Time for protectionism?

The USA has always been one of the strongholds of the bridge world. It has often been said that its major events, Vanderbilt, Spingold and Reisenger, are tougher to win than the World Championships. I'm not certain that this is actually true, but the strength in depth in these competitions nowadays is staggering.

It seems that there has always been a professional scene in American bridge. Certainly winners of the Spingold since the mid-seventies seem to have a recognisable sponsor playing with world-class players. In those days, and perhaps up to the mid-nineties, the top teams would have a cakewalk to the quarter-finals when the real event would start.

But this is no longer true. Nowadays the top teams are tested in the round of 64 (and, occasionally, in the round of 107) and at every subsequent stage. The increased number of sponsors has brought an influx of (cheaper) foreign talent and these events have world-class players in most of the teams.

Surely this can only be good for the development of American bridge?

The top teams get exposed to the methods and style of the foreigners that they will subsequently have to play at the World Championships. Easier to play people when you've played against them before. With system innovation completely stagnated by regulation, it provides an important opportunity to see how bidding is developing in the rest of the world.

However I imagine that many feel that it is now getting out of control. Let's look at the final eight teams in the New Orleans Spingold. There are six US sponsors playing with a US partner, but only three professional pairs who are eligible for the US trials (9 pairs). There are four Italian pro pairs, three Bulgarian, two French, two Norwegian, one Swedish and one Egyptian (13 pairs). The final pair is a French sponsor.

How is this helping US bridge? The foreigners are dominating the event but at least the three US pro pairs are now in the semifinals. They will be rewarded handsomely in the US trials as they are making hay with important seeding points while the rest struggle. But, and perhaps an important point, the foreigners are even having a significant impact on the US trials as they beat the top US teams, depriving them of seeding points and opening up the trials.

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. I still feel it is important for the US players to play the best in the world. The damage, if there is any, to the US team selection process is far less than that done by the desire of sponsors to play for the US team and the desire of the professional community to be paid for representing their country. I'm sure at least Judy will agree with this!

So I hope that there is no knee-jerk reaction as the US teams fail to dominate these events.

You can follow the semifinals and final of the Spingold on Bridge Base Online today and tomorrow (schedule, vugraph).

To cue or not to cue

I played with Mike, the current leader, in the Russell Cup last night. He was hoping for a big bounce in my performance but, although we managed to replace his lowest counting score, it will probably not figure in his final score.

When we played in the same team at the Spring Fours, there was discussion about how mandatory it is to cue bid - are you permitted to skip a cue bid if you feel that your hand has not improved during the auction? I took this view last night but with hindsight I think I was wrong -

I was pretty sure that Mike was void in clubs and decided that my hand was not worth a diamond cue bid (given that I had bid four spades at unfavourable vulnerability). But this was wrong as Mike could have been considerably stronger with two or three small diamonds. So we only scored 5/22.

Mike had an interesting choice of calls on board one:

We were playing 4-card majors and a mini 1NT in this position, so Mike's choices were:

• 2♦ - probably not near the top of list especially at matchpoints
• 1NT - shows 12-16 points and protects the club honours, but if partner has four spades then the opponents have at least eight hearts between them and a heart lead looks like it would be unwelcome
• 2♠ - as noted above, when partner has four spades then notrump may not be best. And when he has five spades this may be a winner

What is your choice?

Like a bouncing ball

Of course when a ball reaches the top of the bounce, gravity takes over. That was the feeling last night as I played with Diana and seemed to be entering bottom score after bottom score into the bridgepad.

Things started badly, although not necessarily all our fault, and continued that way. Our zero scores did improve a little but insufficient for us to break average on the night.

The evening did feature an unusually high number of distributional deals. Surprisingly only half the field bid a small slam and no-one the grand on this hand:

The first decision for North is after one heart - one spade, do you rebid two clubs or three clubs? Although three clubs gets across the distributional power of the hand, it does crowd the auction and partner may expect more in the way of high cards. Especially at matchpoints you can imagine the auction finishing in a notrump slam on a complete misfit.

With so few high-card points there is no danger of the auction finishing at two clubs, so I expect most followed with this. South now has the easiest 3NT call and North will continue with four clubs.

Now South is under the spotlight! The four clubs bid is not necessarily slam going. North could hold a similar hand without the king of hearts for instance. Would North bid like this with a weaker 6-5 hand? Probably not ... aiming for five clubs instead of three notrumps is rarely a good matchpoint strategy.

So I think South should be progressive and cue bid four spades. Even if, like most, you cue bid first and second round controls equally, when partner clearly has a massive distributional hand it is aces that matter, not kings, in the other suits. North now has the information to bid 5NT, grand slam force, and this will get you to the grand slam. Perhaps a little optimistic in a matchpoint game, but not unreasonable.

A more mundane board, but of course equally important at matchpoints, was board 14. It demonstrated well why you must compete.

My two spade bid is not a call of beauty, but does show how important I believe it is not to allow the opponents to play in one notrump at love all. Anything to disturb them is good. Diana's two notrump bid was well judged, not making the mistake of thinking that I had a good hand.

Diana made eight tricks for +120 and we scored 15/22 matchpoints. If I had passed one notrump, then Dee would make five tricks, +100 for us, and that would have been worth 5/22 matchpoints. One imp at teams play, half a top at matchpoints. Just sayin' © Memphis MOJO.

Back on top

Back to Edinburgh for the next round of the Russell Cup. I was playing with Sheila and we managed to win with 60% despite a roller-coaster ride that consisted of many tops and bottoms and few average boards.

One of the poor scores came when Harry and Sheila started playing tippy toe in the auction with powerful hands:



Although both Sheila and I might have done more, it was Harry's conservatism (and good judgement) that was the real difference from other tables and led us to score just 6/22 matchpoints.

Another of our poor scores occurred when I had the following hand:



What do you think double is here? Clearly if it is takeout then you have an easy call. But a common arrangement, and one that I have with Alex, is that double is penalty when we have passed out a contract. So I could have passed and see if Sheila wanted to compete, but decided to bid three diamonds instead - now Sheila thought I had a more powerful hand and naturally bid game holding king to four hearts and four diamonds to the ace. A takeout double would have got us to three hearts, passing would probably have left them in three clubs. Few played higher than two hearts so Jake and Anna had done well to create the problem for us.

Summer in the country

Last weekend was the Summer Congress at Peebles. I don't normally play this as July is really Summer Nationals in the US, but this year I am going to Philadelphia in October instead and so it was 'swapped' with the Autumn congress.

I'd agree to play with Bill for the event, at the time a 'Selectors' pair, teaming up with David and Liz when appropriate. Spending most of the bridge year in Montpellier means that Bill is steeped in Standard French (aka SEF). Spending most of my bridge year bidding like a junior (although, to be fair, I've been doing well in the SBU News and Australian bidding challenges) is not really a good mix with SEF and so I tried to play my most conservative game.

Even so I felt that there was frequently a clear difference between the hand that Bill expected from my bidding and the hand that was put down as dummy. But Bill was very good and there was only ever a raised eyebrow.

We did okay in the pairs qualifying, winning our section in both the qualifier and semifinal. Unfortunately the final proved a game too far and we were below average. In the teams, we had no chance in the qualifying stage - we did not overbid holding AKQ8xxx opposite a void, but lost 13 imps when the suit broke 3-3 to let the grand slam make; Liz and David also failed to bid and make a number of non-making games that were needed to generate the points necessary to qualify, although it must be said that most of these contracts would have been two down with good defence and one down with a bad defence. Chatting to some of the qualifiers and it seemed that they were playing different boards!

Bill and I were poor in the consolation final and we missed out on third place by a handful of victory points. Apologies to Liz and David as they had a good card.

And did I mention my new style? Luckily I was not dummy, but finding a one heart overcall holding ♠xxxx ♥AJ10x ♦- ♣xxxxx when RHO opened one diamond was perhaps a little less than conservative even if it was favourable vulnerability opposite a passed partner. Even though it helped prevent them from bidding a slam it is clearly not something they do in the south of France.

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet !