The Long Weekend

This weekend sees the EBU Spring Foursomes at Stratford-upon-Avon, simply the toughest open competition in the UK calendar. This year there will be 51 teams competing, down six teams from last year but a big increase in the number of Scottish teams.

They are:

• (#7) B Teltscher (Willie Coyle, John Matheson, David Gold, Tom Townsend, Victor Silverstone, Bernard Teltscher)
• (#18) Spears (Derek Diamond, John Murdoch, Derek Sanders & Brian Spears)
• (#22) Ash (Mike Ash, Alex Gipson, Paul Gipson & Alan Goodman)
• (-) Smith (Roy Bennett, Jim Hay, Finlay Marshall & Harry Smith)
• (-) Porro (Jenny Cooper, Moira McGregor, Adrian Orlowski & Laura Porro)
• (-) St. Clair (Malcolm Copley, Fiona Greenwood, Dee Harley & Anna St. Clair)

The seeding matters little in the event. Although the 'top' 32 teams are seeded, the EBU uses Gold Points for English players and guesses for foreigners. With a number of Scottish internationals, junior internationals from many countries and English Premier League pairs in the non-seeded teams, there is no such thing as an easy draw at any point in the event.

You can follow the event as it unfolds on the EBU web site. The semifinals and final are next Tuesday and will broadcast on BBO.

Photo finish

We narrowly failed to win the club pairs last night. We did not have a counting score and Brian and George overtook us, although it was a scrape as they only had two matchpoints to spare. Overall the difference is less than 3 matchpoints over our best six evenings, a really close finish but congratulations to Brian and George on retaining their title.

With every so tight almost every board in the season could have changed the result. One example last night was a slam hand, where Gary and Sandy did us no favours:



Gary's decision to bid the slam in notrump rather than spades was significant, unsurprisingly at matchpoints. Making twelve tricks was only worth 5/16 matchpoints for us, whereas the spade slam would have been 11/16 for us. Of course we were lucky to get as many as points as we did - we defended accurately, helped by the opening diamond bid, but two declarers made all the tricks.

So the pairs season at the club is done for us. Next week is the final round of the teams, where we need to win and hope that Brian, George, Reg and Malcolm fail to come second. Another close competition.

First timers

I got a late pass for Tuesday night and I was lucky to find that Adrian was not only available, but transportation could be easily arranged too.

It was my first night at the Russell Cup this season and the first time we'd played together, so it was a little surprising to find that we came first with 58%. I guess the most surprised would have been Liz, after we had shown contempt for her weak 1NT and demonstrated our superior modern methods over it while bidding a 24-point slam that went three down. But we did come back on the next board:



My 2♥ bid showed less than invitational values, but Adrian judged that he did have a lot of working values and essayed a raise making it easy for me to bid the game. With a friendly lie of the cards you can even make slam!

I think the hand is more difficult for the weak notrumpers. I think it is probably best to use Stayman and raise if you find a 9-card fit, otherwise settle at the two-level. I know Sam just bid 4♦ to show the majors over an 11-14 1NT, but I think that is too much at matchpoints.

It will be a few weeks before I can Russell again, but hopefully then there will be a summer-long source of material for me. In the meantime Adrian and I will be opponents next at the EBU Spring Foursomes.

Another simple hand

More than one person has asked me about this hand from the Hunter Cup. At unfavourable vulnerability your right-hand opponent opens 3♥ and it is your call holding

♠ AK765
♥ K10
♦ AJ
♣ K982

Bidding over pre-empts is often more an art rather than a science. I normally assume partner holds a random 6 or 7 point hand when bidding, which means that this hand is too strong for 3♠ as partner will pass when holding aforesaid random 6 or 7 point hand.

However you also have to consider your action when partner responds to the double. If partner bids a simple 3♠, do you raise? Here I think you must, as you are working on the expectation of bidding game (especially in a major). Partner's 3♠ call could be anything from 0 to a flat 9 points, so there is no guarantee that this will be good, but at IMPs they pay a bonus for bidding game.

If partner responds 4♦, do you pass or bid on? The answer to this is another question - what does (3♥) 4♠ show? As we know, you do not pre-empt over a pre-empt, so a jump to 4♠ over 3♥ should show a strong 1-suited hand, something akin to an Acol Two bid in spades. This means that you do not need to double with a strong 1-suited hand, so a conversion from 4♦ to 4♠ does not show a strong 1-suited hand. Ergo, a conversion to 4♠ shows 5+ spades, a strong hand, and suggests an alternative contract. You would expect partner to bid 5♦ (or 5♣) with spade shortage or with extreme diamond length. This hand could be the prototype for doubling and then bidding 4♠ over a 4♦ response.

All my Scottish readers will know this, as John Matheson has written extensively about strong flexible doubles in the SBU News. You did all read it, didn't you?

Lady Milne Trophy

It's the Lady Milne Trophy this weekend, the Home International Series for Women's Teams, being held in Manchester, England.

Good luck to the Scotland team who are defending the Trophy:

• Sheila Adamson and Anne Symons
• Veronica Guy and Sam Punch
• Maida Grant and Sheila MacDonald
• NPC: Brian Short

Details of the event and the other teams can be found on the BGB site.

Naturally you can follow all the events on Bridge Base Online (vugraph schedule). For the first time they are showing all six tables on BBO and everyone will be able to support their country. Or if your country is not competing, then just support Scotland!

Update from Sheila A:  Volcano delays play ... as the Pompeii cricket team so often had to announce.

Lady Milne won't start until Saturday morning because the Irish teams can't fly through volcanic ash to arrive in time. So don't go looking for us on BBO tonight.

Simple stuff

There was a hand at the club last night that our opponent was unsure how to bid. As it is a very simple and common hand, I thought it an interesting topic.

You are playing Acol with a weak 1NT (12-14) and hold:
♠ A102
♥ Q7642
♦ K9
♣ A75

What do you open?

The key principle when opening the bidding is to plan your rebid. I think almost everyone at the club will open this hand 1♥ with the idea of rebidding 2♥ if partner responds in a minor. The problem is what are you going to rebid if partner responds 1♠?

The first option is 2♥ - this is not a call of beauty with such an anaemic heart suit, especially when it is only five cards. Ideally you would like to have six hearts for such a space-consuming rebid and my non-Acol readers will probably not understand how you can bid it with only five. I don't really understand it either so would not be top of my list of choices.

A second option is to raise spades. The lack of a fourth spade is troublesome but would be far more acceptable if you had a singleton elsewhere or perhaps a weak doubleton. But here our doubleton is strong and we'd prefer to try and protect it.

A third option is to rebid 2♣. Again partner will expect a 4-card suit for this bid, but at least it does imply a fifth heart. It is also a fairly safe bid, as partners get far less excited when they find a minor fit and will generally explore notrumps before leaping to the 5-level. And if partner is interested in slam, then we have good cards for this.

So, in a traditional environment I would respond 2♣ expecting things to work out just fine.

There are two other treatments that people can consider.

It is become more popular to open 1NT with a 5-card major. Here the 5-card suit is weak and getting across the balanced nature of the hand, together with the immediate definition of its strength, in a single bid looks attractive. Just because you occasionally open 1NT with a 5-card major does not mean that you should change my response structure - occasionally you will miss a 5-3 fit but the opponents will sometimes lead your 5-card suit. It is not sufficient reason to play Puppet Stayman or the like.

Finally, I looked at Eric Crowhurst's Precision Bidding in Acol. His recommendation for this type of hand is to use a more artificial approach. He recommends playing the 1NT rebid as showing 12-16 points, so that you can rebid 1NT with a weak 1NT hand and a 5-card heart suit. Clearly this solves the problem, but it does mean that you have to play the Crowhurst 2♣ convention, which asks partner about range and major suits over the 1NT rebid. The 12-16 1NT rebid does mean that they are many more follow-up sequences to discuss, for example, what do 1♥-1♠-1NT-3♣ and 1♥-1♠-1NT-2♣-2♦-3♣ show?

If you like the more convention approach then Crowhurst may be the answer for you. But remember to discuss all the sequences and what happens in competition.

Me? I'll just keep opening these hands 1NT.

Setting up a grand finale

The penultimate round of the club pairs championship was a frustrating affair for many. Arguably the four best pairs were all sitting in the same direction but the cards ran consistently for the opponents. For the majority of the evening we just there and waited to see what brilliances or disasters they would perpetrate and take the score we were given.

At the end of the day Brian and George were the major beneficiaries and closed the gap on us to less than 1%. As their lowest counting score is 56.5% and ours is 60%, they have a good chance of overtaking us in the final round in two weeks time.

A day in the sun

Actually it was a glorious sunny day and I spent it indoors at the bridge table. A few comments were made by some of the Hunter Cup participants but it was not a problem for me as I'd left LotG playing in the garden and was partnering Fiona.

We had a sound card but not sufficient to make the prizes. Most of the points we seemed to lose were on opening leads, which is fairly normal but a reflection that we did seem to bid and defend reasonably well in general. However one of the missed opportunities was when I failed to bid this slam:



I can make another try but Fiona is never co-operating especially as her response is a stretch. Perhaps it was easier at those tables where the opponents competed in spades?

Over par

Our final match and the opportunity for Dundas, our opponents, to win the league. Multiple changes of date worked to their advantage as we only had one regular pair available, but we gave them a scare by being level at half-time. But they pulled away in the second half to win comfortably.

David and I played at table 2 against Mike and Nigel. In the end we were -1500 below par on the boards, most of the difference being reflected in two late boards: an -800 penalty, when I could have left them in 1NT-X and probably lose just -380 (I still think it was unfortunate to run to my 5-card suit and find that they had four natural trump tricks even though we were in a 5-2 fit); and a misplayed game. Added to this was a poor defensive effort from me that resolved a guess for Nigel in a game contract.

We did have some good boards, but from a par perspective these only compensated for not bidding two unbiddable game contracts - par can be a tough target when you have a balanced 13 points opposite a balanced 8 points, they open a strong 1NT and you need the weaker hand to play 3NT!

It is interesting to use par as a performance metric. I often use it when analysing the performance of the Scottish international teams, in combination with cross-imping and actual results. When you are looking at a long tournament it helps identify 'interesting' boards that should be scrutinised.

For this match the actual par score was N/S -430. Looking at the hands I judge that N/S -1000 was a more realistic target. I believe most of the Merchiston pairs were a similar distance from this, with Carolyn and Gordon performing best.

So the end of a long season, finishing mid-table with four win and five losses. Our strongest team will give any a good run, but our irregular partnerships seem to struggle. Naturally all the teams find this but our small squad  seems to have found it more difficult this year. So if a couple of pairs wish to transfer ...

Defence is rarely easy

A losing draw in the ICL has left us struggling to qualify for the knockout stages. We are 10 VPs from a qualifying spot and we still have to play the runaway leaders. Alex and I misplayed a game each last night and then there was this defensive problem:



(Click Next to see the lead)

What signal do you give here?

Do you play attitude here? If so, does a discouraging signal strongly suggest switching?

Do you just show count here? If so, do you use honours to show count?

Or do you play the ♣Q to deny the king of clubs? And does this mildly or strongly suggest a switch?

I don't think there is a right answer in this case, but I know that your partnership should know what the signal you give really means.

Not the final but it's all over

It was the penultimate round of the club teams championship and we needed to win. Unfortunately we only managed to scrape above average and so Reg, Malcolm, George and Brian will win the Scott Cup. We, LotG, Ros, Diana and I, will finish second.

The above was utter rubbish, as the physicist on the team has pointed out to the mathematician. We can still capture the trophy if we win the last round and Reg's team does not finish second - game on!

Like most clubs nowadays we use computer-dealt boards and hand records are provided. These show the contracts that can be made double-dummy although it seems that the natural reaction of most is "I could have made that" when they see the computer would have done.

The question that they should ask is, "Should I have made that?". One example came up last night:


(Click Next to see the first three tricks)

So you are in dummy and the threat of a diamond ruff has disappeared. How do you play the heart suit for one loser?

I think most will see that there are two lines: we can play to the ♥K or we can finesse by playing to the ♥10. How do you decide? Let's compare when the two lines win and lose.

We can ignore all 5-0 breaks as we always lose two tricks. Similarly most 4-1 breaks will defeat the contract unless there is a singleton jack. So we should focus on the 3-2 breaks - it is good technique to do the most likely breaks first.

Playing the ♥K on the first round will win whenever the ♥J is doubleton. It will lose when the jack is trebleton (this presumes that you continue with the ♥Q if the king wins the first round, which is as good as anything). As there is more chance of the jack being in a three-card holding rather than a 2-card holding, this line is less than 50%. But it will gain in the one case of the 4-1 breaks when the singleton jack is offside, but this is a relatively small chance.

Clearly playing to the ♥10 is basically a 50:50 chance. Either East holds the jack or not. So the best line is to play small to the ♥10.

So all the top players will be going down on this hand as that is not the winning line. But the computer is not stupid. It can see all four hands and knows the 100% line and so the hand record shows that you can make 4♥.

That computer would be an awesome opponent!