A hop across the pond

Observant readers will have noticed that we did not play in the ACBL Summer Nationals this year. This is because we are off to Philadelphia this weekend to play in the World Bridge Series. As described by the WBF, "Up to 100 nations are ex­pected to participate in the world series, represented by thousands of the world’s best play­ers competing for world titles in many categories."

All the events are transnational and are open to all eligible players - no qualification required. The main event for us is the World Open Knockout Teams, known as the Rosenblum. It starts on Tuesday with three days of round robin play to reduce the field to 64 teams for the knockout stages. We are playing with most of our Washington team - Alex, Sam, Tim, Alan and Mike - our own set of transnationals with Scottish, English and Welsh representation, collectively known as the British Lions.

Sam and Tim are flying out first to play in the Mixed Pairs. Good luck to them and the other Scottish pairs - Liz, David, Dee and Anna.

You can follow the progress of everyone on the WBF website (results).

There are a fair number of British players going, including the England U20 team for the World Youth event, and I'm sure we'll also meet up with many of our friends from previous US trips. Bloggers will also be there, some organising (Anna) and others playing (Memphis Mojo, Ron Klinger, Jenn and Bob, the bridgewinners crowd). The Bridge Base Forums will also be well represented.

I'll try to keep a commentary going through the two-week event.

Gold Cup 2011

By my calculation there are 195 teams entered in the 2011 Gold Cup, the same number as entered this year's event. Of course this year's event is still only at the quarter-final stage as we plan round one, with the semifinals and final at the Gold Cup Congress in Peebles in December.

There are eighteen Scottish teams entered. I have not seen the teams list but it is likely that at least one Scottish pair is playing with an English team. Brian Short's team is the only Scottish seed, the only benefit at this stage being a guaranteed bye into the second round.

Scottish matches in the first round are:

John Dick vs Cliff Gillis
Ying Piper vs Pam Leith
Sam Punch vs David Weir
Harry Smith vs Cathy Ferguson
Anna St Clair vs Paul Gipson

The following have received byes:

Mike Ash
Malcolm Copley
Maida Grant
Mike McGinley
Douglas Piper
David Shenkin
Brian SHORT
Iain Sime

With thirteen teams going through to Round 2, someone will be playing a North-West or North-East team and probably face a long winter trek. Not that all of the Scottish journeys are short!

English Premier League - part two

The second weekend of the Premier League started with the 60-board match against Fegarty. It seemed to me that this match was unwinnable. If we had all played decent bridge then I think we'd have lost by 30 or 40 imps, but when we didn't the defeat was much larger. The Fegarty team took a lot of views that were not taken at other table, and seemed anti-percentage, but it was a set of hands that worked out extremely well to do this. Even their errors and system mistakes did not seem costly. Not the case for us of course. But, to be fair, they also did some good things and fully deserved their win.

We came out around -25 on the butler, which seemed about right. However even where the butler reflected our performance, this was definitely more by luck than design. Seeing where the butler imps came and went bore little relation to my assessment of our play.

The butler was even more skewed for the first set of the Pryor match on Sunday. Alex and I had had one disaster and I was expecting to be down 10-15 imps. But Steve and Chris had a good card and we were 23 imps up. Unsurprisingly this meant that Steve and Chris were -2 on the butler and we were about +25! The fact that the English Girls team lost 110 imps on the set probably did not help. And perhaps what I regarded as normal bridge was slightly more positive for us. But it does show what a poor guide the butler remains in this division.

For the rest of the match we all seemed quite solid with their only scoring really due to bidding poor contracts and finding that they made, and we emerged with a solid win.

The weekend means that the match against Cope in November remains very important. Fegarty may seem clear but has Dhondy, Cope and Pryor to play, so the division is still wide open.

For a change from all the bidding problems, take my seat and try to play these hands (some hands rotated for convenience, spot cards often approximate but irrelevant).

Now a slam problem:

And finally a tough game:

A glacial start

First night of the club's Pairs Championship and we barely made it out of the blocks. Luckily there are ten evenings with your best six to count, so plenty of time to make up the lost ground.

We seemed to be able to do little right. The same could be said for some of our opponents, but their wrongs were worth more points more of the time. And some of our opponents played well against us, which is good to see taking a wider perspective but does little for our score.

It was only the third board when Alan and Colin showed that it was not going to be our night.



The ten of hearts suggested that Alan held doubleton honour, so I decided to rise with the ace of hearts to block the suit. Alan did well to unblock the queen. When I took the losing club finesse, Colin found the diamond switch to permit a heart through my jack and we went four down. No need for the scorers to worry about that one.

Hand evaluation is a key part of the game and I thought LotG did better than most on this hand.



Key to bidding the slam was the three diamonds rebid. Only thirteen points but the hand is very powerful if you have a fit and, even if slam is not in the picture, you probably want to be in three notrump if partner has a modicum of values. A club lead would have been most testing, but LotG found the king of spades to make all the tricks.

It'll be a couple of months before the next round.

Borderers vs Edinburgh

September in the borders and the traditional start of the season as the Border clubs take on Edinburgh. Following last year's thrashing it was decided to bring in some handicapping. This only seems fair as Berwick are the only club with a team in the second division of the East District League and most of the players are from divisions four and five. Meanwhile Edinburgh has internationals at table four and other first division players at table five!

The handicaps are based on the district knockout but it was not sufficient to prevent another big defeat for the locals. The swingy set of hands, some quite difficult, would always favour the stronger team. Edinburgh played consistently well and fully deserved their win. I hope that we stick with the current handicap formula for at least another year, while encouraging Edinburgh to weaken their team!

I played with LotG against Fiona and George at table 2. We had the worst aggregate, -4090, of any table. In fact there was one other East-West pair with -3000 but most were around -1500. Some East-West pairs, only Edinburgh ones of course, were actually +1200.

At the time it seemed we had played a fairly average game, so we were a little surprised at the result. Looking at the hands again I think the 'achievable' par score for the evening was EW -3110, so we were down but not by a lot.

LotG and I had one disaster when we both bid aggressively to game and got punished by some bad breaks. However this was largely offset by a slam disaster for our opponents. In the end the main difference between us and 'par' was that we misdefended a part score and Fiona and George bid a fair slam that could not be beaten: the slam was no better than 50% (it needed the ace of dummy's first bid suit onside) and a quick simulation suggests it only makes around 40% of the time - however it does have the upside that it has more play if the defence do not find the best lead. On this occasion the ace was onside.

A number of EW pairs improved their score by bidding a slam on these cards:



I guess most opened the East hand with a weak one notrump and West just forced to slam, either with three clubs (slam try) or four clubs (Gerber). This is a very poor slam as it always requires the ace of hearts onside whatever the lead. I bet most of the West players did not know how good the slam was either and could easily have been losing the first two tricks in one of the majors. But it was their lucky day while we played safely in three notrump.

I thought this was the most difficult hand to play:



What do you lead to trick three?

As always it was an enjoyable evening. I hope we can all do better next year!

English Premier League

The end of summer leads into the start of the English Premier League. The other pair from last year decided to split, but one is playing with a new partner (Chris and Steve) and we added Nick and Alan who led the butler last year. Although we are a team of six we are playing as teams of four over the first two weekends.

There are eight teams in the second division. Six of these teams are playing for promotion and the other two are playing primarily for experience - they may cause a surprise, but the English Girls team and Boys U20 team are unlikely to be promotion contenders although the league does provide them with valuable experience that the Scottish Juniors would probably die for.

Each match is played over 60 boards, in three segments, playing with screens. It is these long segments, playing under pressure, that Alex and I love and tend to play our best bridge. Momentum can ebb and flow and coping with the highs and lows throughout a segment is something that you can only learn by experience. This is why I feel the junior teams will struggle this year, but they will benefit enormously and certainly be more competitive in the future.

Our first match was against SHILLITOE. Two of their team, captain Alan and DanMac, played with us last season. Not a grudge match for us, but certainly some kudos at stake between some of the playing and non-playing participants.

We were down after the first set, almost solely due to their bidding of an excellent grand slam on meagre values - Alan and Andrew were the only pair to bid it in the second division and only two pairs bid in the first: additionally even the small slam was only bid at four of the sixteen tables (including team mates Nick and Alan).

We pulled back most of the deficit in the second set and but for a stupid bid by me we'd have been ahead. I thought the bridge was pretty careless by both teams in this set, probably the worst of the weekend, so happy to have the opportunity of another set to settle the match.

In the final set it appeared that our team could do little wrong and SHILLITOE little right. We finished with a comfortable 23-7 VP win.

On the second day we faced DHONDY. They were relegated last season and would be the favourites to bounce back up, so we knew that we'd be in for a tough match. The first set was pretty much one-way traffic in our direction and we finished 36 imps up. They pulled sixteen imps back in the second set, mainly due to a slam that they bid and made with a trump suit of AQ94 opposite 8632.

In the final set I forgot the system (our only 'forget' of the weekend) at the wrong time and then we bid a thin slam that failed. These were our major contributions to the final result of a 14-16 VP loss in a match that was generally played to a good standard.

Overall I thought Alex and I played well over the weekend. We made five unforced errors, too many for my liking but perhaps not too bad in context. Interestingly it was only when I went over all the boards that I saw how many good things we did. Some of these were hidden by good play at the other table, some hidden by bad play at the other table, and some missed because they did not result in a good score (not bidding a 17% game is a good thing, even if it makes!).

Currently we are a few imps below average on the butler, but we have been on the wrong side of many poor making games and slams and it really does not reflect our actual performance. Conversely Alan and Nick had a good weekend on the butler, as they did last year - I'm sure they feel that it does reflect performance!

Teamwise I think it was a good start. We are second in the table having played two of the other teams in contention for promotion. The next weekend is in Manchester and again we'll play two tough teams. It will go a long way to deciding who are the real promotion contenders.

All the results are available on the EBU web site.

The end of summer

The weather has turned distinctly autumnal and the Russell Cup has finished, so the dark days of winter are just a few weeks away!

For the last round of the Russell I was playing with Julia. Despite a couple of early gaffs we played reasonably well but it proved to be an evening where doing the right thing still did not get you a good score and we finished just below average.

For example, we scored 9/18 on board 27 when I expected to do better:



Although our auction was not necessarily full of confidence, we found the optimum spot when East held the ace of hearts. Eleven tricks were the limit, but with one pair doubling five diamonds, another losing -500 in five hearts doubled (in bizarre, unrepeatable circumstances but Harry was not to blame!) and one pair chancing their arm in four (yes, four) notrump and finding the jack of clubs dropping, it was just another boring average for us.

What do you think of my one spade opening? At least three players, possibly four, thought that this hand represented a weak two bid in spades. I'd almost call that a psyche, being a gross misrepresentation of their hand!

Board 24 had a decision at trick two:



There is actually a trick one decision too, but it looks normal to win the ace of spades. It is possible that partner has led from four spades to the king and queen, otherwise it looks like it is from three to an honour. She did not lead the unbid suit. Is this an indication that she may have four clubs and hold a stop, declarer having just a singleton? If this is the case then a heart switch attempting to remove dummy's entry looks right.

At imps, I think it is probably right to switch to a heart. But at matchpoints you may not win another trick if the clubs come in and declarer can finesse the diamonds. So there is an option of returning a spade so that you take your tricks. What do you think?

Julia and I failed to register the 90% score that would have taken us into the leading two positions of the Russell Cup. I have not see the final results but I think that Les Steel won the Russell Cup, or more precisely the money, from Dave Walker by the narrowest of margins. It seems that Dave needed to score a single matchpoint more last night to win. Reminiscent of my win in 2007 when I beat Les by just two matchpoints. I hope that my calculations are correct and he came out on the right side this time!

Update: Oh dear! Iain informs me that there was one scoring (bridgemate entry) error last night and the change has given Dave two more matchpoints - as Iain noted, this was overkill as Dave only needed one! Congratulations to Dave and commiserations to Les.

Doing the right thing

Rather than write about the Russell Cup evening with Miro, where we scored 54% but was largely uneventful, I thought I'd discuss some hands that I've seen on BBO over the last few days.

All the hands feature imps scoring.

Do you sacrifice at love all?

Let's try and assess the likely outcomes. It is hard to envisage a hand for partner where we can make ten tricks, so bidding five hearts seems to be aiming for a best result of -300. If they can make five diamonds, then we will gain 3 imps.

However going three down also seems quite likely, especially if partner is short in clubs, and losing -500 will result in a 3 imps loss.

This would suggest that there is not much right or wrong with bidding. However our tricks as so soft that it seems far more likely that partner will go four down (losing 9 imps) than one down (gaining 7 imps), and when he is one down they may not make five diamonds.

In conclusion, sacrificing at equal vulnerability is quite dangerous as there is often a small upside with a major downside when it's wrong. Unless you are actually bidding five hearts with some threat of making the contract, then it is probably wrong to bid.

Use the Next button to step through to the decision point. What do we make of the hand and partner's discard of the seven of diamonds (standard attitude)?

Partner is marked with about twelve points and there is one card smaller than the seven of diamonds that we cannot see. Partner is unlikely to have five diamonds and would not discard from four if he held the ten of diamonds, so it seems that partner is discouraging the suit. The lack of an overcall suggests that partner does not have five spades, so this marks declarer with a likely 3325 distribution and partner with 4234.

So it is probably best to continue with a low spade at this point. You will get back in with spades and decide whether to lead a club, or diamond, later when you have some more information.

This is not a hand where there is a right answer, but one where you hope that an educated guess will work.

A really simple question and one that partnerships should know the answer to. I do not think that there is an 'expert standard' and, at a club, you can often tell by the speed of the double. But that is cheating and you should have an agreement. What is yours?

It is very easy to lazily bid four spades here, but consider 3NT too. On a club lead and continuation you could easily concede a ruff to the jack of spades and then be faced with picking up another suit. There is no guarantee that 3NT is the better contract, but it is worthy of consideration.

Or should you be thinking of slam? Absent a stronger raise from partner, like four clubs, I think your quacks suggest extreme caution.