvio Fantoni of Italy. Second place went to Kismet Fung of Canada playing with Brian Glubok of Italy. The top 10 had an international flavor with 9 Americans, a Canadian, 5 Italians, 2 Latvians, 2 Russia and a Chinese.

Does this help as you decide which countries (beside the US) will do well in the Open Teams. If you haven’t done so yet then enter the contest. It is easy, costs nothing and gives you a guaranteed prize. For details just click on the picture of the Philadelphia Nationals on the www.bridgeblogging.com

Congratulations to the winners. My special congratulations to Kismet who has represented Canada a number of times in Womens competitions. Well done.

For all the results.

Once again Bulletin is online the night before.  I think I better check to make sure that all the bulletins haven’t been written already.  The cover has a smiling Donna Compton and Fulvio Fantoni with their medals meeting with various officials.  Wow Donna’s smile says it all.

The Rosenblum and McConnell start tomorrow but it will be a while (round of 64) before we see any of it on BBO.  The Bulletin shows provisional groupings for the Rosenblum.  There are 16 groups of apparently 9 teams with presumably 4 teams qualifying from each group.  There are some intriguing team names.  The Italian stallions are all Americans and the Texan aces are a ll Indian except for one player and the playing captain.   It’s interesting to see so many multinational teams as I go through the list.  It is sure to be an amazing event.

The ladies event had only 37 teams entered on the website but maybe more have joined since.  It appears that they will play a round robin to go to 32.  It seems a bit unlikely.  The Seniors teams is even smaller with only 27 teams entered including Canada Master Point Press.  I think they have quite a good chance of winning a medal.  Go guys: Boris Baran, John Carruthers, John Gowdy, Eric Murray, Michael Shoenborn and Joey Silver.

When I checked the Verona event in 2006 the entry was about the same.  I wonder if the organizer expected a bigger tournament with the competition being held in the USA?

Onward Mixed

October 3rd, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

The first session of the Mixed Pairs Final is in the record books.  Check out:

THE RESULTS

After the first round the leaders Yvonne Hernandez – Lu Kohutiak are listed as an American pair but I think they may actually be from Unionville Ontario not too far from where I live.  I noticed that they won the Red Ribbon pairs some time ago so this is a pair that has played together for a long time.   Also notable is that Karen Cumpstone playing with John Rayner is in eight place.  I have enjoyed playing with Karen from time to time on BBO and she has played on international teams a number of times.   Captain John captained the Women’s team I played on in Istanbul.   Kathy Sulgrove and Joaquin Pacareu are in second with Pam Miller and Jim Ramussen in third.  The Mixed Pairs and the Consolation (Mixed Plate) conclude tomorrow with two more sessions.

The Bulletin for Monday was already published by 11:30 EST (very efficient Bulletin staff).  According to the Bulletin John Kraynak playing with his mother Laurie who were leading the field with a huge score (66%) dropped out after Laurie became sick.  I hope she is feeling better soon and I send her my best wishes.

Worlds start with the Mixed Pairs

October 3rd, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

The World Championships have started with the opening event the Mixed Pairs.  Yesterday was the first two of three qualifying sessions.  My guess is that this year there will be a record breaking entry.  There were 445 pairs from 49 countries entered in the first event the Mixed Pairs.  Don’t miss the article in   .  It includes this photo.  The player holding the cards in the foreground is Roberta Melman.  Her smiling partner is Rhoda Schaffer.  The front cover of Saturday Bulletin has greetings from President Obama.  Among other things he mentions that he has fond memories of his grandparents enjoying the game.  Mr. President I am sure you would enjoy it too!

CBS Philly has this headline

Philadelphia Hosts World Bridge Series Championships

The results are posted and the leaders after two sessions are:

John and Laurie Kranyak  (his mom) with a great cumulated score of 66.2%.  John was on the USA Junior team which won the 11th WORLD YOUTH TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS Bangkok 2006.

Second is Sandra Rimstedt, Sweden (Sweden) Shane Blanchard (USA) with 61.77%.  I noticed my friends Arnie and Wendy Krause of Canada had a good start with 56.25%, as did Gloria and Les Bart (USA), 56.37%

Sandra

There are lots of interesting hand in the Sunday Bulletin with a good size staff covering the event.  The first round of the final of the Mixed Pairs and the Mixed Pairs Plate (Consolation) start Sunday evening.

Bidding is the easy part

September 28th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

When I talk to card players who know bridge but don’t want to play it, they complain about the bidding.  it is too much work.  It is too much too learn.

When I talk to students they don’t complain about the bidding.  They complain about the card play.  Most of them are comfortable talking about the merits of this bid or that bid, about cuebids and splinters, Lebensohl and 2/1 and keycard Blackwood.  But when it comes to card play they often have a problem.  My usual approach is to tell them to count losers in suit contracts and winners in notrump and then to make a plan.

This hand comes from a recent session with a student.  Playing imps with the opponents silent you arrive in 4♠ on this auction

North ♠ J42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ K4 ♣ K105

South ♠ AKQ107 ♥ 87 ♦ AJ76 ♣ 97

The opening lead is the ♦2.  East plays the ♦Q and you win the ♦A.  So following my suggestion my student counted losers.  She has two possible red suit losers and two club losers if the♣A is offside.  One plan is to ruff the third diamond and then give up a heart.  If all goes well then the placement of the ♣A won’t matter.  And that is the plan that my student chose.  She first drew one round of trump using dummy’s ♠J (a mistake) and then played a diamond.  The ♦K was trumped by West.  As it turns out if West plays clubs now you will go down even though the ♣A is onside!  Here is the position at the table.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ 42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ – ♣ K104
West ♠ 65 ♥ A1093 ♦ – ♣ A864		East ♠ – ♥ 62 ♦ 10985 ♣ QJ32
	South ♠ AKQ10 ♥ 87 ♦ J7 ♣ 97

Let’s say West plays the ♣A and another club.  You win and you can draw trump and play a heart.  West wins the second heart and you come up a trick short.  You make five spade tricks, two diamond tricks, one club trick and one heart trick.  You can see why playing the ♠ J was such a problem.  First it set up the potential that West could make another spade trick by ruffing a third diamond and most importantly it takes out an entry from dummy you can use after establishing hearts.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ J42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ K4 ♣ K104
West ♠ 8653 ♥ A1093 ♦ 2 ♣ A864		East ♠ 9 ♥ 62 ♦ Q109853 ♣ QJ32
	South ♠ AKQ107 ♥ 87 ♦ AJ76 ♣ 97

This is obviously not the best line.  You have an almost certain line.  Let’s count winners.  After the opening lead you have three diamonds, five spades and you can make two hearts by giving up the ♥ A.  You don’t need a diamond ruff and you don’t care who has the ♣A.  You start by drawing trumps, here four rounds.  You lead hearts.  Here West will win the second round.  Now a heart back makes things easy.  You win and cash the ♦ K and ruff a heart back.  You have the ten tricks mentioned earlier.  In fact after you cash your winners, you will make eleven with the ♣A onside.  But what about a club back?  You duck a small club and East wins.  East can’t hurt you with a club return and the most the defense can take is two clubs and a heart.  If you go up with the ♣ K and its wrong it is possible for the defense to force you in clubs and you won’t be able to untangle the diamond suit.

So my student had a reasonable line and in fact she made it on the defense when the defender failed to lead a club back after the diamond ruff.  But it wasn’t the best line.  Some times counting winners works better than counting losers.  And finding one plan doesn’t mean there isn’t a better one.  How do I explain this?

Getting Ready for Philadelphia

September 27th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  6 Comments 

The World Championships will be on us quite soon and I am looking forward to watching great and exciting vugraph for weeks with lots of hands and stories.  Can you wait?

I am not going and I think that Ray won’t either although he is still vacillating.  It’s just that I have been traveling to much this year and I am going to Orlando in November.  I just couldn’t bear to pack another suitcase.  I miss home too much.

I shall miss seeing all my friends and deep down I may miss playing just a bit (although I don’t feel anything really).  Do you know the song from Chorus Line:

And I dug right down to the bottom of my soul

And I tried, I tried.

But I felt nothing

I am quite happy being right here in front of my desk with my wonderful house, my great electronics, my food, my family and all the things I like best.   Now if it had been Paris or Rome….

So anyway it is time for us to get ready and of course it is time for the world championship contest.  So this is what I am thinking giving that this is a multinational, entrants will be asked to name five countries.  We will take the listed nationality of each contestant who plays in the Rosenblum.    No need to pick the USA we will assume that everybody has and give you all the points for that.  We will look at the top eight finishers (the round of eight).  You will get one point for each player of the nationality you selected in the top eight an additional three points for each who finishes in the final four, then three extra for third, five extra for second and ten extra for first.  Through the miracle of spreadsheets we can keep track of it.

Now all this may sound complicated but all you have to do is to send us the seven nationalities that will produce most of the winners.

This year the winner may pick from a list of Master Point Press books which we will publish later and will also get a gift certificate for an ebook from www.ebooksbridge.com.   I am open to better ideas so if you have any other suggestions about the contest or even some ideas about rule changes let me know.  We will probably publish something on Wednesday.  Meanwhile if you are thinking about Philadelphia have a look at the USBF site.  No doubt there will be a prize for everybody who enters too.

Ron Bishop came by and he is heading down for the Open Pairs.  Apparently you will be allowed to play multi but all players can bring their OWN defense to the table and read from it during the play.  Is their any other convention that gets this treatment?  Is multi that hard?

Anybody have any other Philadelphia tidbits to share?

Thank you to Ray who suggested that the idea of giving everybody the USA.

Phil Leon Will Be Missed… from Jonathan Steinberg and Allan Tushman

September 25th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

Phil, courtesy Jonathan Steinberg

I received an email a few days ago from Jonathan Steinberg to a large group talking about Phil.  I didn’t know Phil, having seen him from time to time but I thought the announcement should be shared.  Here is what Allan Tushman said:

Phil Leon passed away yesterday afternoon (September 22nd). Encyclopedia of Bridge (6th ed.) entry: “Born 1927. Of Grosse Pointe Shores, MI. Retired but still does selective interior design projects. Past president (served 2 terms) and tournament chairman of Michigan Bridge Association. Leon served as MBA and board of governors member for many years and was vice-chairman of the ACBL Appeals Committee for more than 20 years . Diamond Life Master, won more than 14,700 MPs as of 3/2001. He has won more than 100 regional titles.”  Just a thought. Someone need to put together a good oral history of bridge in metropolitan Detroit before its too late. It’s partially too late already.

It is sad to see many of the pioneers of bridge pass on.

I agree with Allan.  People should be collecting histories of bridge in their districts.

Jonathan added one or two of his favorite memories.  I wouldn’t mind seeing the board referred to below.

I have always been fortunate to play bridge with quality partners. Phil was also a quality person with eclectic interests. It was through Phil that I enjoyed a private performance with one of his best friends, the late Leonard Pennario, classical pianist and composer. One of my first encounters with Phil (around 1980) was at an NABC Appeals Committee that Phil was chairing. In no uncertain terms, he admonished the professional player who was appealing that he should not appear before Phil in any future committee!

We enjoyed many tournaments together throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Phil was my partner at the 1988 London Bridge Regional final of a seeded KO where we brought home a vulnerable 6S doubled contract making (+1660) while teammates were in a vulnerable 6H doubled, also making! A 22 imp swing which happened to be the margin of our deficit at the half. “Just One Board” has been written up in several publications. Thanks, Phil, for being part of it.

From the on-line ACBL Top 500 list: # 100 Phil Leon Grosse Pointe MI 18,041.47

:

Are Bridge Robots Ready For Prime Time?

September 24th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

I know that a lot of people have already written (even books) about playing against the GIB robots on BBO.  Frankly I wasn’t all that interested.  I play with people.  But lately Cora and I have used the robots to practice playing.

It can be hard to get a game where people stay for more than a couple of deals and we seemed to spend a lot of time waiting and then some times people can be quite rude, usually to their partner.  So robots seemed more efficient.  Your score is compared against other people playing against robots which makes the score quite artificial.  So I thought I would look at one of the boards from yesterday and see how the robots went wrong.  Would humans have done the same thing?  I rotated the deal to put the robots North-South.  We were vulnerable against not and the South robot was dealer.

North ♠ AKJ ♥ J8653 ♦ AK ♣ 964

South ♠ Q632 ♥ 109 ♦ Q106 ♣ AJ102

South passed. Cora passed and the Northern robot opened 1♥.  I think many humans would open the hand 1NT especially with the anemic heart suit.  One problem with opening 1♥ is you may not enjoy your rebid.  We were silent throughout and South bid 1S.  North bid 3♠ which seems the best of the possible rebids.  16 points is quite a bit for this bid but you can hardly jump with a three-card fit.  Now partner raised to 3♠and there was no question about going to game but I think every human I know would venture 3NT at this point.  The North robot bid 4♠ and there they were on the 4-3 with 3NT very likely to produce 9 tricks.  4♠is not a bad contract but it requires clubs to work and friendly splits.  the clubs were okay but the splits were not.  Here is the whole deal.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ AKJ ♥ J8653 ♦ AK ♣ 964
Cora ♠ 1084 ♥ AKQ72 ♦ J8742 ♣ –		Linda ♠ 975 ♥ 4 ♦ 953 ♣ KQ8753
	South ♠ Q632 ♥ 109 ♦ Q106 ♣ AJ102

First thing to notice is that many people would open Cora’s hand in second chair.  She is 5-5 with a decent ten count.  (With those nice hearts I would have opened 1♥ ).   If you open 1♥ then North will bid 1NT.  At this point I can’t imaging bidding on my hand.   When people played with three robots the robot bid 2♣ on my hand which lead to all sorts of trouble.  Big big numbers.  Moral don’t bid on a weak hand with a probable misfit.  Robots are you listening?  No robots reached the 3NT game even when North overcalled 1NT.  When East-West escaped to diamonds (which should still go for a big number) the robots ended in spades when South pulled? 2♦ doubled to 2♠ and North often reasonably raised.

My conclusion from this hand is that robots still have a lot to learn about bidding in contested auctions (and maybe in general).  Cora was the only West to pass by the way.   Even robots were enticed into opening her hand including both humans and robots.  I don’t think it is as clearcut as that but I do think that very few people (or robots) would pass.

What would you bid after your partner opened 1H and RHO doubled with

I think all humans would bid 4♥ .  Our robot bid 2♥ and then 4♥ at his next turn.  There are many problems with this approach although it didn’t work out badly this time.

I have a sense that the card play of the robots is better but I haven’t checked that out yet.  Still they do provide quite worthy practice.

Barbu? Really?

September 20th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

Some of you may have noticed a new blogger called Neil Trentham. Neil will be blogging about Barbu. Barbu is a real card game (unlike poker it is about card playing and not just betting). Many years ago when I started to play bridge all of us got into many card games (and even other games like Battleships if you believe it).

One of our favorites was Kings. If you are unfamiliar with Kings it is a game that has eight rounds. Each round is a different game including hearts (don’t take any), last two (definitely don’t take either of the last two tricks), tricks (avoid taking any tricks at all) and then whist with the dealer calling the trump suit (take tricks, lots of them). A variation of Kings which we called “Roll Your Own Kings” meant that the dealer could call any round they wanted based on the potential of their hand. By the time the game ended they had to have call all of the possible rounds.

Then we graduated to Barbu. Barbu has the same kind of approach as Roll Your Own Kings. The dealer picks the game and the other players can double or redouble. I will let Neil explain exactly how it works in his next few blogs. The doubling aspect adds a lot of strategy. For a while now there has been an online Barbu site which allows you to set up games and even play duplicate Barbu. Again we are sure to hear more about that from Neil. Here is a quote from Neil about how the strategy of Barbu can work.

“But all rivalry and one upmanship goes out the window when there is an opportunity to earn a few extra points. My favorite recent deal involves the three of us working together to trap the fourth player, who had unwisely doubled all three of us at no king of hearts.

If you are on Facebook, you can read about this deal in the “Golden rule” thread on the discussion page in Shireen’s “Online Barbu Players” group. I would guess that one of the most rewarding situations in bridge is when you get on exactly the same wavelength as your partner and produce an intricate defense. On this deal *three* players had to be on the same wavelength.”

Many bridge players also play Barbu. Among the more famous ones are Kit and Sally Woolsey and Lew and Joanna Stansby.

Neil describes himself as follows:

By profession I am a research astronomer, which is completely different from other sciences in that you cannot do experiments and so have to piece together a picture of the Universe from a large number of tenuous measurements, each on its own fairly insignificant. As a result, astronomers have to work with data that is limited and a good deal of effort is spent in assigning probabilities that each result is meaningful. Many of my colleagues are also mathematicians and computer scientists.

When I am not doing astronomy or playing barbu, I try to spend my time understanding voice recognition software (I am an MS patient and cannot use the mouse).  So far, I can play barbu and do some astronomical computations and data work by voice, but there are certainly improvements that can be made.

I could talk for hours about why I enjoy barbu so much.  Presumably it has something to do with the astronomers’ thing of piecing together an unknown distribution of the remaining cards from limited information.

I am trying to convince Neil to try bridge because i do think he would like the card play but he is worried about the effort in learning a bidding system.

Although Barbu is not bridge I think it will appeal to many of our readers.  So just like any other blog enjoy it if you are interested and skip over it if you are not.  I watched a session of Barbu at Shireen’s house in London and I plan to give it a go (and probably blog about it) but not for a while yet.

So welcome Neil!

Please Don’t Shoot The Messenger … The Buffett Cup

September 19th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

Ray, Mark Horton and I set out to Cardiff on the first day of the Buffet Cup.  I had a copy of the brochure.  The pictures were nice but Ray was not impressed with the production.  The pictures were low resolution for one thing.  I thought it was quite colorful but I could see what he meant.  You can see it on the website which I think is quite good.  Besides I am not knocking any sponsors of bridge events … go  Warren.

Still talking about the website… there is a rather peculiar list of bridge books.  Why is it that people who recommend books always seem to pick books written from 20 to 50 years ago or more?  (At least we seemed to have moved on from Culbertson and Goren). I assume it is because the authors of these lists haven’t read any new books for a long time.  Note to list creators … pick a few modern books please!

It appears that all the European players and all the American players share a “national” convention card.  The European card appears to be standard based and the North American 2/1.  The advantage is that we all ought to be able to follow what is going on.  The disadvantage is that partnerships are not going to be playing their usual system and one can expect misunderstandings.  While I like the idea of keeping it simple it does tend to mean that we are not watching the best bridge possible from these wonderful players.

Anyway if you go to the website don’t miss the photos which are definitely the best feature of the site!  I also like the way they presented all the results session by session.

It was rainy and miserable which I am told is not uncommon in the fall in Wales.  We had a bit of difficulty finding the hotel/castle but eventually we arrived at the Miskin Manor Country Hotel.  The venue was very attractive in a castle sort of way and it was fun to see the wonderful collection of great players ready to play.  We all gathered for the opening by the Lord Mayor.

In the picture the Lord Mayor chatted with Rodwell and Meckstroth just before making his speech.  You can see Mark Horton in the background set to take a picture (and wearing a team Canada jacket).  I didn’t really see the playing facilities but I expect they were good.  Then the teams posed for pictures.  You will notice that all the players wore shirts with their name embroidered on them (making them collectables!).

Team America with the Lord Mayor

Team Europe with the Lord Mayor (like the spiffy black shirts?)

The vugraph room was spacious for the small (very small) number of spectators there that first day.  But the vugraph left a lot to be desired.

First, there was no camera in the playing area (at least when we were there).  Second they did not hire professionals to do commentary and had the organizers and various bridge experts (like Mark Horton) talk for a session or two.  The setup meant that you could only follow one table and it was impossible to decipher the scores or scoring.  Some of the officials spent a long time trying to explain what was happening.  Perhaps things improved on subsequent days but it seems to me that the main purpose of this event is to hold a prestigious event to draw attention to bridge.  The vugraph is one of the places which is most noticeable to the general public (along with the brochures).  Given the great cost to assemble such wonderful players in a single space, create a website, write press releases and so on it seems to me that money has to be spent on providing a setting for spectators to see, understand and enjoy the game.   If this was designed to be a BBO event mainly then why bother to gather everybody together!

Next time … do it right and put money and effort into the components that are most visible to the public.  Let’s make it a real showcase!

The Bulletin which was a volunteer effort looked fine to me and is still available on site.

Board 2 Dealer: East Vul: N-S	North ♠ J103 ♥ Q72 ♦ K643 ♣ A42
West ♠ K75 ♥ K2 ♦ Q102 ♣ Q9873		East ♠ A982 ♥ A108 ♦ J95 ♣ K105
	South ♠ Q64 ♥ J9654 ♦ A87 ♣ J6

We watched Gitelman and Hampson (Ray speculated about whether they had purposefully picked a Canadian-born pair!) against Van Armin and Aukin in the first round.  1NT was played at both tables, here by Sabine sitting East.  The opening lead by South, Gitelman was a small heart a good start.  Sabine won the heart and led a club from dummy misguessing and losing to the CJ.  How many tricks would you expect here to take?  It does look like the defense now has 7 tricks: 2 clubs, 3 hearts and 2 diamonds but Sabine managed to take nine tricks and win the board.  When she gave up the second club Geoff had to decide the best way to get to Fred’s hand and got it wrong returning a spade and things went downhill from there.  We all wondered about the signaling in an unfamiliar partnership and playing an unfamiliar system.  It is these little things that make pairs such a challenge when you are not practiced.  In many ways imps is more forgiving.

Team USA was the winner this year.

We did then venture out in the damp to have a look at Cardiff and I hope the players had a chance to tour as well.  Cardiff Castle pictured below is most interesting we were told from the outside and so we saved our money and just had a look.

The best site for us, pictured,  was the Millenium Center (where Torchwood, a great British SF series was filmed).