Feb
14

Nashville, Part 2

Three A.M. this morning found me tossing, turning and completely unable to conjure any state resembling fluffy from my pillow, you can thank my flat pillow for my getting “Part 1” posted. Roughly fifteen hours later finds me in a Target quoting the first Back to the Future movie to a bed-pillow, “I’m your density,” I said poking the not-too-soft not-too-firm pillow through its sanitary plastic wrapper, “I mean, your destiny.” It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m going to die alone in Mississippi. But first ….

Sunday morning was the Swiss teams. I woke up with a nasty, persistent headache that nothing seemed to alleviate. I ate breakfast. Drank coffee. Took Tylenol. Went for a walk to a Starbucks to get more coffee. Nothing helped. One of our teammates has over 2,000 masterpoints and while I could swear that I’ve played on a B/C/D Swiss team with someone in that category in the past (perhaps it’s a regional thing?), at this tournament at least that propelled us up into the A/X flight.

In the first round we played a team comprising two co-workers and their spouses. At the other table, things went fairly well. But at our table, the wheels came off — we had exactly one plus score and we lost IMPs even on that board. At one point a bidding misunderstanding landed us in a hopeless 6♣ contract. The opponents didn’t bother to double us even though we clearly had nowhere to run, this small act of mercy didn’t cost them anything, they would still go on to win all of the victory points for the match — that’s how bad it was. On the bright side, our strategy for the day was set, we were going to beat up on the other teams who were doing poorly.

In the second match, Clark and I sat down against a pair we’d played against the night before. We’d hit it off then and the good vibe continued, it made for a very enjoyable eight boards and the four of us decided that we should just opt to play each other for the rest of the day. I lost my d_mned mind on this this hand.

I’ve asked a couple of respectable, very aggressive players their opinion on what to bid over my partner’s 3♣. Both said they would very reluctantly bid 3♠, knowing full well it might end in disaster. Sometimes a blatant disregard for life and limb pays off, I bid 4 which was promptly doubled. At the time, my reasoning (what little there was) was that, were he completely broke, Clark would have picked one of my majors and that I knew where all of the high card points were — both opponents have in fact limited their hands pretty definitively. That’s all true, but somehow the all too real possibility of partner sitting there with something like 0=2=4=7 and little else save the KJ of clubs didn’t occur to me. Still at the other table they played in 2♥ making three, so win thirteen for the good guys. I wasn’t there for the comparison, but I was told that MM made Clark repeat the score three times.

We lost the next round, but it was at least close. The longer we played the warmer the room got until between rounds I was hanging around outside with the smokers without a jacket just to cool off enough to bear the thought of going back inside. My head was throbbing and each hand was starting to be a struggle. On one fairly routine 4♠ contract I got to a very simple ending with a high cross-ruff and even though I’d worked pretty methodically to get to that point it still took what felt like an eternity to work out the actual logistics of it, my brain was refusing to cooperate. Card after card, hand after hand, Clark and I both somehow managed to keep doing the right thing. Going into the last round I was rather grimly determined to at least leave with a 4-2 record instead of 3-3. I wanted my d_mned match award.

There was a time when it would have been hard for me to imagine bridge could ever feel like a grind. But recently it feels that way more often than not; and, as I said, looking forward to this tournament was the first time I’d really been looking forward to playing bridge in awhile but here too it definitely felt like work. So imagine my surprise when we finally compared the last round score and MM’s partner mentioned that we were in the hunt for first in “X”. Clark offered to text me the final results so we could hit the road. We did. He did. To my further surprise, we won “X”. I was pleased, of course, but mostly I just felt relief; partly because I didn’t want any of my teammates to feel like I’d wasted their time and partly because I felt like for once the “hard work” of playing bridge paid off. But was it fun?

Seeing Clark was wonderful, he was as they say, “A sight for for sore eyes.” Dinner was amazing. Hanabi was fun. But was the bridge fun? Yes and no. The second round was fun, but in hindsight my recklessness on what turned out to be the key hand is somewhat disconcerting to put it mildly; I thought I had gotten past making those kinds of wildly speculative bids. My instincts may be pretty good, but they’ve led me down the path of -1400 before and they’ll do so again if I don’t start tempering them with good judgement. You’d think the rolling disaster that was the first match would have had a more sobering effect on me. Maybe I needed a brush with death to put me back on the straight and narrow. Anyway, I’m looking forward to St. Louis.

Feb
14

Nashville, Part 1

I heard about Clark before I met him. Late in 2011 he showed up at our local club and almost immediately I started hearing his name. One of the players at my club that I really respected came up and asked me if I had met the new guy yet, “He reminds me of you when you started, absorbing everything about this game fast.”

A week or so later I finally did meet Clark, and I was pretty sure we were nothing alike. He was good looking, charismatic and outgoing. He handed me his business card and told me he’d love to play with me sometime. I’ve never been any d_mned good at asking people I want to play with if they want to play with me. He made it look easy. When we finally got a chance to play bridge together he made that look easy too. He had an uncanny knack for making me feel like a rock star at the table; and we fell into an aggressive bidding style in which he would push to put me into an almost impossible contract that I would then push to make. “If I don’t stop making these stupid contracts, you’re never going to learn to stop bidding them,” I would say shaking my head, while inwardly glowing at having pulled off another feat of daring-do. Bridge with Clark is always a good time.

After I moved we immediately started talking about tournaments where we might meet up to play again and we settled on a regional in Nashville. As it finally got closer, something strange happened, I started looking forward to playing bridge again. I found teammates for the Swiss, Mr. Miyagi and another co-worker, and the three of us headed off early Saturday morning to meet up with Clark in the heart of Tennessee.

On Saturday we played in the two-session A/X pairs. The afternoon session went pretty smoothly. Clark, MM and I headed off for dinner and got very lucky playing GPS roulette, ending up at an absolutely amazing restaurant near the hotel. This detail is important because I went on to play as if I’d had a lobotomy during the dinner break instead of the world’s best panna cotta.

On the very first board of the evening session, I misplayed a very common suit holding so badly that I went down two in an otherwise cold contract. Funny thing about me, I can usually see this sort of thing after the fact and this hand was no exception, only my opponent wanted to make sure I knew what I had down wrong and took the liberty of writing the correct line* down for me … on my score sheet. So for the rest of the night there’s this notation silently mocking me from the bottom right-hand corner:

A1
K
9
x2

T2
x
x
x1

In retrospect, I probably should have thrown the d_mned sheet away and started fresh, though my being on tilt didn’t fully account for the lousy splits and the badly placed cards I encountered for the rest of the night it did go a long way toward explaining my inability to cope at all effectively with them. Meanwhile we were following MM and his partner, and the grumbling I was hearing from the North-South pair at table after table was my first inkling that they were having an absolutely huge game. Our opponents were determined to get their tops back from us and many, if not most, of them succeeded. It made for a long night.

After the evening session MM and partner were in good spirits after their big win and I really wanted a beer (or three) so instead of calling it a night the four of us got in a couple rounds of Hanabi. Hanabi is a deceptively simple, cooperative card game in which the only hand you can not see is your own. One must give, receive and, most importantly, remember information to build a fireworks display. The cards (or “fireworks”) must be played in a particular order and if too many errors are made everyone loses. It is especially interesting for bridge players because the order in which information is given can easily be thought of as a convention of sorts, both positive and negative inferences are relied on heavily and, of course, there’s the small matter of trust. It was only the second time I’d played the game. Clark was a natural; and since the first time I had played Hanabi it was also with MM and his partner, the difference it made to have someone who took to the concept so naturally sitting in the fourth chair was especially striking. It’s funny but if the four of us were somehow stranded somewhere where we had nothing better to do than play card games (say Tennessee?) I wonder how long it would take us to get back to bridge. The real answer of course is something less than ten hours, because the next morning, bright and early we were back at the tables for Swiss.

To be continued ….

Jan
30

Seven Good Points

Text message sent to Mr. Miyagi during a particularly disheartening game last week with a beginner (who’s been playing longer than me, go fig):

Just doubled the opps. in 3H and they made an overtrick in part because my p. overcalled on the two-level, vulnerable with 7 HCP…. so this must be what it’s like for you playing with me.

His response:

Oh, don’t get so down on yourself … you always have a good 7 when you make that bid.

So tonight, against our better judgement, MM and I headed off to the local bridge club and this was the very first board.

As we were removing the cards for the second board (and after he finally stopped laughing at my less than eloquent claim), MM caught my eye and mouthed the words, “Seven high card points?” I nodded. After the round, I followed him outside to bask in the 70° weather while we waited for the other tables to finish. I started the conversation, “It was a really good seven high card points.” He reminded me of the above text message which he claimed I’d taken offense at, if by offense he meant that I’d called him a cranky old man and told him to go drink some more bourbon, then yes. Still, it was a really good seven high card points.

As is typical of this bridge club, we played well and had an almost perfectly average game. But there were definitely some fun hands lurking around including a fair number of questionable 2/1 bids and a Jacoby 2NT raise on 4-3-3-3 and 12 HCP that was down one when MM found a slightly superior line to taking a club finesse. The club finesse works, the superior line doesn’t. And there was a particularly cute slam, still not sure how to bid it, but since seven doesn’t actually make (despite doing so at every single table) my lack of scientific bidding wasn’t an issue. Note the distribution in diamonds, MM was visibly annoyed at having to ruff so many in his hand before claiming, but claiming at this club is a tricky proposition unless you have nothing left in your hand save for aces and kings and trumps.

On the car ride home, he started back up again about my claim on the first hand, “It was like you were reading from a novel, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and I’m going to cross back to my hand by ruffing this and pitch the queen on the spade and then the other diamond on the other spade and then I’ll win my ace’ and the opponent was already putting her hand back in the board, conceding the tricks just so you would stop talking.” I laughed. The truth is claims might just be the worst part of my game (and that’s really saying something). For reasons I don’t fully understand, sometimes I have a really hard time putting into words what is so clear in my head. In retrospect this is a super simple claim, “I’m pitching two diamonds on my spades and then the board is good.” But when I tried to say this, it came out completely garbled. From now on I’m going to take the Mike Lawrence approach: just face my cards and say, “I’m not going to do anything stupid,” and hope like h_ll the opponents take my word for it, goodness knows my partners won’t.

Jan
27

Gnats

January in the mid-South dawned cold and bleak. On the first weekend there was a local sectional. After bombing out the first couple of sessions, the Kid (henceforth to be known as Mr. Miyagi) changed tactics and demanded that I tell him the exact distribution of his hand on every board. We had a 40% game, but I got the message. Count on, count off. The rest of the weekend saw much better results.

And since then the handful of times I’ve dragged myself off to the club has reminded me precisely why I don’t play there more often. This afternoon encompassed exactly why I find my new home away from home so d_mned annoying.

This was only my second time playing with this partner and our bidding understandings are still all a bit hazy. We had an ill-fated Jacoby 2NT followed by cue-bidding auction that culminated in my bidding Blackwood to confirm the number of aces she was holding. She replied that she had 1 or 4 (5♦) — bad news since I was looking at three dead diamonds and the AK of trump so even if her on were the ace of diamonds things were about to get tricky. The only good news was that my RHO did not make a lead directing double. So I bid 5♠ knowing full well I was in trouble; there was a long hesitation by my partner during which I started to hope that one of us was wrong about what sort of Blackwood we were playing and she actually had 0 or 3. She passed and my hopes were dashed when my RHO now started asking questions about our earlier cuebids. I still thought I had a chance of scraping out eleven tricks because, you’ll recall, that he had not doubled for a diamond lead.

The opening lead hit … a diamond, of course. Dummy came down when three small diamonds, and all of her other values in the suit in which I’d shown a splinter; my RHO promptly cashed his ace and king of diamonds and the ace of clubs. We were down two when he returned yet another diamond to his partner’s queen. After the hand, he was reveling in his brilliant double, “Well, I had an ace-king and an ace so I figured we were beating it.” Now I fully recognize that it was my own fault for pushing this auction too high (it’s probably still a good idea not to bid Blackwood when wide open in a suit even if you think you have reason to think your partner has it covered), but I just had to ask, “Why didn’t you double five diamonds?” He looked confused, “She was just responding to your bid.” “Yes, but don’t you always want a diamond lead? Given that auction I never would have led a diamond, I would have looked for you to have a void somewhere.” He got angry as if I were accusing him of something, which I suppose I was, but I really would love to know why when given a lead directing double on a platter he refused to take it and then got the d_mn lead anyway. This is why I hate playing at this club.

Later in the day after my opponents got to game with a Drury auction and I was on opening lead I wanted to confirm what sort of Drury they were playing, “Regular, the only kind she remembers,” my LHO muttered. “In that case what did her rebid of two diamonds show?” “Nothing,” he said. “So she doesn’t have a full opening bid?” “Reverse Drury,” the soon-to-be declarer chimed in, “We play reverse Drury.” “So does her bid say anything about diamonds.” He shrugged, I waited. “She could have a void and bid that way,” he said. “So nothing about diamonds, thank you,” I said. I led a diamond. Then the Declarer spoke up again, “It does show something in diamonds, but it won’t make a difference.” Turns out she was right, she was down one anyway, but when my opening lead was won in dummy with the eight I was seeing red.

In the former case, the player was sort of a beginner so I could excuse it — sort of, but in this case the opponent knew d_mn well that it showed something in diamonds. He’s just a jack-@ss.

But with opponents like these, I must admit, the gifts are as plentiful as the fixes. Playing the hand well doesn’t often pay off well because the defense is pretty bad, but here’s my favorite hand of the day anyway (link here). A pushy bid on my part, but it was a “state of the match” sort of thing and I was thinking my partner probably had extras. Later in the day on a very similar auction I would pass now knowing that her subsequent raise to three of minor could be quite unsound (and that time she was a passed hand to boot), only then I hit her with a twelve-count that would have made for a very easy nine tricks in NT.

Nov
30

An Early New Year’s Resolution

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11

You know things have taken a turn for the bizarre when I start quoting Biblical aphorisms. Still hurtling through the air, approximately 30,000 feet above New Mexico those were the words that popped into my head.

Before I continue I feel I should note that I refuse to completely put aside childish things. I recently got a “Recommended for You” e-mail list from Amazon that was made up in it’s entirety of bridge books and SpongeBob SquarePants DVDs. I refuse to give up SpongeBob (this study will come as no surprise to my bridge partners); but when it comes to bridge, the time has come for me to grow up.

I won a lot of masterpoints very quickly playing an off-the-wall kind of a game, always looking for the unusual contract or the unusual play that might just work on that particular hand. It leads to wildly inconsistent bidding, vacillating between overly conservative and overly aggressive, only rarely dipping into a bidding “sweet spot” and many, many bikini games – all tops and bottoms. It is impossible for ones partner to calibrate for that kind of action. A lot of frustration for both myself and my partners resulted from the fact that I felt that I caught a lot of flak when this strategy didn’t work, but it seemed to me that they were playing with me because it just as often did – I find, in retrospect, that they were playing with me despite the gambles that paid off, not because of them.

“This is bridge, not poker!” I heard obscenity-laced variations on this theme from both the Mad Scientist and Yin. Doc, who put up with more than either of them (but is so much more level-headed), managed not to lob this particular insult my way, but I bet he was thinking it. Still it wasn’t sinking in because as crazy-making as playing with me was (and is) it was (but now isn’t) a successful strategy. I’ve taken it about as far as it will go, maybe a little further even, and I’m not anywhere near the player that I would like to be.

Which brings me back to the airspace above New Mexico. I spent six days in San Francisco at the NABC and while I didn’t get a chance to play very often, the times I did play I was repeatedly confronted by the limitations of my skill-set. My first night there I played in a side-game with Washington, I was exhausted after traveling all day and the time-zone change made the 7:30 PM start time feel like 9:30 to my addled brain. Things did not go smoothly. We repeatedly zigged when we should have zagged. On one hand Washington made a less than ideal opening lead and apologized. I jokingly responded, “Now we’re even,” and he scoffed, which was my first inkling that perhaps I was making even more mistakes than I realized. The Kid decided to kibitz the second half and after the game ended at around 11:00 PM (read: 1:00 AM) we were looking over the hand records. I asked about a particular hand, he answered but it seemed like when he was done answering my specific question there was more he wanted to say. I knew better than to push the big red “Don’t push!” button, but I did it anyway. “Was there anything else?” I asked.

Twenty minutes worth of bad plays, and errors in judgment, all casually observed from somewhere behind my right shoulder and only then did he reach the play that “really bothered” him. To wit, there was a very small chance on one hand for me to make the contract, it was a cost free play to find out if in fact my LHO held specifically the Kx of diamonds on-side and instead I conceded the trick. My face burned with the realization, it isn’t like me to just give up on a hand. At the time I didn’t learn that the one holding I needed to make the contract was in fact the holding my opponent had, but it would literally have cost nothing to find out, just cross my fingers and plunk down the diamond ace after the finesse to the queen worked. Suddenly the unsupported Jack in my hand would have been good. Instead I had led a small card back toward the jack, a zero percentage play, zero, zip, no chance – I’d just given up. I felt disgusted, vaguely nauseous and suddenly very, very tired. I limped back to my hotel room and found I couldn’t sleep. When I would drift off to sleep, the King of Diamonds haunted my dreams.

The next night, after working all day on very little sleep, I played with my boss for the first time. I found myself in the uncomfortable position of really wishing I could be up in my room in bed instead of forcing my eyes open at the table. Adding to my misery, the cards were not going our way and hand after hand we found ourselves on defense. When we did get into the bidding the best we could manage was a part-score. We said very little to one another between rounds, except to ask if the other would like a cup of coffee when we left to refill our own cups. This time it was my partner who had a kibitzer, but the hands were so boring that even he lost interest and wandered off after awhile. We had a decent game, nothing earth shattering, but no disasters either.

The Kid and I filled in the movement for one session of a fast pairs game on Sunday. My favorite disaster of the session involved my doubling a vulnerable 5♦ contract that should have been down three only to find the one defense that would allow it to make. White against red, my partner opened the bidding in second seat:

(P)-1♣-(1♥)-1♠-
(P)-2♠-(3♦)-4♠-
(5♦)-P-(P)-X-
All Pass

This was my hand:

♠ AQxxx
♥ x
♦ J9x
♣ KQxx

I am pretty sure my RHO is 5-4 in the red suits, because otherwise she could have used Michael’s so the good news is that I think we have probably two spade tricks coming to us but there’s nothing saying she doesn’t have the Kx of spades. A club lead might be right, but I really would like to get a ruff with my anemic diamonds if at all possible so I try the singleton heart lead even though it is the declarer’s first bid suit.

My partner plays the ♥8 and not surprisingly the declarer wins and switches to a diamond, my partner wins his stiff ace and returns the ♥2 which I interpreted as asking for a club return. I ruff the heart and return a low club. The declarer wins with her J of clubs and the hand is over when the finesse for the missing heart honors is on-side. My poor partner had the KJxx of hearts. The declarer started with the AJ tight of clubs and the Tx of spades. I can see why my partner might not have wanted to return either the K or J of hearts and it is of note that if I return the ♣Q instead my partner will still overtake with the ace (if he had it) to return another heart and it would protect against the declarer having both missing club honors. We would have at least beat it (though not by as much as if I had instead returned a spade to my partner’s king.) Minus 750 is a big fat zero.

My declaring was as enlightened as my defense. Earlier in the session I had gotten completely tangled up in a 1NT contract and went down one when I should have made it and then there was a hand on which the correct line eluded me both at the table and for what felt like ten minutes after the Kid pointed it out to me. He noted the diamond suit. I stared at him blankly, wondering what exactly he wanted me to do with the moth-eaten diamonds. He looked at me wondering what planet I was on. Finally it dawned on me that the answer was to ruff them. (Oh is that what a trump suit is for?) Another zero when I’m in 2 down one when I should have made three. And the less said about the hand where we ended up down one in 3NT when we were cold for 6♦ the better. So for the record, Red Vines followed by a 5-Hour Energy shot is not the breakfast of champions.

On Monday night, I played for the first time with another co-worker of mine and we had a very decent, solid game with only one real exception. In first seat, both side vulnerable, I picked up this:

♠ AJTxxxx
♥ x
♦ xx
♣ ATx

I only really considered opening it 1♠ for the briefest of moments before coming to my senses and opening it 3♠. Everyone passed.

The opening lead was the ♥Q. and the dummy came down with:

♠ xx
♥ AKx
♦ AKJxxx
♣ xx

You know you have a reputation for opening light when you open 3♠ vulnerable in first seat and your partner with a spade fit and four quick tricks, passes. Unfortunately it makes five all day long and with minimal effort once my RHO turns up with the QT tight of diamonds. I will admit that had I been playing with my teacher that would have been exactly what either of us would have done with her hand since our three-level openers are such garbage we alert them, but then we probably would have opened that hand 4♠ instead.

It’s hard to say exactly how these four games led to my realization in the sky that whatever I was doing wasn’t working for me anymore, and really they were just the culmination of a longer process. Upon reflection, the strides I’ve made up until this point have come pretty easy though it didn’t always seem so at the time. The real work is ahead of me now, and I’m not entirely sure that I’ll succeed. I worry that I’m just not smart enough to play this game at the level I would like to, but I feel I must at least try and circumstances are such that I’m not playing as much as I was before and so I have the time to put into really studying card play and developing a different bidding philosophy. Breakthrough or breakdown, in the end, there will be transformation.

Nov
19

Portrait of a Meltdown

Thumperian principle has prevented me from writing much of anything about my trip to Arkansas. I can say that I couldn’t have chosen a more picturesque setting to have a complete melt down at the table. I can also say that my partner and teammates were extraordinarily kind about the whole thing, which, perversely, only served to make it worse.

The Saturday morning session started at the unholy hour of 9:30 A.M. The coffee in the hotel room was weak. The breakfast buffet at the hotel restaurant left a lot to be desired, but the coffee was better. When we sat down at the table I was most of the way through my third cup, but the fog was refusing to clear from my brain. The first session was a three-way match. The first team we played posed little threat and we won our match against them easily. The second proved tougher and they edged us out, okay they crucified us, but it seemed to me that most of the IMPs were being lost at the other table. My teammates would likely tell you they felt the same way. Still our win was enough for us to progress and the size of the bracket meant we would pass Go! and head directly to the semi-finals. I had no appetite for lunch, but my head felt somewhat clearer – alas it was but an illusion.

The first four boards went just fine. In fact we went on to win 22 IMPs in those first four boards. Then something bad happened, namely, I got a good hand.

Both sides vul. My LHO was the dealer and I picked up this:

♠ AQ
♥ xxx
♦ KQJTx
♣ AJx

The bidding went as follows:

(P)-P-(1♥)-X-
(4♥)-4♠-(X)-5♦-
(X)-All Pass

It was ugly; -1400 worth of ugly.

But I wasn’t down for the count just yet. As my partner put it, I went on a “rampage” for the next four hands. “I realized I was just along for the ride,” he said. There was only the smallest bit of reproach in the way he said it. This wild tear culminated with a very uncharacteristic psych bid from me.

Neither side vul., my RHO was again the dealer and this was my hand:

♠ J
♥ xxx
♣ xxxxx
♦ Jxxx

Lovely, right? The bidding began:

(P)-1♥-(X)-

I immediately have a decision to make. This hand isn’t even good enough for a “courtesy raise” to 2♥ and I know the opponents have a spade fit, at least an eight card fit, maybe more. I didn’t really have to think about my next bid at this vulnerability: 1♠. And as is so often the case when someone makes a ridiculous bid the auction went completely off of the rails:

(P)-1♥-(X)-1♠-
(2♦)-2♠-(3♦)-
(P)-3♠-(X)-4♥-
(5♦)-X-All Pass

My partner led the ♠A, four spades came down in dummy and I, of course, dropped the Jack which as per our treatment would be asking for a heart shift, but that would be almost completely illogical on this hand and so he continued with a small spade which I ruffed. Now he was finally in on the joke and we started a cross ruff of spades and clubs which beat the contract three for +800 on a hand where they were cold for 4♠. Our teammates were in 3♠ making four, +14 IMPs for us.

At the half, we were up by a whopping total of 7 IMPs on a set that we should have been ahead by 20. During the break I scurried away to try to collect my thoughts. Unfortunately, I failed.

The first six boards of the second half were unremarkable, but I was on tilt and I knew it. Had I been playing poker I would have walked away from the table glad to still have chips left. On the seventh board, another disaster. In third site, vul. against not I opened the following hand:

♠ Kxxx
♥ xxxx
♦ A
♣ Kxxx

Frankly I would have been tempted to open this hand in 1st or 2nd seat. If my partner bids a major, I have a real live opening bid on my hands.

P-(P)-1♣-(P)-
1♥-(1NT*)-2♥-(3♦)-
4♥-(5♦)-P!!!-(P)-
5♥- (P)-P-(X)-
All Pass

*Sandwich NT showing 5-5 in the unbid suits

When the dummy came down my partner was not amused. He kept it to down two and we lost 12 IMPs. If I wasn’t on tilt before, I certainly was now.

On the very next hand, my eyes (as well as my brain) started playing tricks on me. Both vul., my partner opened the bidding in 1st seat. I had:

♠ xxx
♥ xxx
♦ xx
♣ 9xxxx

There may have been a ten in there somewhere, I don’t remember. The bidding went:

1♦-(1♥)-P-(2♥)-
X-(P)-

At least that’s what I saw so when it got back around to me I took a deep breath and bid 3♣ which was immediately doubled and passed out. But this is how the bidding actually went:

1♦-(1♥)-P-(2♦)-
X-(P)-

Which is to say I didn’t have to bid, I just needed to lead a diamond when they settled on how many hearts they wanted to be in. My LHO happened to be holding the AKQx of clubs and so after he pulled trump there wasn’t much left for me to do except try not to cry as I went down for my second quadruple digit score of the session.

As I noted my partner and my teammates were very nice about the whole thing, which made me feel even worse. Especially when this team that beat us (or should I say the team against which I beat us) went on to win the whole thing which really just means it should have been us. After the match as I was gazing out across the picturesque lake from a balcony one of my teammates told me not to jump and then immediately realized his error and offered me a leg up over the railing. My partner asked very nicely if I wouldn’t like to take a long walk off the short pier into the lake. That was as nasty as they got and the two members of the team with whom I had played with regularly in the past both said they’d still play with me in the future. The fourth member of the team noted that he never would have been willing to play with me to begin with so there was no loss there. And, most surprisingly of all, I made it out of Arkansas alive.

Oct
31

Trick or Treat?

Halloween night finds me sitting with a giant bowl of candy, anxiously awaiting the arrival of trick-or-treaters. It seems fitting that I would be stuck with all the treats tonight, all the tricks were at the club last night.

This weekend the Kid and I are headed deep into Arkansas to play at a sectional tournament and we decided to pick up a couple of practice sessions at the local bridge club before the trip. When I first met him I was surprised to learn that he didn’t play at the club all that often. For one thing, there really isn’t all that much else to do around here and for another, he obviously loves bridge.

It was not until I moved here that I learned that there are Howell movements that go up past five tables. In fact, the directors here love to bust out the special guide cards for seven and eight-table Howells. The games are unbearably slow but you get to play a lot of boards and you get to play most everyone else, plus it’s only a two or three board sit out when there’s half a table.

Our first round was a bit rocky, the opponents bid up to 4♥ and went down one when I realized at trick two that our only hope of beating it was to take tricks in the trump suit and so resisted the urge to fly up with my ace in the hopes that my partner had the KJ doubleton, he did and it was off one. On the very next hand though I ran smack into a signal that I have missed before. We’re playing obvious shift on the opening lead, in the case of a singleton in dummy instead of just switching to suit preference, which is standard, we added the clause that a middle spot encourages while either a high or low is suit preference. Great idea, but you have to remember that is what is going on. I led an ace. He played the seven. (“The seven must be a middle spot, if only I knew what he wanted ….”) I shifted to a side suit. The switch in and of itself didn’t hurt us, but it gave my partner the wrong picture of the hand which led him astray later on and gave them an overtrick for a top. On the bright side, later on when my partner was the one on lead and the dummy hit with a singleton, I remembered to play a middle card to encourage.

The night wore on with hand after hand in which the opponents’ bad plays payed off while our good plays came to naught, but the stuff that nightmares are made of was yet to come. We sat down against a pair that are noted for being unpredictable. The Kid had already bemoaned the fact that the movement meant we’d almost certainly have to play them. On the first hand, my RHO was the dealer, we were vulnerable they were not and the auction went like this:

(P)-P-(1♣)-P-
(1♥)-1♠-(1NT)-P-
3NT!- All Pass

As he was entering the contract, North said to his partner, “Your hand must have been pretty good for a passed hand.” “It isn’t points, it’s trick taking ability,” she replied tersely. The Kid led a low spade and this was her “trick taking” dummy:

♠ x
♥ xxxx
♦ Axx
♣ Kxxxx

North stared at her as if she’d completely lost her mind. I probably had the same look on my face. I won my king, returned the nine, which the declarer covered with the ten and my partner won his ace. He returned a small spade which the declarer won with his queen. Then declarer went after the ratty clubs. He played a small club to the king, my partner dropped the jack which was really bad news because I was holding the T9 … so yes, the QJ dropped doubleton and so did the T9 which meant declarer took five clubs, two diamonds, a heart and a spade to make his 3NT contract with a combined 20 HCP while most of the field was in 3♣ making 4. My partner and I fumed. “Well, we needed a good hand,” South said.

On the next hand, both sides were vulnerable and I was the dealer with:

♠ Jxx
♥ J
♦ T98xxx
♣ xxx

Did I consider opening it 2♦? I admit that I did, but only very briefly.

P-(P)-1♥-(X)-
All Pass

Uh-oh. But on the bright side, half my points are in my partner’s suit. As it turned out, South had a 25 HCP hand and North had six hearts to the king. When the smoke cleared we were down 3 for -800 and they do not have a slam their way. The two of them started into this infuriating dialog, “Hearts was my suit I thought one heart doubled was the best spot we’d find.” “I had twenty-four high card points! What’d we get … two, five, eight .. eight hundred?” “There’s no slam our way.” “But I had twenty-four points!” (She can’t count.) “Doesn’t matter, there’s no slam.” “How many spades did you have?” “Even if we get to four spades it isn’t as good.” “What about clubs?” “There’s no slam.” And just when I thought they’d finally gotten the passive-aggressive gloating out of their system South spoke up again, “So that was eight hundred?” I was ready to test the club’s zero tolerance policy, but instead I picked up the next hand.

My partner opened 1NT (he was a point shy, but what’s one point between bridge partners?). I had another 2 HCP hand, but with a five card spade suit and we got out safely for down one in 3♠. I’ll admit I fled the table before I lost my cool and left the Kid to approve the last score. I get why he doesn’t play there more often.

Not all of the weirdness went so badly for us. I finally got a good hand:

♠ Axxxx
♥ Ax
♦ ATx
♣ AKJ

We were vulnerable and our opponents were not. My LHO was the dealer and opened a preemptive 2♦. Not surprisingly, my partner passed. Then my RHO bid 3♣ which was alerted as not being forcing. I doubled which got passed back around to my RHO who then bid 3♦. Now I bid 3♠ and my partner raised me to four.

My LHO led a club and much to my surprise the dummy hit with five clubs to the ten. Clearly something was amiss here. I won my RHO’s queen and started pulling trump. I wasn’t surprised when they broke 4-1, but I was surprised when my LHO (the opener) was the one who had four. As it turned out, my LHO had only two clubs, Qx. The club lead turned out to be rather advantageous though and the only trick I lost was to the jack of trump. The only explanation I can come up with for his 3♣ bid is that he wanted to keep us from finding our eight card club fit. He had the right idea, but the wrong black suit; a 3♠ bid in the same vein would have done them much better.

Oct
22

In the Money

One of my new partners is also on the softball team. After yet another defeat I was wandering back to the parking lot, lost in thought over just how bad our team actually is, when he got my attention, “Tomorrow night is something we’re good at!” That reminder cheered me up greatly. Once a month the local club has a team game that is balanced by a formula that anyone with fewer than 1,000 masterpoints is a “1″, players with between 1,000 and 2,500 masterpoints are “2″s and those with more than 2,500 masterpoints are a “3″. The total for the four-person team cannot be greater than 8. This particular partner and I had played once before and the card we’re playing is pretty simple, though we expect to add more in the future.

Early on in the night, my partner remarked that I was overly pessimistic in the way I played and defended. I wanted to tell him that my experience playing with the Mad Scientist has inured me to lousy hands and bad trump splits, but instead I told him I was just being “realistic”. Then we went off to compare with our teammates and found out that all our good work had been undone by a speculative double that went spectacularly wrong at their table. “It happens,” I said while thinking of my bridge teacher who almost always continued that with, “… and sometimes ‘it’ is spelled with an ‘sh’.”

On one hand during the very last match, red against white, in fourth seat I opened 1♥. My LHO overcalled 1♠ and my partner jumped to 3♠. I could think of two plausible explanations for the bid, but luckily position told me everything. If he wanted me to bid 3NT with a spade stopper he wouldn’t hold the kind of hand that would have gotten markedly better when I opened the bidding 1♥ and since he was a passed hand he couldn’t be forcing to game with a hand that didn’t improve with my opening bid. Ergo his 3♠ bid was a splinter. I found this quite nifty because I had a pretty good hand:

♠ Qxx
♥ AKTxxx
♦ AKxx
♣ Jx

Since it’s safe to say that he is at the top of his range for being a passed hand (10-11 HCP) and with those points not being in spades, I’m actually interested in slam now that I am no longer worried about spades. Of course, clubs are still a problem so I can’t just pass GO! and go directly to Blackwood, but I have lots of room on this auction so I bid 4♦ showing both a diamond control and denying one in clubs.

(P)-P-(P)-1♥-
(1♠)-3♠-(P)-4♦-

Now my partner knows I don’t have a club control, and clearly I’m interested in slam or I would have just signed off in 4♠ so I must want to know about clubs. As it turns out, he has something for me in clubs, but instead of bidding 5♣, he makes a truly great bid of 5♥ which I interpretted as showing the club ace as well as either a void in spades or something extra in diamonds I wasn’t sure which it was, but it was enough for me to jump go right on up to 6. (Later he would clarify that with the spade void he would have instead cuebid 4♠ so he was showing something in diamonds as well as first round control of clubs.)

(P)-P-(P)-1♥-
(1♠)-3♠-(P)-4♦-
(P)-5♥-(P)-6♥

As my partner remarked while putting down his hand, “That was a sophisticated auction for an unsophisticated pair.”

6♥ was ice cold. The opponents won only their opening lead which was the ace of spades. I was starting to feel distinctly more optimistic.

In the same round a few hands later, I picked up a 23 HCP NT-type hand and another “sophisticated” auction was underway. This time the opponents remained silent throughout:

2♣-2♦-
2NT-3♣*-
3♦**-3♥***-
3♠-4NT-
5♦****-5♥*****-
6♦******-6♠

*Puppet Stayman
** I have at least one four card major
***I don’t have hearts.
****3 or 0
*****Do you have the ♠Q too?
******Yes and the ♦K, but not the ♣K

There was a long hesitation before my partner bid 6♠. It seemed possible he was contemplating seven, but it turns out when I saw his hand I realized the question was really between 6♠ and 6NT. He too had a flat hand but we’d found our 4-4 spade fit so my preference (and his it appears) is to play in the suit. Well most of the time….

The opening lead was a diamond which my RHO promptly ruffed. “Six notrump,” I said glumly. Things were looking up when it came to light that I had to lose two more tricks anyway so 6NT was also a non-starter. Of course, our intrepid teammates intervened over the 2♣ auction at the other table and so they never got to the 33 HCP small slam that wasn’t, instead they stopped in 3NT — making five. When the smoke cleared we came in 2nd overall, not a bad showing all things considered. And, more importantly, we won the jackpot (the team that came in first had not entered).

My partner and I decided to play the next night in the regular pairs game and again we bid right up to 6♥ unopposed. In first seat, vul. against not, I opened with:

♠ AJxxxx
♥ KQJTx
♦ T
♣ x

1♠-2♦-
2♥-3♥-
4♥-4NT-
5♠*-5NT-
6♥-P

*2 Keycards + Q of trump or the “Oh why oh why did we put off adding Kickback?!” bid.

My LHO led a spade. As he was laying down his hand, my partner remarked “If [my RHO] trumps this, I’m never playing with you again.” “Agreed,” I said thinking we were going to make seven and then I asked him to play low from dummy:

♠ Kx
♥ Axxx
♦ AKxx
♣ AJx

My RHO trumped. It’s really a shame that such a promising partnership has ended so soon. Now at this point I’m still convinced that six is going to be gin, unless of course the hearts break 0-4 so guess what? After my LHO showed out on the first round of trump I went into the tank for a long time, certainly longer than most of my partners have ever witnessed me do so. I was, of course, trying to think of a line that would let me make six. Finally it dawned on me that I could make six if my LHO along with his FIVE F_CKING SPADES also held both the King and Queen of clubs and with this in mind I started to pull trump when the bridge gods smiled on me and my LHO discarded a spade (he did not in fact have both missing club honors so there was no squeeze). I was the only person to make 6, in fact several people only made 4. Later on (after three hands on which he opened I did not have enough in my hand to respond) I asked if he still thought I was overly pessimistic, he agreed that I wasn’t.

We didn’t actually end the partnership, though he probably wanted to later on in the evening when I made a boneheaded play on defense which gave the pair that was then in second place a top and the edge over us. We came in 2nd again, but again we also won the jackpot. Things could be worse.

Oct
08

Miscellany

When I saw the trailer for the upcoming film Oz: The Great & Powerful, there was one particular line that stuck out for me: “Kansas is full of good men. I don’t want to be a good man. I want to be a great one.” Of course, for my purposes I’ve tweaked it a bit, “Bridge clubs are full of good players. I don’t want to be a good bridge player. I want to be a great one.” There’s just one problem, I have no idea how to do that. As far as I know getting sucked up by a tornado and transported to a magical land in Technicolor is precisely the way to go about it.

One of the directors at the club is particularly energetic and quite keen on getting me to play Fantunes with him. He overheard a conversation in which the woman I’ve been playing with and I were discussing the myriad of conventions we’re playing (our system really is everything including the kitchen sink at this point). Anyway he asked me if I liked conventions and I shrugged (quite the understatement, I know) and then he asked what I knew about Fantunes and I noted that I’d spent some time watching Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes on the Vugraph recently and shortly thereafter had ordered a copy of “Fantunes Revealed”. He went off to grab his copy of it and now everytime I see him he wants to know if I’ve read it yet, even though I explained that my copy is, at the moment, in a shipping container somewhere between here and New Jersey.

Today I wasn’t able to play because when my partner and I showed up we learned that it was a “mentor” games and all pairs had to comprise one Life Master and one Non-Life Master. I immediately thought of one of my regular partners back in New Jersey and how we’d have likely swept such an event (some NLMs aren’t really, if you know what I mean). It’s probably a really good idea to have such a program, I was just disappointed that I didn’t get to play because there weren’t any spare NLMs running around, though the idea of me being the “mentor” is kind of laughable anyway.

But not everyone would feel that way. On Thursday I arrived home from work and when I checked my mail I found a letter from one of my bridge students. The letter was so sweet and unexpected that it brought tears to my eyes, no one would be more surprised by that occurrence than me. I’m still sort of shocked that I liked teaching bridge as much as I did. I should get back to it, and I have been giving some thought to a novice class. I’d much rather teach off my own notes than be tied to the series of books that the local club uses so perhaps I should see if one of the local community colleges is interested in it as a continuing education class.

Oct
01

I’d rather be lucky ….

When it comes to partnerships I’ve always been pretty lucky and while I worried that this move would represent the time that my luck ran out, it has not. I’ve played a few times now with a very sharp woman who is an excellent player and she has yet to run screaming from the club; in fact, she seemed pleased to get to trot out some of the conventions that other people in this area aren’t keen on playing.

Yesterday she presented me with a laminated, computer printed convention card (a huge step in any bridge partnership). She arrived just before the game started so I didn’t actually get a chance to look at the new convention card and as we played she kept thinking of things that she’d added that we had never actually discussed (for example: Namyats, Rosencrantz, Snap-dragon doubles). Before we play next I’m going to have to spend some serious time with the card and a high speed internet connection just so I know for sure what I’m in for. But as I’ve said in the past, when I play with a stronger player the thing I have to offer is a willingness to learn new conventions so I’m game to play their ideal card, almost regardless of what it includes. Of course, when I’m playing with a weaker partner I’d never ask them to try to play all the conventions I like so I volunteer to play whatever they like. One day I will find a partner with whom I can play the stuff I like — though to be honest I’m not longer exactly sure just what that system would look like.

Today I read in the news that a 697 lb. alligator had been captured and killed in MIssissippi. My initial reaction to the headline was “Thank g_d that’s nowhere near here,” only then to realize that it was here (a few hours south of here to be precise, but not nearly as far away as it should have been).