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.

Jan
16

Withdrawal

I’m off to Virginia for a few days. It won’t exactly be a break from bridge since I have a couple of books I want to take with me (including The Rodwell Files) and I’ll be taking my laptop along primarily so I can finish up the class notes I’ve been working on concerning bidding in competition. (The wide-eyed look I got from most of the class when someone asked a question about raising their partner’s overcall and I mentioned cue-bidding left me thinking I probably ought to start from the beginning.) Still, because I can hardly help myself, I poked around on the ACBL site to see just what was available bridge club wise. The entire state has a dearth of full time bridge clubs and in many cases scary terms like “semi-monthly” can be found lurking in the listings. It occurs to me that perhaps my dream of one day running away to live in relative isolation in the Blue Ridge mountains may have a fatal flaw.

Dec
17

Dream Sequence

The buzzer went off just as I was realizing a line of play that would enable me to set up the moth-eaten heart suit, clinching the contract. The line of play evaporated into mist. My hand shot out from under the covers to smack the snooze button. In the next nine minutes, the suit re-materialized but the line of play did not.

I’ve always been a prolific dreamer, my dreams are often both vivid and strange and I seem to recall an awful lot of them. Nowadays, more than anything else, I dream about bridge. Every day, in my dreams there is bridge being played and bridge being watched. I literally dream about new conventions.

Just the other night the Mad Scientist sent me some notes on a convention we had discussed (specifically, TOPS – Transfer Openings Pre-emptive or Strong) and I glanced them over before going to bed. My dreams found me defending against a pair playing that system. When I awoke there was another e-mail, with a refined version — I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking about it overnight. I saw TMS at the club later that day and noted that I been dreaming about the system and I felt that it would enable the opponents to double our riskier preemptive bids easily — a trade off I wasn’t ready to make, especially with my penchant for far-reaching pre-emptive bids in 3rd seat. I hadn’t really given much conscious thought to it, but this was clearly the Achilles heal of the system and TMS agreed.

On another occasion, while away at a tournament, I sat down for the evening open pairs session and on the first hand found myself playing a pretty cozy 3NT contract with 30 HCP between my partner and I. The dust cleared and I was off one. I tried to put it out of my head for the rest of the session, but it was the first hand I looked at on the hand record. Yes, there were two 6-0 breaks, but the hand record claimed it could be made. I stared at it. My partner started at it. Lots of people seemed to be looking at because in a big room full of bridge players only two had actually brought it home and they seemed nowhere to be found — even double dummy it looked impossible. I went to bed that night hoping my need for sleep would trump my need to solve that brain teaser of a hand. I awoke at 5 AM with the answer, but I wasn’t able to fall back asleep and, frankly, I felt as if I had spent the five hours between not sleeping but working that hand out.

Yesterday I was again at the table with TMS. A week ago we mis-defended a hand that boiled down to my desperately needing a heart to be led, and him not believing that I could have the holding that I had and therefore not lending much credence to my signals. Today he solemnly vowed to lead a heart when I asked for one, I mentioned that he had not done so in my dreams that morning. I didn’t mention that in that case I forgave him because a velociraptor had burst into the club which caused a bit of a distraction right in the middle of the hand. (And yes we did keep playing once the dinosaur had moved on. Remember, in a bridge club you don’t have to be able to outrun the dinosaur, you only have to be able to outrun the other bridge players — not a tall order in most cases.)

Aug
11

I can sleep when I’m dead.

Once again work and bridge have conspired to keep me from sleeping for more than three hours at a time for the next few days. Granted whenever I drag myself off to a tournament I typically find myself getting five hours of sleep on a good night so two 3-hour naps isn’t that bad. I could blame my current preoccupation with playing on being so close to Life Master that I can taste it, but I’ll be surprised if my priorities actually change after that particular milestone has come and gone.

Speaking of time management, I now have a group of women meeting every other week so that I can teach them 2/1. I learned it from Audrey Grant’s excellent book on the topic, but some people don’t particularly like book learnin’ and I guess that is where I come in.

Last winter I was asked to take over two classes at a local community college when the regular teacher headed south for the winter — the bigger of the two classes is about 36 people and they are beginner/intermediate, the small class is about 12 people and they are novices. I’ve been asked to step in again, except this year it will be for the month of November as well as January, February and March. I’m already starting to think about lesson plans for the intermediate group — having spent some time last year emphasizing how important it is to show partner shape and HCP by opening NT whenever possible, this year I think I’ll teach them DONT so they can “disturb” those who actually adopted that particular proclivity.

Which brings me to the point of this scattered entry, I never wanted to be a bridge teacher. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve said in a number of contexts that I would make a lousy teacher and yet both classes last year seemed to like me, my little group of soon-to-be 2/1 players like me and I find the exercise challenging and surprisingly enjoyable (even as I see a significant absurdity to the idea that anyone could learn anything from me and my 2 1/2 years of experience). When I think about my own game, all I can see is how much I still need to improve. I don’t want to fall into a trap of being content as a decent player and a good teacher, I still want to be an expert one day, but I’m coming around to the notion that teaching might actually help me towards that end.