Feb
28

A Comedy of Errors

My partner was having a bad night and not just because he was playing with me. Early on there was an ugly revoke, leaving us down one instead of making. A bid out of turn didn’t end up costing us anything because I was the only one at the table who noticed. I was the dealer and was trying to figure out just what to open when partner passed and then my RHO opened the bidding. In fact a take-out double described my hand better than I might have otherwise been able to so it may have even helped us a bit.

But those were trivial compared to the bizarre errors that took place on one hand in the fourth round. I am quite happy to say that for once I was not at fault. Vulnerable against not, my partner opened the bidding 2♠ and as is typically the case I was void in spades, what was not typical was that otherwise I had a nice hand:

♠ (void)
♥ AT9xx
♦ QTxx
♣ AQJx

But nothing gives me the jitters quite like a vulnerable misfit when the HCP are fairly evenly distributed so after my RHO passed I did as well and my LHO told his partner to lead. The opening lead was a small heart. When I put my hand down, my LHO joked that I should always put the trump down first, I replied that I had. Then he asked if I figured bidding 2NT would only get me a 3♠ response and I replied that I am “an eternal pessimist”. If memory serves partner won the ace of hearts and led a small diamond toward his hand (I think he had the king, in any event the diamonds set up). The important piece of information here is that the opponents got in and made him ruff a heart. Then he led the king of spades from his hand which lost to LHO’s ace. When partner got back in he led the queen of spades and my RHO showed out, my LHO gave my partner a little wave. Partner continued with the jack of spades followed by the ten on which my LHO played a club! My RHO said “No trump?!” sounding quite surprised. My LHO didn’t respond to his partner and I wasn’t going to say anything because while I was pretty damn sure my partner would not open 2♠ with nine of them to the KQJT, I was not at all sure this hand could be made so a revoke might come in handy. What I didn’t expect was my partner’s next move, he claimed the rest of the tricks!

My LHO was sputtering, “What do you mean the diamonds are good?” Partner looked confused, “Did I miss a diamond?” Since a director call was imminent I decided I ought to wait to mention the revoke. “You’re clueless!” LHO said in the same breath that he called for the director. For reasons that are clear to no one else, LHO wanted to speak to the director away from the table, once the director ascertained it was a faulty claim they returned and the director asked to see my LHO’s hand. (My partner’s hand was already face up on the table.) When the LHO showed his hand it was nothing but black cards including the 98x of trump. It seemed like as good a time as any to point out that my LHO had revoked on the last trick — news which caught him completely by surprise. When the revoke was proved to his satisfaction(?), LHO started demanding, “Partner, why didn’t you ask me, ‘No spades?’?” “I did!” “He did,” I added helpfully. The director finally made sense of the ridiculous circumstances (no easy task), and he granted us an over-trick. LHO was apoplectic.

I wish I could say that we went on to great things, but we gave all the matchpoints right back to them on the next hand when they got to an ice cold 7♠ with a combined 33 HCP.

Feb
26

Transubstantiation

I love preemptive bids. In fact an opening bid of 2♠ just might be my favorite bid — it’s such a hassle for the opponents to deal with and yet so descriptive for my partner. In 1st and 2nd seats my preempts are fairly controlled:

  • The suit has two of the top three or three of the top five honor cards.
  • I do not have the equivalent of (or more than) a singleton and a king outside of the suit.
  • I do not have an outside four card major.

Well, that’s the general idea anyway, vulnerability plays a factor, or perhaps more accurately, unfavorable vulnerability is more likely to keep me honest. I also take more liberties in first seat than second, that’s just a matter of the numbers, if I’m the first one to bid it is twice as likely that I’ll be causing problems for my opponents rather than my partner (much as I excel at the latter, it isn’t intentional).

Yesterday at the club I was even more tired than usual which is saying something. The cobwebs were forming in my brain faster than the coffee could hope to clear them. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?) The game was a three table, Howell movement, IMPs scoring. The Mad Scientist and I got a very lucky break in the very first round when we beat a vulnerable 4♠X by five tricks. I would do my darndest to eat into that cushion in the next to last round by letting an opponent make 2♠X, but despite my best efforts we would come in first by over 50 IMPs, which brings me to a hand that accounted for a fistful of those.

By the last round, I was really struggling and not a little worried about whether or not I could make it through the last five hands without giving away the whole of our (now somewhat smaller) lead. On the next to the last hand, both vulnerable, I was the dealer and picked up the following:

♠ AT98xx
♥ xx
♦ xxx
♣ Ax

If I squinted it looked like a 2♠ opener and I do love to open 2♠ so that’s what I did. As off-kilter as that bid was, it was the most normal bid of the auction:

2♠-(2NT)-3♠-(6♥)-

I’m looking half-hopefully at my hand and planning my attack, lead the ace of clubs to see if dummy’s spades are short enough for me to at all plausibly cash the ace of spades.

2♠-(2NT)-3♠-(6♥)-
P-(P)-6♠!-(X)-All Pass

The thoughts going through my head are best not reproduced here. Suffices to say, I realized in that moment that playing with me had finally driven TMS completely around the bend.

The opening lead was a low heart and the dummy came down with:

♠ KQxxxx
♥ (void)
♦ KJxx
♣ Kxx

Never mind that my LHO can’t possibly have his 2NT overcall (it turns out he had mistakenly thought it would show the minors) I’m trying to figure out just what the damage is going to be, and it’s pretty obvious they weren’t making six hearts unless something really unfortunate happened with the club suit. If I’m lucky in diamonds I might hold it to down one, I look back at my hand to examine the spots in the crucial diamond suit and a miracle occurs. The hand has transformed into:

♠ AT98xx
♥ xxxxx
♦ (void)
♣ Ax

Just call me “Rueful Rabbit”, I had mis-sorted the hearts into two suits and when I realized I was going to make the d_mned contract, with an overtrick no less, I almost fell off my chair. Perhaps I really would rather be lucky than good. As surprising as everything going on at our table was, at the other two tables no-one bid the spade slam. Had I sorted my hand correctly, I never would have opened it and when the TMS bid spades (either opening the hand or overcalling) I certainly would have come alive. I don’t know if my cue-bidding the minors would have gotten us there or not (or if I would have even gotten the chance to do so), but I’d like to think it might have.

Another notably less icy slam that we reached yesterday involved a terrifically fun auction. With the opponents’ (growing increasingly) silent throughout:

1♥-2♥*-
2♠**-2NT***-
3♦****-3♠-
4♣-4♦-
4♠*****-4NT******-
5♣*******-5♥********-
6♥

* Shows a limit raise or better with three hearts
** Start of a short-suit game try
*** What’s your short suit?
**** Singleton or void in diamonds
***** RKC Kickback
****** 0 or 3 Keycards
******* Do you have the queen of hearts?
******** Nope and it worries me that you’re asking.

(Those lonely un-starred bids in the middle are cue-bids.)

It took thirteen bids to find out that we might be able to take twelve tricks. I had a great time bidding it, but it was a good thing I wasn’t the one who had to play it.

Feb
25

Destroyer of Worlds

Yesterday at the club I found myself once again playing bridge with sitting across the table from the Mad Scientist. Someone when discussing a good player noted that they were “good for a couple of disasters every session” so by comparison, I reasoned, I must be Godzilla:

The first round of the session was fairly unremarkable. I played the first hand which is almost always a recipe for disaster since the caffeine has not yet kicked in, but there wasn’t much I could have done to mess it up.

In the second round I got my first opportunity to really screw up an auction, tripping over my own feet on the bidding, but managing to wake up just in time to pass and let partner play the hand in a still make-able contract (4NT as compared to 3NT, but he looked like he needed a challenge). Then I got to play a hand and it’s pretty safe to say I could not have done it any worse, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. I failed to take the on-side trump finesse, instead attacking a side suit by way of one of my patented “heads we tie, tails I lose” finesses that make me so popular with opponents (in this case I lost). The dust cleared and I was down one in a contract that should have made an overtrick.

Round three and my LHO opened the bidding 1♥, TMS made a take-out double and I chose to convert it to penalty while holding:

♠ x
♥ AQT9x
♦ xx
♣ Axxxx

TMS led a trump and the dummy hit with:

♠ AJTxx
♥ xx
♦ Jxx
♣ xxx

I won the opening lead and my thinking was something like, “I don’t want her to lead a trump through me,” and somehow that thought wound its way through my twisted little brain and became “So I’ll do it myself.” (?!) Anyway I returned a trump instead of a club and she made an overtrick. I rule.

Then a really strange thing happened, I actually managed to buckle down and not screw much of anything else up until the very last round when I committed the cardinal sin of leading a singleton trump. “You should never lead a singleton trump,” TMS noted dryly at the end of the hand. Then he wandered away from the table and returned with my system notes binder so that he and the owlet could glare at me in unison. The resemblance really is uncanny.

On an unrelated note, I scored a copy of All the Tricks signed by Helen Sobel.

Feb
24

Stewed, Screwed and …

I may need to get this tattooed on the back of my right hand:

Red = Dead

Then maybe next time I reach for the bidding box at unfavorable vulnerability, I will pause to reconsider.

Feb
23

Upload

Over the past week, a flurry of system updates have arrived from the Mad Scientist, leaving me somewhat dazed and with a vague sense of dread each time I check my e-mail. Unable to delay the inevitable any longer, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, gathered up the new sheets and went on a search-and-destroy mission through the system notes binder seeking outdated information. The system notes are housed within an unwieldy three-ring binder. The cover is a photograph of a pissed-off looking owlet, all fluff and talons. I chose that picture because the way in which the bird is glaring at the camera reminded me of the way TMS looks at me from across the table.

On the bright side, the updates do away with one bid (an amalgam of Flannery & Mini-Roman) that I might recognize but for some reason never seem to remember that I have at my disposal when I need it. The thing is whenever I’m playing something like Mini-Roman that gives 2♦ an artificial meaning, I find myself picking up hand after hand with six lovely diamonds and nothing else that just begs to be opened 2♦. When I’m not playing Mini-Roman, I pick up 4-4-4-1 hands all day, but honestly I find that to be less of an annoyance than the former (“You can pry my pre-empts from my cold dead hands!” Never mind, that in all likelihood my hands will be cold and dead exactly because I made a pre-empt at the wrong vulnerability and went for -1100, but I digress ….) On the not-so-bright side, an opening of 2♦ will still be conventional.

While it isn’t permissible for one partner to be playing one set of agreements while their partner plays another, in practice that is exactly what is happening when one partner consistently forgets that they have certain bids available to them. This point was driven home recently when TMS and I were playing against a good player and his student. TMS opened a spade in third seat, the student overcalled 2♥ and I, with a lousy hand and three small spades, raised to 2♠ which ended the auction. I was zoning out as dummy when the good player snatched up my convention card, then a look of complete surprise registered on his face and he put the card back down without a word. A few tricks later the seven card trump fit came to light for me too and I realized what he had been looking for on the convention card. It’s right there that the expected minimum length for a major suit opening bid in 3rd or 4th seat is four, but I can’t tell you the last time I opened a four card major, it just doesn’t occur to me to do so. I haven’t even given the issue significant thought, for example, should every opening hand in 3rd or 4th seat that includes a four-card major be opened with the major? Is there some sort of significance imputed if the opening bid is one of a minor and then a four card major is shown by opener? I probably should have thought about all this back when I started playing this card, but for now I have new sequences to process. Oh what I would give for a USB port into my brain.

Feb
22

Going Rogue

On Sunday, during a Swiss teams event, I demonstrated once again why it is almost never a good idea for me to go “off book” with my bidding. In third seat, vulnerable against not, I picked up:

♠ (void)
♥ xxx
♦ xxx
♣ AKQTxxx

I was all ready to open a gambling 3NT when my RHO opened 1♠. Of course, I don’t like the vulnerability, but if my partner has a spade stopper and at least one club we’re very likely to only be down one in 3NT. If my partner does not have a spade stopper we’re very likely only down two in 4♣ and while at matchpoints, 4♣X down two would be a disaster, this was IMPs. Plus I had a sneaking suspicion that our opponents might have a spade slam (just call me “Sherlock”). So I bid 3♠ asking partner to bid 3NT with a spade stopper. My LHO goes into the tank for a bit, asks my partner what my bid means and gets the response that I am asking him to bid 3NT with a spade stopper. Finally my LHO bids 5♠. Partner asks the opening bidder what that bid means and is told it is asking if he is at the top or bottom of his opening bid. Unfortunately(?) my partner has a spade stopper and so feels compelled to double 5♠ because he has no idea what my hand actually looks like (how could he?). At that point I bid 6♣, LHO doubles and my partner pulls to 6♥. The whole auction:

P-(1♠)-3♠*-(5♠)-
X-(P)-6♣-(X)-
6♥-(X)-All Pass

Not surprisingly, 6♥ is down four for -1100. Our teammates bid and made a small slam in spades, but of course we still lost IMPs on the deal (I hate to admit this, but in three of the last four IMP games I’ve played in I’ve gone for -1100 — nasty habit). As it turned out, my partner has three clubs to the jack, but he thought my bids showed something like a Michael’s type hand and felt he was not pulling, but correcting to hearts. We hadn’t discussed anything like a leaping Michael’s cue-bid so that particular interpretation hadn’t entered my mind when I bid 3♠, but I did know it wasn’t likely that he’d be able to guess what my hand looked like based on the bidding which is never a good thing in a partnership game. And, yes, I am still kicking myself for not passing 5♠X.

Feb
20

Contained

On Friday one of the Mad Scientist’s regular partners, a lovely woman who is also a very skilled card player — quite a lethal combination, asked if I wanted to play today. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity, only later to realize I had just agreed to play with her for the first time on a day when I would be on even less sleep than usual (due to working last night after playing in a Swiss teams event yesterday during the day).

Not surprisingly, I did a lot of zigging when I ought to have been zagging. On one competitive auction I bid 2♥ over LHO’s 2♦ and hit partner with a singleton heart and five diamonds to the ace. Down one might have been good if at other tables people weren’t getting to 3♦ and going down one or two, doubled or not. Twice I upgraded my hand based on a protected king in my RHO’s suit, and twice the ace of that suit was held by my LHO instead. I completely misdefended one hand, unsure whether my partner’s lead was trying to hit me after I made a shaky take-out double or if it was really her suit. My partner opted not to invite with a flat, unremarkable 8 HCP when I opened a strong NT and this time I was at the top of my bid and it made four; most of the rest of the field was in 3NT. Even the good hands weren’t matchpointing well, but it was still a very enjoyable game and I decided that our goal was just to beat TMS and his partner. When I left the club we were just barely ahead of them, but in the end they pulled half a board ahead of us coming in 5th to our 6th. Not a great showing at all by team “Lab Rats”.

Over the past year or so, I’ve spent a tiny fortune on interesting, antique and unusual playing cards that are now primarily being displayed in small, haphazard piles. My main interest has been in decks designed specifically for bridge, especially five-suit bridge and I now own several of those. I really ought to con, cajole and/or bribe some other bridge players into an exhibition match of five-suited bridge one of these days, just to see what it is like. Recently the ACBL posted a story on their website about the “green suit” that included a photograph of the famed Four Aces playing a round of five-suited bridge. I have example decks of the British “crown” suit and the American “eagles”, but not the Austrian “leaves” — I will remain vigilant. After the game this afternoon I headed to the Container Store (after a brief detour to the remaindered bookshop) to find a suitable storage container. I found just the thing in an archival box designed for Christmas tree ornaments, the dividers are adjustable and I think it will do very nicely for my purpose.

Feb
18

“I’m the root of all that’s evil, but you can call me ‘Cookie’.”

The “Swiss Pairs” was a disappointment. This is the 3rd year they’ve run this event and once again there was some issue with the scoring software which led to lots of confusion. The pairings were hard to decipher in part due to the fact that the software was not translating anything into victory points. In the end it looked to be just total matchpoints, and I fail to see how that’s different from regular pairs except that in this case one was playing a lot of boards against a small percent of the rest of the field. Of course, it didn’t help that after a solid first round against a good pair our standings slowly slid toward the bottom. Some of our misfortune was due to luck, but we brought most of it on ourselves.

On one hand I failed to recognize an obvious singleton lead and did not give Yin a ruff in the suit later on. We managed to beat it one despite that, but -100 was no good as we were making a part score our way, on the other hand, -200 would have been stellar. At least one good thing came of one of our more disastrous hands. Yin opened 1NT (15-17 HCP) and I invited with:

♠ KT
♥ QJx
♦ QTxx
♣ Txxx

It isn’t pretty, but I’ve seen worse and I like the QJ and QT holdings. Yin hadn’t and did not. It turns out he doesn’t invite with 8 HCP. It was probably time we got around to discussing that considering we’ve been playing together (though not always regularly) for almost two years. I wonder how many of those 8 HCP invites I’ve made over that time that have left him wondering just what I was thinking.

Finally in the last round, after we’d sunk below any hope of coming in anywhere at all, we got our sh_t together. We gave up one bad board (and I’m still not clear on why it was bad), and one average … the other five were tops or near tops. One of those near-tops was a hand on which Yin opened 1NT and I passed with 8 HCP. I hate it when he’s right. (But, for the record, I’m still going to invite after a strong NT opening with 8 HCP, just not with Yin.) One funny moment in the last round was when Yin opened 1♦ and I had:

♠ T9xx
♥ KJ
♦ Txx
♣ Qxxx

I dutifully bid 1♠ and, of course, Yin then jumped to 2NT. I started having flashbacks to a hand in Lancaster some three months ago on which I bid much the same way, but in retrospect I probably should have stretched to open 2NT. Yin had passed and I lost my cool completely after taking ten tricks (in my defense it was IMPs), “That 2NT rebid is basically forcing! It has to be because a jump to 3NT shows a different hand!” After that we added modified Wolff sign-offs to our card and never spoke of it again and here now I’m facing a hand that if ever a hand should pass that 2NT rebid by opener, this was it. I passed. On good defense, 2NT went down one. My comment after the hand was “I guess I really can pass 2NT.” Did I mentioned I hate it when he’s right?

I didn’t bother to stick around to see where we ended up, even with our terrific last round it isn’t likely we made it back to par and I’m playing the Swiss teams event tomorrow.

Update:

We ended up 1st in “C” and 5th in “B”, but were still pretty far out of the top ten.

Feb
17

Sleepwalking

I often find myself forgoing sleep in order to play bridge, in fact that’s the normal state of affairs for me, but tonight I was playing bridge to keep myself from falling asleep. After I got home from the bridge club this afternoon I was, not surprisingly, rather tired; but since I had taken tonight off from work in preparation for the Swiss Pairs event tomorrow, the last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep only to later find myself wide awake, at say 3 AM or so, and unable to fall back asleep.

I figured I could pick up a partner for the evening game, and I can’t emphasize this enough, because I didn’t want to inflict my even-more-sleep-deprived-than-usual self on any of my regular partners. I like them too much for that. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to inflict myself on a pick-up partner, but even after I went out for dinner I couldn’t think of a better plan to stay awake and I was fairly certain I could at least follow suit. (An aside, Yin’s version of how we starting playing together is hilarious because he claims that after the club had put him with a string of little old ladies who couldn’t even follow suit, he figured I couldn’t do any worse so he asked me to play — little did he know.) Anyway I could have sworn that Paul Dano, rocking a Jesus beard and long wavy hair no less, was sitting at the table next to mine at Qdoba and, since I’m not one who consistently recognizes my own reflection, the thought that I could spot an incognito movie star at a fast food restaurant probably should have persuaded me to go home.

Instead I called the club from the restaurant and my teacher, who was running the game, assured me he could find me a partner so off I went. When I arrived he told me that one of my regular partners was coming in to play with me … so much for that idea. My teacher sat in on the first hand. The opponents stretched to a game and we managed to beat it one. That was the last good result for quite some time.

Washington arrived and I wondered if I should just apologize up front for nodding off at the table during a lull in the action, like when I was declaring. It was a three table Howell movement and the cards simply weren’t going our way, no matter where we were sitting. In the second round we watched helplessly as the opponents bid to four ice cold games (one of which they really should be in a small slam) that the N-S pair before them simply had not bid (well, in one case they made it to a game, but it was the wrong one so they went down). We just bled IMPs that round through no real fault of our own. The third round was okay, but we weren’t picking up the sort of points we needed to recuperate. In the fourth round I found myself with all of the points for the defense on lead against 3NT and my haphazardly scrabbling around cost us dearly. I was definitely feeling mentally fatigued and by that time there had been a hundred unforced errors. The other two pairs were in 2NT off one, but I let our opponents make 3NT. I did, however, manage to follow suit consistently. I really did feel bad for Washington coming out to play with me.

Finally in the last round we got some points and this by far was my best hand of the night:

♠ Ax
♥ KQJxxx
♦ KQJx
♣ K

I opened the bidding in second seat, both sides non-vulnerable:

(P)-1♥-(P)-1NT*-
(P)-3♦-(X!)-P-(P!)-
P**

* Forcing
** (looking around at the bids on the table, wondering if I nodded off and missed something during the bidding) “Am I really getting to play 3♦X?”

My partner came down with everything and the kitchen sink for his forcing NT bid:

♠ Qxx
♥ x
♦ AT9xx
♣ Axxx

Needless to say I made six, which was good for +770. We might have made it to 6♦ without the interference, but the others were playing it in 4♥ making 6 so this was a very good result (certainly with an assured big plus score, it wouldn’t have been worth the risk to explore further). I wish I could say that (and the 3NT that we set 5 tricks on the next board) was enough to bring us back to life, but I don’t think it was and I wasn’t in the mood to stick around to find out. Though perhaps I should have as now I’m at home and still awake as evidenced by this entry.

Feb
16

Keeping Up with Yesterday

It’s remarkable how all seventeen of my online Scrabble opponents fall silent at once when I have some really heavy duty procrastinating to do. “But what of the BBO ‘bots?” you ask, “Aren’t they always available to kill the time that needs killin’ in some other way?” Well, yes, they are, but somehow avoiding bridge-related work by playing bridge does little to ease my guilty conscience. However, bridge is an excellent distraction when I have other kinds of work to avoid.