Grandchildren … not about bridge at all

January 11th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

Jessica Lee

I couldn’t resist posting this picture.  It is of my only granddaughter Jessica.  She is Colin’s little girl and I think she is the cutest. 

Its not that my four grandsons aren’t wonderful.  I love them all.  Just a week or two until Ray and I go to Vancouver with Colin and his family.  So for a wonderful week we will all be together.  I am sure I will have a picture or two to post.

While I am not talking about bridge I have a few things to say about life in general:

– it truly bothers me the way that Israel is demonized and the prospect of more anti-Semitism is frightening

– I can’t believe that all the fighting that is going on in the middle east is really worth it

– Don’t be afraid of universal health care, Americans, our system in Canada isn’t perfect and I am sure you can improve on it but I don’t think there are almost any Canadians who would want to go back to private insurance etc.

– I am very grateful that I live on the top half of North American.  What better place can there be then to have only one neighbor, the U.S. probably the best neighbor we could have had.  Now if only it was a little warmer in the winter.

Okay I promise never to talk about non-bridge again, for a long time.

And People Say 1NT Contracts Are Boring

January 10th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

I saw some interesting bridge in the last few days but no defense was better than this one against a quiet partscore of 1NT. 

The defender we are going to watch is Subhash Gupta, one of India’s very best players.  The event is 7TH Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bridge Championshipheld in Indora India.  Doesn’t the name itself just conjure up imagines of something exotic and wonderful.  The part of the tournament I was watching was the team of four event for selecting the team to represent the West Zone in the summer nationals.  I believe it was called the Kalani Trophy.

Gupta

This was the first of four rounds of the final.  The teams had rather interesting names by the way.  I am not sure I fully understand the significance of the first, but I am assure it is humorous:  Maya Meera Sneha.  Gupta was playing for 3 Idiots + i. 

Here was the deal from Gupta’s perspective:

	North K1094 104 87 Q8632
Gupta QJ32 763 Q1094 J9

Partner opens 1.  RHO overcalls 1NT and this is passed out.  You lead the 4 and see this dummy.  Partner plays the K and declarer wins the A. Declarer leads the 5.  And you?  Gupta put up the Q which was covered by the K and A.  Partner returns the 2 suggesting an initial holding of 4 and you win the 9.  You play the Q, declarer discards a club from dummy.  Now?

I am not going to try to duplicate Gupta’s reasoning but I suppose one can deduce that declarer’s clubs are not solid.  Declarer is missing at least one of the top honors.  Partner can;t have too many more high cards.  If partner has the K say, the best he can have is the K to give declarer 15.  Your side has two spades, three diamonds and must find two more tricks.  It doesn’t seem likely that you can get them in hearts.  Did you find the shift to the J?  Gupta did.  Partner played the 5 and declarer won the K. Now he hopped up on the spade continuation and continued clubs.  Partner was able to win the club ace and ten.  I just said wow.  Here is the whole hand (I have rotated it).

	North K1094 104 87 Q8632
Gupta QJ32 763 Q1094 J9		East A8 9852 KJ32 A105
	South 765 AKQJ A65 K74

Do you think it would have been a little bit harder if declarer had discarded a heart or spade from dummy?

A Ducking Defense

January 8th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

I was dummy playing with a pick-up partner watching the play on this deal.  Chris Willenken, one of the fine new group of young top experts was sitting West (well West when I rotated the deal) and made an interesting defensive play. 

With everyone vulnerable you have

10 10843 AQJ863 K3

Partner opens 1 and you bid 1.   Chris overcalls 2 natural and this is passed to you.  What do you do?  I suppose 2 is the best and that is what you bid.  Is this a game force?  I don’t think so but it is forcing for one round for sure.  Anyway partner bids 3.  Do you press on to 4?  I think this is pretty aggressive and there’s a chance the K isn’t going to work out for you but you can’t resist the vulnerable game.

The opening lead is the Q.  This is dummy.

You win the ace.  How do you play the hand.  Chris, West, probably has most of the remaining high cards for his vulnerable two-level overcall.  It looks like his partner has the K and most likely the J too.  It seems to me that it is very likely Chris has the A and K.

This is how the play went at the table.  South led the K, won by Chris with the A.  Chris returned a spade which South ruffed.  South played a heart to dummy as Chris showed out.  He tried the diamond finesse which won.  Now what?

If you repeat the diamond finesse you can run diamonds pitches a spade from dummy on the third diamond.  West will ruff in but you will still have the 10 as an entry to your hand.  However, it turns out that when you repeat the finesse Chris wins the K.  And down two you go.  As it turns out, if Chris wins the first diamond that also leads to down two while ducking gives declarer a chance at down one if he guesses it.  Of course he can’t, well maybe he can.  But who can blame declarer from taking a chance to make it.

I personally would have finessed the diamond at trick two.  That doesn’t help much but if Chris does duck and I guess he’s down that I can make the hand.  There are various lines that work.  An interesting point about the hand is the opening lead.  Only a spade will do.  The hand can be made on any other lead.

Here is the whole hand.

So the clever duck isn’t always right but it is hard to read.  I should know.  On the next deal I ducked an ace and left a position (while impossible to read) could have let a doomed contract make.

A Bidding Problem?

January 7th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  6 Comments 

If you are angry at me because I wrote so many blogs today just don’t read this.  Ray and I had this discussion about a hand in the paper in Paul Thurston’s bridge column.  It was from the 2009 England gold cup final.  So here is the “you hold”

With both vulnerable, RHO passes and partner opens 1D,  The opponent on your left overcalls 1H.  What do you do?

At one table this hand made a negative double.  Do you hate that bid?  What is your choice?  Perhaps 1S.  Anyway Ray gave me this hand and forced me to double.  I am assuming that your methods don’t force this, you are doing it by choice.  Now East bids 4H which is passed back to you.  I have a simple answer I bid 4S.  Unless we have very strange agreements partner must know that I have game values and a four card spade suit.  I would have surely bid 1S with 5.  I almost have to have support for diamonds to risk a bid like this. 

You could double instead but the risk is that partner has lots of diamonds and not enough spades to bid them and will pass.  This might be bad.

Perhaps I am resulting.  But then again when Ray gave me the hand I didn’t know the result.  The player with my hand doubled.  They played there for a double game swing against them.  Partner held

S 642
H Aj
D AJ8432
C 72

A hand that many would not have opened.  In any case at the second table the “you hold” hand decided to just raise diamonds and splintered over the 1H overcall.  This worked out quite well when it induced partner to bid 5D over 4H.

If you bid 1S and it goes 4h-p-p you really aren’t so well positioned.  Partner can still have spades but perhaps he is less likely to.  So you might try 5D.  I am not so sure of that.  So the negative double doesn’t work out so bad after all.

You Are Never Too Old

January 7th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

I just read a comment by Maggy Simony on my blog Some Insights from Howard Bigot-Johnson’s Bizarre World of Bridge.  Maggy will be 90 years old this March and has just written and published a book about sociable bridge clubs that last 50 years.  The book is called Bridge Table or What’s Trump Anyway.  Her comment is quite long because … well she had a lot to say and because she types fast.  I hope I can do anything fast when I am 90.

Maggy

What a wonderful achievement.  I can just tell from her comment, her website and her book that this lady is a go getter.  Here is a bit of an excerpt of her biography from her own website  http://bridgetable.net/ which makes me wish I knew her better.  Other hobbies than writing Bridge Table, are hanging out at libraries, politics (a “junkie”), reading, cooking and cookbooks, occasional beachwalking.  Those sound like great hobbies to me and maybe when I am down in Florida we might even meet and walk along the beach and talk politics.  I too love all those things.

There is information about how to order the book or an ebook version on her website.

My mom is a bit younger than Maggy, a young bride just after the end of World War 2 in Europe who still plays bridge with her women friends.  Most like Maggy are widowed and most enjoy the companionship and intellectual stimulation bridge brings.  My mothers mother and one of her brothers and a sister had dementia but not my mother.  Is this because of her bridge playing ways?  I sat in on one or two of her games and gave a few pointers.

The refreshments and sociability was so nice.  My mother does not want to play in a bridge club and the one time I took her and we were allowed to play in the novice game (our score didn’t count of course) my member spent the whole time trembling.  She is much more in her element with her friends.

You can read this in Maggy’s comment but let me quote the latter part of it here.

Spreading sociable bridge amongst the boomer generation is the surest way that serious and competitive bridge will bloom to something of the level of interest it enjoyed in the 20s-60s. Culbertson figured that out by converting all those auction playing bridge ladies to contract. If women made contract bridge the socially “in” thing to do, serious bridge would also flourish.

The fact is — the only reason bridge was ever the frenzied fad it was back in the 30s, and through 50s and 60s is because of the sociable ladies-only bridge clubs!! We were t he ones who steered children into playing bridge — inevitably SOME will become serious players and competitive tournament players. Inevitably also–human nature being what it is–MOST won’t!

I haven’t seen the book but I am sure that Maggy can take us all back to a time where people played bridge for fun at home.  Every so often we get a few couple together for dinner and bridge.  It is a little different than Maggy’s world but as close as I am going to get.

Thank you Maggy for getting in touch with me and sharing your story with your book.  I wish you great success with it.  And I just hope that when I am 90 I am still writing bridge books too.

Why Can’t The English

January 7th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

I am writing this blog because I think there must be a serious flaw in the way people learn (or are taught) to bid.

I am not going to talk about playing the cards just yet but perhaps the biggest problem with card playing is that I suspect many people are never provided with much instruction in that arena and don’t use the available tools to teach themselves.  But back to bidding…

This is not a complaint, just an observation (and a worry).  Playing with people (as partners and opponents) who classified themselves as experts, I ran into these amusing bids. (Okay so they aren’t experts but presumably they have been playing for a few years, are likely life masters etc…)

All of these happened within about 10 total hands yesterday.  Each of these was done by a different player.

Here’s one which I will label hand evaluation.  This area is very abused.

At favorable colors your partner passes and RHO bids 1C.  You double and vulnerable LHO bids 2S.  Partner passes again and LHO bids 3S.  Is this your moment to act?  Maybe you don’t think this is the worst example you have seen but I hate bidding on this hand.  Partner can’t have much and you have just enough defense to probably prevent the opponents from making anything.  As it turns out, if you double you will get a minus in four of a minor (they actually played diamonds) and 3S is not making.  I was the 2S bidder on this hand.

This one I will call … abuse of negative doubles and failure to support partner.

S KJ93

H 10854

D K753

C J

With everyone white your partner opens 1H.  Your opponent overcalls 2C and you bid ?  Anyone for negative double?  I wonder what the guy would say when writing this up for the master solver’s club… “I knew we had a 5-4 heart fit but perhaps the 4-4 in spades will play better”.

Here is another hand which includes hand misevaluation and misrepresentation and failure to understand when you can bid notrump

S KQ62

H K1083

D K72

C 73

Nobody vulnerable, LHO passes and partner opens 1D.  You bid 1H and LHO 1S.  Partner makes a support double and it is your turn.  What do you bid?  I give 2NT the nod myself but I could hear an argument for 1NT.  Perhaps you are thinking that this player passed the double or bid 3NT or some number of hearts.  Not there yet…. Try again.  The choice was 2D. 2D was cold but then so was 3NT.  Partner had a balanced 14 count.  Passing the double was just fine (although I am not advocating that choice … no, no no).

This all happened in one short session on one day.

So to misquote Henry Higgins…”Why can’t the bridge players learn to bid”… Maybe I could find a young unruly bridge player and … no somebody did that story already at a nationals.

If you think I am being too harsh… okay but

Honors Books – what are they, why are they?

January 5th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

Master Point Press is getting ready to start a new line of bridge books.  They are called Honors Books.  These books are ones that we like and think have merit but we can’t publish for some reason or other.  A lot of the time it is because the market is tiny but some of the time its because the book is tiny (in pages).

It has always bothered me that we can’t publish some of these books.  Ray and I have these arguments.  I am usually on the side of publishing whatever it is and he telling me that the market is too small.  Some times we publish a book because we believe in it a lot and we just do it anyway.

We realized that we could afford to publish a lot of these works as ebooks and make them accessible to more people.   Because we have a small staff we wouldn’t be able to provide the kind of editing we do for Master Point Press books.  But we could help the author to develop them, provide them with some tools, make the work an ebook and sell it on our web site.

We have already had quite a few submissions that we think are terrific ebooks which tells me that there are a lot more out there as well.  In our bridge community we need to give people access to a lot of ideas and concepts.  In many cases these ebooks will be inexpensive when compared to the cost of a bridge book you might be at a book stand.  But even more important it will be a way for a lot more people to have their ideas heard and shared.

We feel that every Honors Book should have intrinsic merit and we will read and accept each book as we would any book submitted to us.  It is even possible that we might ask the author if they would like the book published as a paper book too.  We want everyone who downloads an Honors Book to feel that they got something of real value and maybe something they couldn’t really get anywhere else. 

If you are interested in submitting a book just sending it to me or Ray.  There will be more details about Honors books on the www.ebooksbridge.com website and on www.masterpointpress.com in the next few days.  I have already seen a few ebooks I want to read including a book on strong club with four card majors, canape and relays (are you reading this Colin?).

There is no conflict between publishing your book on Amazon and on Master Point Press.  We produce books which work on everything but the Kindle and Amazon only produces books that work on it!  Actually if you buy an ebook from us you can have Amazon convert it for a very small fee (under a dollar I think). 

I think we live in an exciting interesting world with a lot of new ways to communicate.  I do agree with Judy Kay-Wolff about some times missing the old days.  But I can’t help loving the new days too.

What to play over reverses

January 4th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

Well I am playing with some new partners and as always there has to be at least some system discussion.  I have never been terribly satisfied about having figured out the best way to handle auctions after reverses.

On more hands than not the opponents are all over your auction, not just this one I mean all auctions, so it becomes less important.  But since you probably have a good piece of the deck after a reverse you need to have some system for the uncontested auctions.

Yeah, yeah I know you play that 2NT is Lebensohl of some sort.  My problem starts with what to do when you have a five card major, weak, better, best.  So say you have 5 spades, 2 hearts, 4 diamonds and 2 clubs.  Partner opens 1C and you bid 1S.  Partner now makes the dreaded 2H bid.  Sure you can bid 2S but what does it mean.  Is it any hand with five spades?  If so how do you bring the auction to a close on a weak hand etc.

I like to play that in this type of auction 2NT is the only way out, five spades or no.  If you have a bad hand with spades suck it up and bid 2NT and then get out in 3S.  2S is thus game forcing and in both cases you have at least set the level.  You were going to have to play at the 3 level anyway.

I understand that had I bid 2S and partner hated spades they would have bid something else like 2NT and depending on your methods you could have passed with that weak hand.  But that is the tradeoff against the ambiguity.

What if you have fourth suit available at the two level.  Okay I am happy to use that as the weak bid and then I suppose 2NT can mean something else, ideally not too natural cause I don’t really want the weak hand on play.

So am I completely out to lunch.  What do you think?

Of course there are always other bad places in systems too.  Like what overcalls mean in the sandwich position and when is 4NT or 5 of a minor blackwood and even worse when it is exclusion or when is 3NT serious, seriously.

Still it is fine to tinker, I think.

Imp Match Bidding

January 2nd, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

I was doing commentary on the last 1/4 of the Israel Team Championship Final.  The Herbst team who I have watched a number of times was battling out with the Bareket team.  Herbst was behind coming into the quarter by 36 imps. 

This match, as many are I suppose, was all about the bidding.    On the following hand, the first board of the quarter (although played fourth at my table) South for Bareket held

South   AKJ7   AKQ102   863 A

His partner opened 1 and RHO bid 2.  I think it is clear to bid 2.  You have a good enough hand that you will be able to get both suits in anyway and your hearts are very good for a five card suit.   South, Lengy Asag doubled.  West bid 3.  His partner passed and when it came back to him he doubled again.  Apparently and strangely as far as I am concerned 3 at this juncture would not have been forcing.  Partner held:

North   10532   865   KQ   KQJ8

and bid spades.  Blackwood revealed the missing spade queen and the missing ace and they wisely stopped in 5 which was the limit of the hand with the spade queen wrong.  However, 6 was bid and made at the other table.  It is true that they did not have the same auction since North did not open the bidding but even with that this pair should have found hearts.  Later in the match the same South had a similar decision.  This time he held

South 8 AKQ54 Q876 985

and when his RHO opened 1, he chose doubled and ended up in a silly 4-3 fit in clubs going down 2 when hearts was making for a loss of 8 imps.  I wonder if these two examples will change his philosophy.

In any case the Herbst team picked up on the quarter but lost the match by 5 imps.  I hate losing by 5 imps.  My condolences.

More Decade Awards

December 31st, 2009  ~  linda  ~  5 Comments 

A couple of readers have suggested that I include Master Point Press and to be honest  Ray has done a remarkable job of creating a successful bridge book business so I hope you don’t mind me adding that to my list.  So modesty aside:

Best Bridge Book Publisher: Master Point Press

Ray has done a remarkable job of taking a tiny micropress and making it into the world’s leading bridge book publisher.  Master Point Press has published more than 160 bridge books, imagine that.  Some are published to serve a mass market but some are published with no thought of significant profit, because they should be.  I could say a lot more but that is enough.  Thanks Ray.  You really did it.

Ray in Shanghai

Bridge Personality Of The Decade: The Sponsor

Time magazine does this all the time so I guess I can too.  The bridge sponsors have been around for a long time.  They have taken the place of other types of funding in many cases to become the prime funders of many national teams.  Some have done it as financial supporters providing leadership and team sport (Lavazza) and some have been team members in some cases almost as good as the professionals and in some cases not very good at all.  They provide an income for bridge professionals.   They have also provided support for a number of other bridge activities.   Most of the top 16 in U,S, major team events are sponsored.  They have a lot of say in what happens to bridge.  For good and not so good they have changed the game.

Bridge Writer Of The Decade: Barbara Seagram and Audrey Grant

Barbara  and Audrey                        

Oh my goodness this is a tough one.  There have been some very impressive books (Roy Hughes for example), there have been some very prolific and talented authors (Julian Pottage, David Bird, Mark Horton are examples here) but perhaps the two greatest writers in terms of contribution to bridge this decade are two women bridge teachers.

25 Conventions You Should Know has become the best selling bridge book of modern times, translated into many languages.  Many more copies sold in Japanese then there are members of the Japanese Bridge League.  Barbara is author of many other equally fine books which have made bridge enjoyable for hundreds of thousands of bridge players.  Audrey Grant authored the ACBL standard series for teaching beginners and many other fine books as well.  She teachers hunderds of bridge teachers through her bridge festivals, runs a successful bridge magazine, cruise ship teaching program and more.

Most Impressive Performance By A Country: China

Certainly Norway, the Netherlands, Italy and others have had a terrific decade but no country has come further, faster than China.  I love the fact that China takes bridge seriously.  They just won their first Venice Cup and successfully ran back to back world championships.

Bridge Man or Woman Of The Decade: ?

My nominations are

Bobby Wolff for his contribution to bridge administration, the laws and ethics, his writing and his accomplishments as a player

Jose Damini President for the WBF who advanced world bridge in many way including encouraging bridge in many countries, running some impressive world championships, bringing bridge to the Olympic movement and to the world mind sports and fostering youth bridge.

Jeff Meckstroth for his skills as a bridge player as part of Meckwell but also for his participation in bridge in many other ways

Bill Gates for his love of the game and his willingness to use his prestige to support bridge and his support of youth bridge.  (Warren Buffett could be a co-nominee).

Fred Gitelman for his writing, his software, development of bridge base online and all the ways he has contributed to bridge with his skills and his time

I am not going to pick this one alone.  I need help with this one.  Email is fine or post a comment.  I am sure I left some worthy people off the list so feel free to add other names.

……………

Well that is my list.  It wasn’t done by committee (except I hope the last one, to be named Person Of The Decade).  It expresses my views only.  I hope you had fun with it.

And of course Happy happy happy New Year, New Decade… ring in the 10’s.,,, may they be roaring.