Online game

After all the games at the start of the month, the second half of February has been quiet so here are some hands from a short online match last night.

I was playing with David, another serious blogger and contributor to the BBO forums. We have played against each other in real life, but I couldn't remember playing with him before. Our opponents were worrisome: Justin, a non-serious blogger but one of the major contributors to the BBO forums and always happy to share ideas and opinions, is a multiple junior world champion and one of the young stars of the game; I don't really know Ron Smith except that I've kibitzed him a few times in the latter stages of the Spingold, a real world-class professional. Ron was actually playing in the GNT at the time, well sitting out of course, but was happy to play.

The first board was a quiet 1NT. We gained 6 IMPs on the second hand when Ron and Justin were two down in game and our team mates, Jason and Matt, played safely in the part score. Three flat boards followed and then:

♠ A6 ♥ AQJT94 ♦ ♣ Q9643

♠ J974 ♥ 7 ♦ QT4 ♣ AQ875

West	North	East	South
Ron	David	Justin	Paul
		p	p
1♠	2♥	2♠	p
p	3♣	p	3♠
p	4♠	p	5♣
p	6♣	p	p
p

West	North	East	South
Jason	Aaron	Matt	jjbrr
		p	p
1♠	2♠	X	2NT
p	3♣	p	4♣
p	5♣	p	p
p

On our auction Justin mused what would have happened if he had passed 2♥, would I also have passed? In truth I was still deciding but would probably have saved David by responding 2NT. But once he had raised I thought we had a sensible auction to the slam. A spade lead (or switch) would have forced David to guess the heart position, but on the diamond lead and trump switch it did not matter.

Then we got lucky.

♠ Qxxx ♥ x ♦ Kxxx ♣ Axxx

♠ Ax ♥ AQxxxx ♦ Ax ♣ Txx

West	North	East	South
Ron	David	Justin	Paul
			1♥
p	1♠	p	3♥
p	3NT	p	p
p

As you can see, this contract needs the hearts to be 3-3 and the king to be onside before we start. So it is less than 18%, but the cards were very friendly and we emerged with +600.

The key to the result is my 3♥ bid. It is not a thing of beauty and really needs the ♥J, but I chose the call as we open some real filthy hands and I was afraid that David would pass a simple 2♥ rebid with game having some play (David and I had played for the previous hour and there is no doubt that we open more hands than most). A very lucky 10 IMPs when they sensibly played in 2♥ making 9 tricks in the other room.

We lost a non-vulnerable game swing on the next board when we failed to find the only making game, in a 4-3 fit, and played quietly in a part score. Board 9 saw identical declarer play in a tricky 3NT contract:

♠ JTx ♥ xx ♦ KQT ♣ QTxxx

♠ xxx ♥ AKJ ♦ Jx ♣ AKJxx

West	North	East	South
Ron	David	Justin	Paul
Jason	Aaron	Matt	jjbrr
	p	p	1NT
p	3NT	p	p
p

Both Wests led a 4th best-looking diamond. There is a clear danger that the defence can take four spades and the top diamond, so you'd like to take 9 tricks without losing the lead. This means taking the heart finesse.

However, if this loses you want the defence to continue diamonds to establish a ninth trick rather than switch, so the key play is the ♦K to trick one. Then take the heart finesse before the defence realises what may be happening. Both declarers did this, the finesse lost and the West players continued diamonds hoping for a misguess when East holds the ♦J. Flat board.

A quiet final board meant a win by 28-7 IMPs.

Balancing the BIL

I'm trying to be more organised for my Monday evening sessions in the BIL. Using DealMaster Pro, I'll generate 64 hands and select 12 that seem appropriate for my theme of the week.

When selecting the hands I just choose those that appear to meet the base criteria, without over-analysing them. This way the BIL players get my first reaction too. So for my session on balancing I just made sure that there was an opening bid followed by two passes, and left it at that.

Things don't always work out as expected. On the first hand responder had a 4441 hand with three points and a singleton in partner's club suit, so I was not expecting a 1NT response. Luckily this was followed by two passes and so the hand in sixth position balanced - how great was that!

Still, hands can pop up where I am unsure of the right call. At this point I just explain the merits of the available calls and say 'expert opinion will probably be divided on this hand', hoping this satisfies them. Sometimes I am really unsure, so I'll ask on the Bridge Base Forums. The following hand was one of those:

♠ KJx ♥ KTx ♦ KQTxxx ♣ J

West	North	East	South
meshmeshaa	sceptic	tmortada	peterb370c
	1♣	p	p
?

There are three options: double, 1♦ and 2♦.

Double brings the majors into play but might lose the diamonds. 1♦ allows partner to bid a major and works well if you can double 2♣ on the next round, but you are maximum for the bid. 2♦ gets the strength and 6-card suit across, but you'd prefer a slightly better suit. Nothing is perfect.

So I asked the masses. There was significant support for both diamond bids, but little enthusiasm for the double (poll results and opinions).

I'm sure the BILlies are heartened to see that even the experts struggle for consensus with some of the problems I set.

A beer for Mike ... and well done to the Scottish youngsters

I've been commentating on BBO all weekend as the Junior Camrose (for U-25s) and Peggy Bayer (U-20s) Home Internationals took place in Manchester. As expected England won the Junior Camrose although Scotland had the opportunity to win when they had a comfortable lead after the first round robin, but unfortunately played poorly on the Sunday. However the real Scottish stars were the U20 team who won the Peggy Bayer comfortably, despite only being a team of four. So congratulations to Yvonne, Ralph, Philip and Frazer.

Making his debut for England in the Junior Camrose was Mike Bell. We played on the same team in the Berks and Bucks League of Four for a couple of seasons and played the Brighton Teams one year. He has now moved to Manchester and stopped playing with (us) old men, but perhaps we taught him something as he showed good technique on this board, and got the beer to boot:

	♠ 754 ♥ 752 ♦ AT3 ♣ Q872
♠ KJT93 ♥ A4 ♦ 87652 ♣ A		♠ AQ2 ♥ QT98 ♦ Q ♣ KJ653
	♠ 86 ♥ KJ63 ♦ KJ94 ♣ T94

West	North	East	South
Bell	Nash	Morris	Connolly
		1♣	p
1♠	p	2♠	p
4♠	p	p	p

Nash found the best lead of a trump. Mike won the queen and crossed to the ace of clubs to led a diamond towards dummy. Nash rose with the ♦A and continued trumps. But Mike won this in hand (key play) and was able to ruff a diamond with the trump ace. Now he could cash the club winner, pitching a heart, and return to the ♥A to draw the last trump and play the diamonds, preserving the beer card, to establish his ten tricks.

Well played!

Missing Queen Rule

I am just reading the February ACBL Bridge Bulletin. Marilyn Hemenway's column contains the Missing Queen Rule:

If you have a two-way finesse for a queen, finesse the opponent you like the least. If you dislike them both, play for the drop.

I've seen one team mate use this strategy successfully this season, so there must be something to it!

Missed opportunity

I played with Malcolm in the next round of the club teams championship. We finished second, following a split tie, and are handily placed in the standings.

However we'd have finished first on our own if we'd bid this hand properly, or if I played it properly despite being the worse slam.

	♠ QJTxx ♥ J9 ♦ 97 ♣ Jxxx
♠ x ♥ KQxx ♦ Qxxxx ♣ Axx		♠ AK9xx ♥ ATxx ♦ AK ♣ QT
	♠ xx ♥ xxx ♦ JTxx ♣ K8xx

West	North	East	South
Paul		Malcolm
1♦	p	1♠	p
2♦	p	3♥	p
3NT	p	6♦	p
p	p

We missed the good heart slam as Malcolm was concerned that 2♥ would not be forcing, and I 'knew' that 3♥ was a splinter bid!

The contract should make easily on the spade lead. Just ruff two spades, draw three rounds of trumps and lead hearts. South will eventually ruff in and be endplayed to lead away from her ♣K. Stupidly I threw a club rather than a spade from dummy and did it in. This gave 11 IMPs to the team that we lost the split tie to, so doubly costly.

I'll have to concentrate more next time, but it just shows that you must play to the end of the event - this was our last hand of the evening.

Gold Cup progress

We won our second round Gold Cup match comfortably yesterday. But it was a frustrating match as we opened a huge lead in the first sixteen boards and then contrived to give a few IMPs back and ended up playing all 48 boards.

The set scores were 34-1, 55-0, 11-39, 17-6, 0-22, 27-20 (144-88 IMPs). Most of the IMPs we lost were 5-level decisions when our opponents found a good sacrifice missed by Harry and Finlay: it did appear that our auctions to game were confident affairs, whereas there was a lot more doubt at the other table - of course all our games are bid confidently and we had made a couple of doubled contracts, so perhaps unsurprising that they sacrificed more.

It's likely to be another round before we are mixed with the English teams, so round 3 will mean a tough tie against one of the few remaining Scottish teams.

Pivotal problems

We had a comfortable win in the district pivot teams quarter final last night, gaining a concession before the final set when we were leading by 89-8 IMPs. Probably a good decision by the opposition as we were yet to play our strongest line up.

There were a couple of instances where the irregular partnerships were exposed in terms of (lack of) understanding.

	♠ AKJ9x ♥ AKxx ♦ xx ♣ 83
♠ xx ♥ T9xx ♦ Qxxxx ♣ J5

West	North	East	South
Dee		Paul
p	1♠	2♣	2♦
p	2♥	p	2NT
p	3NT	p	p
p

Dee led the ♣J and I followed with the ♣7 and declarer played small. Dee now switched as he thought that the ♣7 was a reverse attitude signal, whereas I was showing (standard) count.

Naturally, as the one with the pen, I am clearly right! Actually, according to our limited agreements, our carding was 'Sam-standard' which means that everything is count except on the lead of an ace or queen. This is not my preferred agreement but I'm a pretty firm believer in not changing your carding in the middle of a match. When we gave the hand to team mates at the break, unsurprisingly Alan (Dee's partner) agreed with Dee and Sam agreed with me. I'm sure we'll sort this out before the next match.

The other problem that arose was the non-definition of follow ups, just quoting a convention name. So we were all playing Asptro defence to 1NT and we had the following auction:

♠ Jxxx ♥ Kxx ♦ QJxx ♣ Kx

West	North	East	South
Paul		Alan
	1NT1	2♣2	p
?

¹ 15-17
² Hearts and another suit

The ♣ bid showed 9 cards between hearts and another suit. If the second suit was spades, then hearts would be the weaker suit.

So I bid 2♦. I expected Alan to pass if his second suit was diamonds, bid 2♠ with the majors, and bid 2♥ when holding five hearts and some number of clubs, and bid 3♣ with four hearts and longer clubs. It seems a perfect bid to me. Alan actually held four hearts and six clubs and we were slated to play in 3♣, but the opponents suddenly came to life and bid 3NT.

This is where our misunderstanding came to light, as Alan believed that 2♦ denied three card heart support. When I eventually led hearts he did not believe I held a top card and switched. It did not prevent us defeating the contract, but we could have done better.

There are many conventions on our card where we have not delved beyond the initial call. This is inevitable in a competition like this but hopefully we'll be more in tune for the semi-final.

Less success

My fifth consecutive day of playing, but this time in the more peaceful surroundings of the Berwick club. Reg was still under the weather flu-wise and we only managed 56%. Amongst all the errors there were two hands that had instructive auctions:

♠ AT3 ♥ A754 ♦ A987 ♣ 92

♠ 65 ♥ KQJT9 ♦ J ♣ AK653

West	North	East	South
Paul		Reg
		1♥	p
2♦	p	3♣	p
3♠	p	4♣	p
6♥	p	p	p

Playing fairly simple Acol we do not have a forcing raise available, so I have to start with 2♦. Reg's high reverse shows extra values and is well judged - the hand is minimal in terms of high cards but the 5-5 distribution and excellent heart suit means it is the right bid.

I should now bid a forcing 3♥, but I was concerned that it would not sound forcing so settled for 'the pitiful crutch', as fourth suit forcing was called by Reese. It worked out well when Reg showed his distribution, also implying little in the way of values in the pointed suits. At this point I have few sensible bids left so just bid what I thought would make. The clubs were 3-3 and hearts 2-2 so all thirteen tricks could be made, but we were in the right contract. No one else bid this slam.

In the final round we had this hand:

♠ AQ5 ♥ Q2 ♦ KQJ4 ♣ J743

♠ 43 ♥ A43 ♦ T632 ♣ AK85

West	North	East	South
Paul	Gerald	Reg	Marguerite
	p	p	1♥
X	p	2♥	p
3♥	p	3NT

Only two pairs bid this game and I expect that the problem was that few doubled with my hand. I thought my options were to overcall 1NT with a dodgy heart stop or double. Opposite a passed partner I thought double was probably safer. From that point the auction was pretty automatic.

I think that passing this type of hand is something that a lot of intermediates do, when you should really be competing at matchpoints. Although it does not have four spades it does have compensating values. It is this mix of values and support for the majors that are the key for making takeout doubles, the more support you have for the unbid major(s) the weaker your takeout doubles can be.

However, on this hand it should not matter as East should balance with 1NT if the opening bid is passed round. But perhaps the East players were concerned that (1) partner has not doubled and (2) NS may have a spade fit.

We still have a handy lead in the pairs competition but will need to play better if we are to retain our title.

Phoenix rising from the ashes ... not!

Another new partnership for the 49ers as I played with Bronius against Phoenix. We'd agreed a fairly simple 2/1 system but our captain failed to tell us about each other's style - he just hoped that my overbidding and Bronius' sound philosophy would cancel out!

As it happened it didn't really matter what we did. We ended the match with a small plus (+620 aggregate points) but this was our smallest score at any of the tables as we ran out winners by nearly 6,000 points. This was the biggest percentage win in the league to date. Iain and John, sitting the same direction as us, were +3,000 so some way ahead of us.

Bronius and I defended soundly and seemed to keep the opposition from bidding game a few times. On the negative side we missed a simple slam following a misunderstanding after a 2♣ opener. Aside from this a quick compare with Iain's card of the other boards suggested that our opponents were much saner than his!

There are two matches left in the league. We have an even stronger team available for the Nomads match, which is worrying as they are below Phoenix in the table. The final match of the season will be the rearranged match against Falkirk. If Falkirk win their matches in hand then the 49ers will be two points ahead in the table, which means that a losing draw or better will be required to win the league.

Winter Foursomes 2008

The start of February means the SBU Winter Foursomes in Falkirk. This is Scotland's most prestigious open competition and always has a good field, but this year it was disappointing to see only see 24 entries.

24 teams does lead to an almost perfect double elimination format. Teams should play in a triad (over the first two rounds), with each triad producing a winner left with 2 lives and two teams left with a single life. The rest of the tournament then runs automatically. Strangely this format was not used: instead, teams who lost twice in the first three rounds entered repêchages which allowed them back into the competition in Round 5. So a number of teams got three lives and an easier route to the later stages of the competition - bizarre and unfair in my opinion.

Alex and I were playing with Harry and Finlay. We were in the second bank of seeds (7-12) and played McKAY in the first round. We won this match by 73-3 IMPs - only conceding three single IMP swings in the sixteen boards was a good start. In fact all 11 seeds won their first match (SENIOR being absent due to travel delays) so the seeding committee did a good job.

In the second round we play McGOWAN, the top seed in our section. Liz's team mates were Roy and David, my Scottish Cup captain and partner respectively, so it was good to beat them in a close match by 40-28 IMPs. Both declarers went down in 6♦ on this hand:

Dealer N Vul - Scoring Imp Lead ♣J	♠ AQJT92 ♥ A ♦ A643 ♣ Q4
♠ 7653 ♥ J652 ♦ 5 ♣ JT87		♠ K84 ♥ T87 ♦ QT97 ♣ K92
	♠ ♥ KQ943 ♦ KJ82 ♣ A653

West	North	East	South
Alex	Liz	Paul	John
	1♠	p	2♥
p	2♠	p	3♦
p	4♦	p	5♦
p	6♦	p	p
p

I'm not sure the auction is correct but John played the hand well but was left with a guess of my distribution near the end. Fortunately for us he got it wrong (but it was a true guess). I didn't hear how Finlay played it and I didn't hear of anyone who made the contract by legitimate means.

At this point there are six unbeaten teams. Another feature of the bizarre format is that [b]four[/b] unbeaten teams were needed at the end of round three, so there would be three matches and the smallest losers would be classified as unbeaten too!

We played GERRARD. We played his team mates, Ian and Mike, at the same stage last year and it was good to get another victory over them, this time by 30-16 IMPs. Nine of the conceded IMPs came when Alex doubled their game contract only to find it making an overtrick - perhaps I did not have as much as I could have for my overcall - but when he did the same in the second set we gained 12 IMPs.

As it happened, we would get to play SANDERS in round 4. They had lost by 1 IMP in the previous round but were still considered to be 'unbeaten'. I don't have the scorecard for this match but we lost reasonably comfortably to drop into the 'once defeated' pool.

Round 5 saw us playing PUNCH, regular team mates and partners of mine, Alan, Dee, Sam and Tim. We won a scrappy match by 35-28 IMPs that got us in the quarter finals.

In the quarter final we played DE BOTTON over 24 boards. Janet's team had lost two lives early in the tournament and were the beneficiary of the repêchage format. We were 22-41 IMPS down at the half and lost another 5 IMPs in the remaining boards, so we exited the principal event.

Subsequently DE BOTTON would beat SANDERS confortably in the final. So the team that had lost two lives beat the 'unbeaten' team who had already lost a match. We had the crumb of comfort that we lost our lives to the finalists, the same as last year.

This meant that we played in the consolation final on Sunday. Following Harry's instructions we did better than last year and won the event comfortably.

The Winter Foursomes remains the best weekend of bridge in the SBU calendar. Although almost all the top players are there, there are a handful of good English teams and all it really needs is a few more teams to take the entry up to 32 teams. Hopefully we'll see more there next year.

February Partnership Quiz

I've decided to make this a monthly feature of the blog. As in the first quiz there are no correct answers and all that matters is that you agree with your partner.

This month is a simple test - is the final bid of the auction forcing or not? If non-forcing, is it invitational or sign off.

Assume all problems occur in teams play.

Hand 1

West	North	East	South
		1♦	1♠
2♥

Hand 2

West	North	East	South
	1♥	1♠	p
2♦

Hand 3

West	North	East	South
		1♥	p
2♦	p	3♦	p
3♥

Hand 4

West	North	East	South
		1♠	p
2♥	p	3♥	p
3♠

Hand 5

West	North	East	South
			1♣
X	p	2♣	p
2♥	p	2♠	p
3♠

Hand 6

West	North	East	South
			4♣
4NT

Hand 7

West	North	East	South
		1♥	1NT
2♠

Hand 8

West	North	East	South
	1NT	X	2♦
p