A New Canadian Master Point on ebooksbridge

April 14th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

This month we are providing the July 1996 issue of Canadian Master Point as a free download.  When I opened the front page I couldn’t help but notice that I had written the editorial.  The best part of it was a picture of me from 1996.  I looked great, where is Dorian Gray when you need him?  The editorial describes my idea of how bridge games should be fun.  This was before the days of lots of online bridge and I started to think about the differences between tournaments, clubs and online.  Perfection is different and the problems are different but actually I think online bridge has resolved some of the problems inherent in bridge at the table (while creating new ones perhaps?)  In fact my son Colin has written an article in this issue about bridge on the Internet.  But by now I already know that 😀 is a smiling face.

Fred Gitelman describes his experience playing with George Mittleman in the Cavendish.  Check out George’s one spade overcall about halfway through the article.  His spades are great but his high cards are many.  See what you think.

David Silver has a lovely story which involves defeating the “unbridge” players who win by being lucky having made some sort of pact to get the luck.  But sometimes being too lucky can cost.  Roselyn Teukolsky discusses a hand from a team game where you can try to make the hand with a squeeze or finesse.  Which one should it be?

There is a lovely bridge cryptic in this issue with the words in the crossword generally bridge terms.  Warning, if you aren’t used to doing cryptic crosswords you will find this one a challenge.  I have never been good at them and looking at this one right now I know I would be filling out a lot of the puzzle by looking at the answers later in the magazine.

There are many more good articles including a discussion of responsive doubles in crowded auctions, an article on the value of lying low with distributional hands by Ray Jotcham with some cool real life examples, a fascinating set of hands played by the Indian international team and a lot more including two articles for new players.

You can go to www.ebooksbridge.com and download the magazine for free.  Let me know what you think of our free magazines.  You can comment here or send me an email at [email protected]

Playing in the Toronto Regional with Macho Man

April 13th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

It has been many years since I played in the Toronto Regional.  Isabelle and Jeff Smith stayed over at our house and Colin and I played a couple of events with Isabelle and Sondra.  Jeff had a pretty good Regional finishing first in the Open Pairs with Ross Taylor (a new partner) and winning several rounds of the major knockout event.    Our team had a decent finish in the Compact KO. 

Jeff and Isabelle Smith at the MPP Office

One of our opponents teased Colin about all the testosterone when he made a series of bids which appeared to be pretty aggressive.  Here is one from the session (no hand records so all spot cards are approximate):

I opened 4◊ Namyats showing 8-9 tricks with spades as trump.  The suit does not need to be solid.  In our methods Colin can make several different slam tries.  He has available an asking bid in trump (which considering his holding might be making him nervous), an asking bid in clubs or he can show a slam try with hearts and diamonds controlled and no club control.   He can also use keycard.  Let’s say he starts with the trump asking bid:  The auction would go this way:

And he is too high for a club asking bid.  I like Colin’s choice of 5◊, the more cooperative bid of showing me cards in diamonds and hearts and slam interest.  This was my hand and I was able to bid the slam for a good pickup.

On a heart lead I had the small extra chance of dropping the doubleton AK of clubs or maybe getting RHO to rise on length to the ace and ruffing out LHO’s king and/or some kind of squeeze if I can deduce it from the discards.  There was a squeeze but it only made me feel better because the ◊K popped in the onside hand when I led towards dummy’s diamonds in the endgame.  Still really just 50% but it was the best kind of slam, the kind that makes.

Macho Man also got to a grand but maybe it was more Macho Woman, you decide.  I don’t have Colin’s exact hand but it was something like this.  (Colin email me with the right hand when you see this).

Here was my hand and you can decide who was naughty.

A club lead would have doomed the contract.  Even six looks to be a small challenge on a club lead.  But as Colin said he was unlikely to get a club lead, the suit he had bid twice and indeed a trump hit the table.  Colin was able to win in hand and with hearts 3-3 the hand was easy.  Macho macho macho man.

I would have made the auction a lot easier if I had bid 3♠ over 3♥ and I suppose I might not have shown the king of hearts.  Was I the macho woman?

The Struggle for 3NT

April 7th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

Playing in a team game last night, Jeff Smith and Paul Thurston reached an aggressive 3NT not reached at the other table.  This was one of those deals that could have gone either way.  Let us start by looking at it from the point of view of the Italian defender.

The auction had gone:

I will do my best to interpret the bidding but perhaps someone who knows can correct any of my mistakes.  1♣ followed by 2NT showed a balanced hand outside of their opening 1NT range  something like 17-19.  3◊ was checkback for majors.  What do you lead?  Our Italian star found a heart lead, leading the ♥2, a good choice.  This was the dummy.

Jeff played the ♥10 which was covered by the ♥J and ♥A.  Jeff now played the ♣10 which you perforce cover with the ♣Q which is allowed to hold.   You return the ♥Q (I am not sure why the Italian star picked the ♥Q, did he want to show a spade card since partner already knew about diamonds?).  This was allowed to hold partner playing the ♥4 and declarer the ♥6.  Now what?  Is there a message in the ♥4?  Do you continue hearts or switch.  If you switch what do you play?  Think about that and I am going to move around to Jeff’s side of the table.

This was the position when Italian Star played the ♥Q.  What is your plan?  The hand is hopeless unless the clubs come home so lets count that as four tricks to go along with two hearts, a diamond and a spade.  At the moment the defense has a club trick.  The hearts appear to be 4-3 so they can eventually take two heart tricks.  The question is where is your ninth trick to come from and can you get it without giving up too many tricks.  There is a miracle in the spade suit (KQ doubleton) but what other chances do you have?  An endplay seems most likely so you are going to want to keep a heart to throw in the Italian stud (I mean star, sorry).   Should you duck the heart now?  I think this is almost impossible to see at the table but there is a danger in ducking and winning the heart won’t cost.  What do I mean?  From the play of the ♥Q  Italian Star has all the heart spots.  There is no need to duck his partner can’t get in.  You are willing to give him the heart tricks anyway so might as well win the second heart.  What is the danger?  What are you going to do about a spade switch?  Not much.  Ducking it doesn’t work and winning it sets up a bunch of spade tricks for the defense.  We will come back to this later.  Anyway after you duck Italian star who is perhaps sipping cappucino doesn’t find the spade switch.  (I know it is very hard for him to find at the table, did you find it?)  He continues hearts and you win the third round as Cayne follows with the ♥2.  So now it is up to the card gods (to help with the club suit) and your talent to find the right ending. 

You lead a club and the card gods  make it easy with the ♣K appearing on your left.  You now run the club suit and watch.  You know that Italian Star has either 2-4-5-2 or 1-4-6-2 to help you along. 

We arrive at the last club Italian star having thrown all diamonds and this is the ending.

When you lead the last club Cayne throws a diamond and the Italian Star throws the ♠Q.  This makes things really easy since now you don’t even care how many spades he has.  You cash the ♠A which can’t hurt and exit a heart.  (You can play the ◊A first if you like and when Cayne follows you have an exact count on the entire hand). 

If the Italian star had thrown one more diamond instead of a spade, you can play diamond, diamond, setting up your third diamond retaining the ♠A as a stopper.  I can’t think of any discards that the Cayne team can use that makes this hard for you.  ( I did look at the effect of keeping both spades but when Jeff crosses to his hand with a diamond he will have seen the ◊J and ◊10 from your hand making his ◊( a power winner).

Well done Jeff.  Bid aggressively and played well.

Awed by Colin

April 6th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

I had a very interesting day yesterday.  I played bridge for an hour or two with Colin before heading off to Medieval Times with Mark Horton and Ray to watch Claire the falconer (and our intern) and partake in all the other festivities. 

Medieval Times

Claire the Falconer having just sent her falcon off

Claire came to centre stage all alone with her falcon and sent it off on soaring flights in complete control of the large bird.   She was great.

But Colin is the real star of this Blog.  Colin reached 3NT in a straightforward auction where he opened 2NT and I gave him a choice of 3NT or 4♠ via a Jacoby auction.  The opening lead was the ♥3 (attitude) and this is what he saw

Colin played low from dummy and RHO played the ♥K.  Colin  had to decide what to do.  Do you duck or win?  Colin ducked and the ♥10 was returned which he won with the ♥A.  Colin should probably have played the ♥J at trick one in case LHO had underled the KQ?  I can’t think of a time it costs.  Colin now ran the spade suit throwing two clubs and a diamond from his hand.  LHO followed to the two spades and had to make three pitches as well.  He pitched two diamonds and then a heart.  On the last spade RHO pitched a diamond.  The AQJ of diamonds are still outstanding and no others.

Here is the ending:

Now you have several choices.  You can finesse the club, probably the most straightforward choice.  You can lead up to the diamond.  You can do what Colin did and play a club to the ♣A and then throw LHO in with a heart.  LHO had come down to three clubs queen and three hearts.

As it turned out if you do plan B, a diamond up, that will work too.  However, Plan A fails.  I have been thinking about the merits of each plan and how you can decide from the discards which works.  From the play and the lead LHO started with five or six hearts to the queen.  He has grimly held on to all his clubs while in the end throwing a heart.  From these discards (and given that he wasn’t Zia) Colin deduced that he had kept the third queen of clubs.  Since he can only have three other cards, whichever red cards he has whether all hearts or hearts and diamonds the defense cannot cash more than three red winners. 

It is interesting that once you place him with the three clubs to the queen you can fairly safely follow Plan B as well.  Let’s say you lead a diamond up.  If RHO has the ◊A then he can win but if he has a heart to return the defense still can only take three tricks.  If LHO wins the ◊A you are fairly safe since it seems impossible to me that his partner has the ♥Q the only possible entry to cash diamonds.  Eventually LHO will have to lead a club into your club holding.    The whole hand was

Very nice card reading Colin.  I wonder if Colin would have got it right if West had calmly thrown a club, a diamond and a heart or something like that. 

Bidding Over Weak Notrump

April 5th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

If you play DONT perhaps you bid 2◊ to get into the auction. Probably you pass. One thing I wouldn’t do is make a “penalty” double even if you play it shows an opening bid plus. At the table I (South) passed which forces redouble and West passed as well. Do you have an agreement about how you play the pass by fourth hand? Discussing it in the car today with Mark Horton who is visiting from England, Ray and my son Colin we decided that most people haven’t discussed this auction. Our consensus with some doubters (like me) was that a pull of the double by West should be from weakness. I argued that a pull of the double should be from shape. We also talked about the meaning of a jump bid by West in the auction: 1NT-DBL-Pass-?. Anyway, the point is that it was clear that this is something worthy of discussion with your favorite party. At our table the auction went like this: West Sylvia East Linda 1NT (10-12) Dbl pass* pass redouble* all pass You just know this is not going to be a fun hand. As it turns out you can hold it tight if you manage to cash your tricks but our defenders didn’t work it out and Sylvia made two uptricks for an embarrassing –960 on a partscore hand. The hold hand was:

In the end the morale of this story is there is really no need to bid on the East hand.  Some people just get too active over weak or very weak notrump. 

Over a very fine Indian meal Ray recounted this story which happened when we played against Paul Soloway and client in a Nationals.  One of us opened a weak notrump and Pau’s partner doubled on a balanced 13 count.  We redoubled for penalty and they had nowhere to go (except for a number).  At the end of the hand, Paul turned to his partner and said: “It’s because of people like you who double on a balanced minimum that is the reason that I play weak notrump.”

Best of the Blogs

April 3rd, 2009  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

As a blogger I realize that blogs are ethereal.  You write your blog; you hope you have said something interesting or amusing or thought provoking and then after a few days the headline disappears off the front page and a week or two later the blog goes into your archive.

This seemed sad to me and so I decided that it would be a good idea to keep focus on some of the blogs for a bit longer.  So we created the Best of the Blogs feature.  The idea is that we will pick the blogs we liked best and keep them on the front page for longer.  Every 6 weeks we will update the best of list so alas even some of the best blogs will disappear into the archives.  This first time I picked the best of list but others may do so at other times.  I tried to pick all different types of blogs.

We hope you will like this feature let us know.

Girls versus the Boys

April 1st, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Last night in our practice team game, the girls played against the boys.  Our team was Sylvia and I, Isabelle and Sondra.  We played against Paul and Jeff at our table with John Duquette. playing with Herve at the other table.  As you might expect there was a lot of action.  Things started off pretty quietly until Board 7.   I guess this deal is a bit about system and a bit about hand evaluation.  I held:

We were all vulnerable and Sylvia opened 1♥ and Paul doubled.  I think this is a decent four card constructive raise.  The diamonds looked like they may be well placed and I like the spots.  We have a bid for this 3◊ and Sylvia went on to 4♥.  At the other table my hand bid 2♥ (a constructive raise) and they played there.  As it turns out 4♥ can be defeated on a diamond lead and it does need a fair bit to make.  Here is Sylvia’s hand:

Without a diamond lead you have time to set up a club pitch for the third diamond.  Now all you need is the diamond finesse and no heart loser.   In theory this is not a game you want to be in but I like bidding aggressive games and after a heart lead with the diamond finesse onside Sylvia was in good shape.  Anyway maybe the girls were lucky on Board 7.

The next swing was not luck.  I held this rather entertaining hand with nobody vulnerable:

Sylvia opened 1♣ and I bid 1♥, not having a bid to show a red 6-6.  Not surprisingly Jeff bid 1♠ and Sylvia rebid 2♣ which tends to deny three card support (we play support doubles).  Paul cuebid 2♥.  Maybe I should bid a bunch of diamonds here.  But I decided at the time to double hearts now and bid diamonds later.  This is what happened:

Sylvia’s double of 3♠ was penalty but of course I was not interested.  Sylvia’s cuebid of 4♠ didn’t really improve things that much.  I was pretty sure she had a singleton heart by this point but I just didn’t think it was enough and signed off in the diamond game.  At the other table Isabelle overcalled 1♣ with 1♥ and my hand never bid. 

Here was their auction.

I suppose in part this auction shows the power of the four card overcall.  I am going to confess that I would have bid anyway.   Maybe not over 1♥ but later over 1NT.   I wonder what would have happened.  Let’s see

Well maybe that is a fantasy.

The whole hand was:

We had another big swing on this hand and I know what worked on the hand but I put it to you who made the better bid, the man or the woman and you have to guess which sex made which bid.  You have

The auction was slightly different at both tables but it amounted to this:

One person bid 3NT and one person bid 5◊.  Which sex bid 3NT? 

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The male bid 3NT and went down 5 on the expected spade lead, mainly because partner couldn’t get to the diamonds.  Here was partner’s hand:

Sondra ruffed a spade to hand and laying down the ◊Q pinning the ◊J.  With no diamond losers she could afford two heart losers.  She could always fall back on the club finesse if the diamond play didn’t work.

I waited a long time to make this bid

March 30th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

I had this great hand yesterday.  I had to call Ray in to watch while I made my bid.  Here is my hand white on red sitting West:

It may not look like an awesome hand but wait…. 

Partner opens 2♠ which shows 5-10 HCP and at least 5-5 in spades and a minor.  You already have a plan when your RHO bids 3♠.  With Ray looking over your shoulder you bid 6♠.  That was fun, your highest level preempt ever.  This is passed around to South who bids 7♥.  He must have some hand.  Too bad that are playing it from the wrong side for a club ruff.  This was passed out.  Before I tell you the rest of the story let’s see what happened at the other table. 

Yes, it really is the same hand.  Now what do you lead into this auction.  I don’t know if you can work it out but don’t lead a diamond or it’s curtains.  And in fact, at the other table that is exactly what happened.

Here is the whole hand and you will notice that when I bid 6♠, I bid what we could make.

After the diamond lead in 6♥ declarer took the club pitch, drew trump and conceded a club.  I made the same lead but that is not enough in 7♥.  Declarer won the diamond and took the club finesse as his only chance so he went two down.  That was 17 imps. 

At our table our system helped us a lot.  Do you like the opening 3♣ bid at the other table?  Is there anything East-West could have done?  If East passes funny things may happen.  If South opens 6♥, he will still buy the hand but probably he won’t.  Say South opens 2♣.  I am probably going to bid spades.  That is going to cause some fun and games our way.

Curse You Red Baron

March 28th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Some bidding problems for you!  Sometimes you sit down to a teen game and your opponents are unexpectedly good.  That was the case today when Hussein and Koukou played strong aggressive bridge and gave us a lot of bidding problems.  We got a few right but we also got a few wrong.  Let’s see how you would do.

Partner opens 1♣ and RHO bids 1♠.

This is a two part problem.

Part A) What do you do?

In your notes for better or worse it says that a jump shift shows a fit after interference over a minor opening.  So your choices are:

a) pass  b) 2◊ c) double d) other

Part B) Whatever you call,  the bidding continues 3♠, pass, pass now what?

This time you have

You are vulnerable against not and South on your right opens 3♣.  Do you bid?  If you pass and the auction continues 4♣ by LHO and 4♥ by partner do you bid now?

Answers next time.  Maybe I should send these problems to Marshall Miles.  Ray has been working through some Marshall Miles problems and he and I seem to be on the same wavelength (different from everyone else true) but I am quite proud of that.

The Final Quarter of the Vanderbilt Finals

March 26th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

When I put on BBO to watch the last quarter of the Vanderbilt I am pleased to see that the score is close with the Diamond team trailing the Katz team by 16 imps.  I have the TV on in the background showing the curling Canada Cup.  It is the Men’s Finals too with the Martin team, who are in my opinion the current top curling team in the world playing the Ferby team.  The Martin team has just come off winning the Canadian Championship (the Brier) and the team is noticeably tired.

It only takes one board before the action starts in the Vanderbilt.   In the open room the auction on Board 50 seems normal enough.  You are white on red holding

Here your partner opens 2◊ showing 11-15 and diamond shortness.  South doubles.  Unfortunately I don’t know what that double means.  It certainly shows cards but more than that I cannot say.  What do you do on this hand?  Partner is not likely to have a five card major (the way I play it partner can’t have a five card major but the description on BBO suggests that they could be 5-4-0-4).  There may be no better place to play this hand than diamonds.  It does look to be your hand.  I don’t know enough about their system to know what each bid means but the question is where do you want to head.   Notrump seems a possibility but maybe diamonds is as good as anywhere else.   Hampson redoubled which I assume is for penalty and he was unlucky when Sadek could sit there.  Sadek held

The whole deal was

Playing in 3◊doubled the defense took their side suit winners and Greco had to play guess diamonds to hold 2◊redoubled to down 1.  He didn’t and he was –600 for a loss of 11 imps on what looked like a “nothing” hand.   Meanwhile in the curling the Martin team unexpectedly lost a four ender to trail Ferby 4-1.  This is a lot harder to overcome than 11 imps.

Board 52 was a strange board with an unusual set of “tactical” bids.  Moss didn’t know about the 11 imp loss a few boards back.  Did he suspect his side was down and needed a lift or did he just decide that this was a good way to handle this hand?

Brad held

He was in third chair with both vulnerable and opened a strange 2NT showing a balanced 20-21.   When Fred bid Stayman he denied a major.  I guessed he figured Fred wasn’t looking for hearts.   This auction is particularly interesting because Ray tells me that he is editing a book by Marshal Miles where a very similar hand in a very similar situation is discussed and Marshal discusses the possibility of opening 2NT.  Maybe this is a classic pysche that I just don’t know about.  How did this board turn out? Gitleman bid 4NT over the 3◊ response to Stayman and Moss of course passed hoping that where there are nine tricks there are ten tricks.  The opening lead was the ◊3 and this was the whole deal:

Moss played the ◊J and Levin won his ◊Q.  As you can see there are at least ten tricks assuming a heart split (and actually eleven since the spades play for four winners) if you can only get the lead.  Levin has to find a club shift to beat the hand.  On the auction a heart shift would seem attractive but there is something weird about this deal.  Levin can see 21 HCP so Moss has at most 19.  Okay that is possible.  Partner could have seven small hearts I suppose and no other high cards.  But if that is so do you have any chance at all to beat 4NT.  Moss would have four spade tricks, at least two club tricks with the finesse and three heart tricks.  If declarer is 3-3-2-5 then he has more club tricks coming etc.  Levin took quite a while to make a play at trick two.  It was just too much to smell out and he decided to go passive with a heart return and Moss had his eleven tricks.  At the other table on a normal auction North-South reached 4♥.  Now if only Hampson could find a minor suit lead.  But alas he made a normal looking spade lead.  The board was a push.

What do you think about the 2NT opener?  Do you think there is any chance Levin could have found a club shift?

In the end the Diamond team could not generate any positive action and Katz won a closely contested final 107-80.  In curling, the Martin team fought its way back and won the match.  The funny thing was that in the end the Martin team didn’t look tired at all.