Mar
14

Pop Quiz

I did not relish the thought of reviewing the past six weeks worth of material on over-calls that I’ve been working on with my intermediate class. I couldn’t say whence it came (surely, it had nothing to do with the beery hours I spent in a pub on Monday night), but yesterday morning when contemplating how best to tackle the problem, inspiration struck: PUB QUIZ! Unfortunately this idea did not pop into my head until about an hour before the class was scheduled to start.

One mad dash through Staples later (have I mentioned my office supply fetish?), I had acquired the meager components needed to pull off such a thing. I already owned a white board and a collapsible easel (the office supply thing may be an affliction, but it comes in handy sometimes), so all I really needed were some pads of paper and a set of big colored markers. (I wanted to invest in a set of small white boards and the attendant markers, but could not justify the expense.)

I announced to the class that the three other people at their table were now their teammates and gave them each a pad of paper and marker (the color of which became their team name, I just couldn’t bear the thought of eight teams squabbling over who got to call themselves ‘the Aces).

I spent the next hour writing hands on one half of the white board, while keeping score on the other. The basic structure was to give them a bidding sequence and then ask, “Now what would you bid with this hand?” In some cases they were making a direct overcall, in some cases they were responding to their partner’s overcall and in some cases they were balancing. Discussing the answers and fostering the debate between teammates made it a really great way to go over a lot of material fairly quickly. The time flew by. I even had a sudden death question all lined up in the event of a tie, but one of the teams managed to answer every single question correctly (I was so proud). Afterward, numerous students, perhaps even the majority of them, made a point of telling me that they really enjoyed the quiz so I think I’ve found my new way to review topics with this group.

Now I just need to convince my club’s owner that we need the occasional bridge quiz competition at the club. I think some people would really be into it and perhaps it could be used to draw a bigger crowd to the sparsely attended weekend games.

Speaking of teaching, I was playing against one of my students at the club. She made a jump overcall to 3♠ and remarked to her partner, “My teacher says we should be as annoying to our opponents as possible.” In fact, her bid was so annoying it took me a minute to realize she was quoting me. I had such mixed emotions about it, on one hand she made a great bid that left her opponent without any clear idea about how best to proceed, but in this case that opponent was me! Sure enough she kept us from finding our 4-4 heart fit (unfortunately for her, the other pairs sitting our direction were bidding NT and going down a lot).

Mar
06

An “A” for Effort

Not that very long ago in preparation for addressing my intermediate class about basic defensive signaling I set up some hands that included a suit that would block if not handled carefully. It took a surprising amount of time to come up with the perfect holdings that would be fairly simple to unravel, given a little effort, but that would hopelessly block if played thoughtlessly. This afternoon while playing with three students I watched two of them block a diamond suit in which the student on lead held KQTxx and her partner held Axxx while the remaining diamonds split 2-2. After making an overtrick, my partner wanted to know why I hadn’t raised her opening bid of 2NT to 3NT with my 3 high card points. “So an opening bid of 2NT isn’t forcing?” she asked.

Recently I read a book by Eddie Kantar in which he talked about some of his experiences teaching and he noted that shortly into his career he began refusing to teach beginners because he felt their logic was starting to work on him. He started teaching “intermediate” classes instead. He noted that it did not bother him in the least that the same people showed up.

As an aside Kantar mentioned that if he didn’t include a five card suit in a hand no one in the class would open it no matter how many HCP it contained. Today a student asked me what she should over-call on the three level with a flat 14 HCP hand. The hand looked vaguely familiar. I asked her how the bidding had gone and she told me that she had passed and her LHO had opened the bidding 1♥ and that her RHO had raised to 2♥. I asked her why she hadn’t opened the bidding and she said it was because she didn’t have a five card suit. Of course. This was a hand that I had set up to demonstrate a Michael’s cue-bid, but the E-W pair had gotten to the intended contract on their own anyway. (Needless to say, the woman who opened her two-suited 10 HCP hand, vulnerable, in 2nd seat has real potential.) The first thing I started with when the beginners arrived for their class was to exhort them to open all hands that contain 12 or more HCP regardless of whether or not they have a five card suit, but I just know that’s going to come back to haunt me someday.

With the beginners I was working on play of the hand, specifically counting sure winners and figuring out where to come up with the needed tricks to make a contract. I set up two hands that would have plenty of transportation between them so that we could end up in whichever hand we liked almost no matter what, but first we needed to talk about why there were only seven sure tricks in the hand before we went looking for the other two needed to make 3NT. One of the students was struggling with why the AKx of hearts across from QJx of hearts was only going to produce three sure tricks. “Well,” I said, “If we had this …” (here I grabbed a small heart from another hand to shove into the dummy to produce AKxx) “… now we can get four tricks from this holding, but as it is …” (here I took the small heart away again) “… we can only ever get three.” She nodded. I moved on to talk about setting up long suits so that the small cards will take tricks too. I talked about finesses and moved kings back and forth between the hands to show how sometimes a queen will take a trick and sometimes it won’t. Ten minutes in and I was still getting looks of what I took to be real comprehension so I felt great. When I was about to scoop up all the hands to move on, the same woman said, “But with the hearts, I have the ace, the king, the queen AND the jack so why won’t I take four tricks?” I gave up and asked her how she was going to play the suit, she paused and after a long moment said, “Oh.” Oh, indeed.

Feb
14

Valentine

In honor of St. Valentine’s Day, I brought my bridge class conversation hearts and the best piece of partnership advice I have ever received:

It is widely accepted that when partners of different levels are playing together, the better partner should play only the agreements and conventions with which the other is comfortable. So if you are confronted with a partner who wants to play a bunch of silly conventions that you don’t know or don’t like simply say, “Partner, since clearly you are the better, more experienced bridge player, would you mind playing these conventions with me?” Voilá, never again will you have to play any agreements you don’t like.

I failed to mention that were I to take this advice myself I wouldn’t have any partners because all I really have to offer partnership-wise is an uncanny knack for sort of, kind of, sometimes, half-remembering conventions.

As he was leaving, one of my students wished me a Happy Valentine’s Day and told me to go out and do something I couldn’t tell him about, so I guess I should make a psych bid or open a four-card major or something.

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.