Jul
20

Telephone Numbers

I’ve been pretty disappointed with my overall performance during this tournament. I feel like I haven’t been playing at 100% and I’m hoping that will change today and tomorrow.

I went through the partnership desk to find a pair for a round robin event with Doc. We were paired up with two ladies who had about the same number of combined masterpoints as us which seemed promising. Then they mentioned that they had started playing duplicate at the same time together … twenty years ago. It was going to be a long day. I really wish the partnership desk would make it a policy to ask not only how many masterpoints a player or pair has, but how long it took for for them to be acquired.

Even so there were some bright points in the day. On one hand my RHO opened 2♣, vul. against not. I was looking at:

♠ xxx
♥ AKx
♦ Qxx
♣ JTxx

I watched in dull amaze as they bid up to 7NT with me on lead … and, yes, I managed to find a double. The dummy came down with:

♠ KQJxxxx
♥ JTxx
♦ xx
♣ (void)

I cashed my AK of hearts and exited with the ten of clubs. Doc turned up with the ace of spades besides, we also grabbed a club and a diamond trick for +1400 — a major swing despite the fact that our teammates went down one in 4♠, though I’m not really clear on how.

That night in a side game, playing with one of my favorite partners, we managed to scrape up an even better score on defense. My partner and I had found a major suit fit. In the process one of the opponents made an unusual NT bid and the other chose to take a sacrifice in 5♦ while I was still contemplating a slam on the hand. I was looking at the KJTx of diamonds and doubled, betting that we’d beat it enough to at least top all of the pairs who stopped in game. Turns out there were a couple of small slams available to us, but we held the offense to 4 tricks for down 7 and +1700. The declarer’s comment, “I guess I shouldn’t have bid 5♦.”

Jul
10

Getting Around

The Mad Scientist is out of commission at the moment, so I find myself getting to play with a bunch of different partners. I finally got to play a session with a very good player that I’ve been wanting to play with for ages. We didn’t do terribly well, but there were a couple of moments when I really appreciated having someone with so much sense sitting across from me.

When discussing what we were going to do over the opponent’s NT openers, I mentioned that in the pass-out seat: (1NT)-P-(P)-? I re-open on shape, not points and that she shouldn’t get excited if she had a good hand. I brought this up because I’ve had partners flip out on me for doing exactly that — usually because I hit them with the expected full opening hand and they pushed on to contracts that could not be made. Her response, “Oh that’s nothing special, that’s just good judgment.” My heart soared.

Considering how weird the hands were, we didn’t have many bidding misunderstandings. We bid two slams that didn’t make (though in retrospect, I should have made the one I played — I misjudged which of two finesses should have been my fall back one). Surprisingly, since defense is especially tough with a new partner, we did pretty well there and we were just playing standard. It’s amazing to me how effective standard defense can be with the right partner. I prefer odd-even discards and upside-down count and attitude, but really the methods don’t make a big difference — the real difference is made by whether or not both parties are paying attention.

Jun
23

Big & Small

The old man is staring daggers into me, practically spitting the words out, “You must have had a game your way!” It’s an accusation, not an observation. “We didn’t, but that’s beside the point.” It’s true that we should have doubled his contract or, at the very least, we should have played in a part score somewhere. If my partner had doubled the old man’s 1NT opening bid to begin with then I would have known to act over what turned out to be responder’s garbage Stayman bid. This is the point which I am trying to make to my partner but the old man keeps interrupting. I refuse to explain just why his -100 is going to be a good score regardless of the fact that we did not have a game.

This is the same old man who repeatedly demanded to know why he had to skip a table. I’m trying very hard to respect my elders, but my patience is wearing thin.

Earlier in the day I knew the declarer could not have a four card major after jumping to 3NT in response to his partner’s opening bid of 1♣. I knew very little else about his hand. And it was in fact true that he didn’t have a four card major, he had two.

We defended a particularly ill considered 3♣ contract very well beating it 4. I was afraid the declarer might cry. I’m torn between being incredibly proud of how my partner and I defended the hand, and wanting to make her feel better. “Every suit split very badly for you,” I said. She nodded. We moved on.

Playing with and against beginners is such a different experience. For one thing most of the mistakes I make go unnoticed. Yesterday TMS and I put forth an almost perfect defense on one hand. It was just a part score, it didn’t even matchpoint particularly well for us. But as we were putting the cards back into the board, I was inwardly beaming at how we had worked out exactly what to do, and that we had given the declarer no quarter. “Thanks for playing another heart,” I said. “You shouldn’t have played the queen at trick one,” he replied.

He’s right of course, it was the wrong card, wrong signal and potentially a costly error, but it just so happened that in this case it cost us nothing. I did everything right after that. With a beginner, the wrong signal at trick one may have not even been noticed, and even if it were it certainly would have been forgotten by the time we got to the end of the hand. Of course, a beginner never would have led another heart.

Once things have snapped into place it all seems so obvious, but until then …. I opened 1NT, my partner transferred me to spades and then bid 2NT. I liked my hand and with only a doubleton in spades went to 3NT. The dummy came down with a moth-eaten six-card spade suit and an assorted mess of 7 HCP. One suit in particular proved troublesome with only one stopper, and the missing spade honors were badly placed. I was down three (or four?). It was a lot. My partner asked if they shouldn’t have invited. I said the invite was a judgment call, and it was okay if they thought the hand was worth an invite … just they needed to tell me it was a six card spade suit by bidding 3♠ instead of 2NT. Whenever I’m playing with a regular partner and one of us opens 1NT (weak or strong) I feel safe and secure in the knowledge that we are very likely to get to the right contract, but I remember when I was first learning transfers and Stayman I used to dread 1NT openers.

I had a hand that I liked a lot, a gambling NT type hand with outside stuff but I was a little in love with my AKQTxxx of clubs. I opened 1♣. My partner bid 1♥. My RHO doubled. I jumped to 3♣. My partner bid 3♠. I shrugged and bid 3NT. Which got passed around to the RHO who doubled and everyone passed. I feel confident that I can make this as long as my partner’s spade stopper is sufficient. The dummy:

♠ QTxx
♥ T9xxx
♦ Qxx
♣ x

I feel the blood draining out of my head. My partner has bid not just once, but twice with four HCP. I’m still only down one as long as the clubs break. They do not. I’m down -1100. It’s IMPs. I need to excuse myself from the table. And then as I’m regaining my composure in the restroom the thought strikes me that this must be what TMS feels like playing with me. It’s all relative.

Like yesterday when I would have sworn I had counted 13 tricks and bid 7NT only to find that he had only one king not two and even if he had both kings it still only added up to 12 (I can’t count higher than ten with my shoes on), lucky for me it made seven anyway thanks to his holding the queen of diamonds but I hadn’t asked about that card.

TMS and I had a 72% game yesterday. I guess that’s what happens when you mistakenly bid 7NT only to find out that it makes anyway. When I got an e-mail after the game it was with a system correction only. My reply included a snarky remark about how I had played pretty well and “thank you so much for noticing”. His response was a recitation of mistakes that I’d made (including that queen of hearts play that marred our perfect defense). Oops.

Jun
10

First Loser

“Second place is just the first loser.” I suspect I was pretty young the first time I heard that and I still really hate coming in second. When it is by a close margin I spend hours analyzing all the ways in which I gave up the matchpoint that cost us first.

Today though that analysis was relatively simple, there were two hands that cost us a fistful of matchpoints. The second such hand was a joint effort. The opponents had 10 spades between them and the one holding KQTxx didn’t manage to find a 1♠ bid over my 1♣ opening bid; usually this would be a mistake but in this case it led us down the garden path to a doomed 3NT contract without a spade stopper (we should really be in 5♦). I even got a “mea culpa” e-mail from the Mad Scientist for that one. Initially I was excited to have proof of his fallibility in writing, but then I noticed that there was a set of updated system notes attached to the e-mail. *sigh*

The first really bad hand was all my doing. The opponents reached 4♠ after TMS had overcalled clubs on the two-level. I had 11 HCP and four spades so I doubled. I led a club, the dummy had a singleton. TMS won the trick and at trick two he made the strange return of another club. I even thought, “Well, gee, that’s weird,” but then failed to draw the correct inference.

The board at trick three:

♠ Qx
♥ Kx
♦ KQxxxxx
♣ (void)

My hand at trick three:

♠ Axxx
♥ AJxx
♦ Tx
♣ x

The declarer played the queen of spades from the board. While I was perfectly aware that I needed to kill the entries to the board, I didn’t work out the only way to do that was to duck the queen, leaving him on the board. If I had done that he would have been quite stuck. If he leads another spade to his hand, I will win that one and return my last club. If he leads a diamond to his ace (he would have the ace, wouldn’t he?) the best he can do is lead another club to ruff. Now he either leads another diamond which will prove to be his last diamond trick or he leads a heart which I’ll win and put him back on the board so he’s back in the same boat — only getting two diamond tricks. Seven card diamond suit, where is thy sting? All that, if only I duck the d_mned queen. Of course, had I ducked the queen we would have come in first. It’s all so easy in retrospect.

"Which way did he go, George?
Which way did he go?"

Jun
06

Twitch

I happened to be nearby when Washington said he was looking for a “decent” partner for tonight’s game. I volunteered anyway. I may not be decent, but I play bridge pretty well. Okay, so only half that’s true, but he agreed to play with me nonetheless.

My defense was only slightly better than it had been yesterday afternoon, which is to say it was pretty awful. Bridge is not a game in which choosing the devil you know pays off very well. And, most of the time, I only think I know what the devil’s going on. Tonight I led right into an almost completely solid suit in dummy in the hopes that my partner was void (I had a lot of cards in the suit, but none large enough to be a stopper). I guess I thought if he wasn’t void it wasn’t going to hurt anything. He was not void. He did have the ace in the suit that I had chosen not to lead for fear of pickling my queen. What I had failed to take into account was the fact that if I was wrong about the void my queen was dead anyway and now, thanks to my asinine play, so was his ace. Surprisingly it wasn’t a zero, someone managed to defend it even worse than I did — I suspect a revoke had to be involved.

As of this moment, I’m unlikely to play bridge in real life again until Friday. I suppose I ought to brace myself for the withdrawal symptoms.

May
22

The Agony and the Ecstacy

When one has a lousy game, the drive home feels like stumbling back after a bad night, hungover and ashamed of where one woke up. But when one plays well and wins, the drive home is exhilarating like that after a perfect night capped by a long-awaited kiss.

I got to experience both of these today; little wonder then that I’m so hooked on this game. Of course, when I do badly it’s a reflection on both my intellect and my skewed priorities; as well as proof that I will never live up to my potential and that I’ve made very poor life choices. Whereas when I win, it’s because I had a good partner and we got lucky.

There was one hand tonight that stands out which had nothing to do with luck but everything to do with having a good partner. The Mad Scientist and I defeated 2♥X, vulnerable, by 5 for +1400. (And no, the opponents had not had a bidding misunderstanding.) It only occurred to me later that TMS and I had actually made 4♥ our way; but I can’t imagine it would have been nearly so much fun and I doubt the opening lead would have been as favorable if we’d instead played it that way. (Incidentally, the double turned out to be just a bit of gratuitous violence because +500 would also have been a top for us.)

In fourth seat, vul. against vul., I opened:

♠ x
♥ AJ9x
♦ Kxx
♣ AQT9x

1♣-(1♥)-X-(P)-
1NT*-(P)-P-(2♥)-
P-(P)-X-All Pass

* 15-17 NT-type hand

(What do you mean that hand doesn’t look balanced to you?) In any event, I thought 1NT was a better rebid than 2♣, you know, just in case the opponents decided to step out of line — which they did.

My RHO actually had 10 HCP, but only 2 hearts and unfortunately for him four of his points were tied up in the wholly worthless KJxx of clubs. TMS led a club. I won the nine, and returned my stiff spade to TMS’s ace. He led his second club, this time I won my jack and returned the ten. I knew both the declarer and TMS were void, but the declarer did not ruff and instead pitched a diamond. Anyway, TMS scored one of his baby trump and believed my high club and so returned a spade for me to ruff. Then I played my ace of clubs forcing declarer to ruff high.

It gets a little fuzzy after that (the fog of war, I guess, this was the Battle of New Orleans and they were the British), but in the moment it was almost as if I could see through the backs of the cards, that’s how clearly I could picture the declarer’s and my partner’s hands. I felt omniscient in this one small, impractical regard (I suppose that’s what it is like for TMS on just about every hand). Anyway, I know that we won a diamond trick, I got to ruff another spade and I pulled declarer’s last trump with my ace to make my baby club good at the end. It’s a tad worrying that I could get so much pleasure out of something so brutal. Who knew defense could be so much fun?!

May
19

Getting Defensive

A lifetime ago, back at the very beginning of 2010, Doc and I were preparing to travel up to Connecticut for a regional tournament that coming February. This was to be my second regional tournament. I had gone off by myself for a couple of days to Lancaster that October, in fact, that is where I had met our teammates for the Connecticut tournament; but this was a far more serious undertaking since we would be there for five days and we’d be playing for those elusive gold points.

Doc had still needed some silver points to put toward making Life Master (needless to say, I needed everything) so the week between Christmas and New Year’s we had played almost every day at a sectional tournament. At the end of that week, despite a fair amount of success playing in the 299-er games, he told me that we needed to work on defense. And, if memory serves, he didn’t much care which agreement we reached, but it had to be something other than our present one which was “standard”, but really meant nothing in particular.

After poking around a bit (I think I read Bergen for the Defense), I decided I wanted to play upside-down count and attitude and odd-even discards. He agreed and I thought that the six weeks we had between then and the tournament would be more than enough to implement the new agreement.

Ignorance was bliss. I had no idea just how difficult improving our defense was going to prove to be; and I had yet to experience the phenomenon of working on one area of the game only to have another fall spectacularly apart. It quickly became apparent that six weeks wouldn’t be nearly long enough. Mounting a real defense was hard. But eventually I came to believe that I was decent at it.

Once again, I had been blissfully ignorant. Roughly a year ago I played with the Mad Scientist for the first time. It quickly became apparent that my defensive skills were sorely lacking. I wasn’t (past tense?) good at getting a count on declarer’s hand. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the spots on my partner’s returns or his count. I wasn’t identifying threats even when they were IN THE DUMMY; and did he just say he gave me an “adverse stiff gecko”?! Mounting a real defense is still hard and I still suck at it; only now playing with partners who like to whack anything that moves, my mistakes are often doubly apparent.

May
16

Regrets

The only thing more annoying than getting fixed is getting fixed when there was something you could have done about it. Tonight the thing I could have done about it was to make a Lightner double. The auction went 1NT on my left, pass by the Mad Scientist and 3NT on my right. My hand:

♠ T
♥ QT9xx
♣ A
♦ AKxxxx

If I double asking for an “unusual” lead in this sequence, then I will get my diamond lead and the diamonds split so that I can cash my AK exit with a small diamond to the now bare queen in dummy and when I get back in with my ace of clubs cash the rest of my diamonds for down two.

Instead I got a heart lead, which isn’t terrible but the opener didn’t really have a 1NT opener. She instead had a 17 HCP, two-suited hand with 5/4 in spades and clubs (even those of us who open a strong NT with a five card major would reevaluate this hand to too good to do so) so there were nine easy tricks for the taking in the black suits, the queen of diamonds and a heart made eleven — so instead of down two they are making two overtricks. How annoying is that?!

If the auction had started with her bidding a spade, I would always have had room to show my hand — probably with a 2♠ bid — though that would have gotten my partner off to the same lead. If, however, I am on lead against 3NT which would be much more likely in the hypothetical (1♠)-P-(1NT)-2♠… auction, then I can double with impunity.

I’m so annoyed at myself; in retrospect the double is so obvious it’s like a red neon “X” blinking in my head.

Apr
09

Snake Bit

Last night while mulling over the concept of some updated system notes (which is to say, I was not actually studying the notes themselves, I was instead just ruminating on the idea that I would need to spend time studying them — I’ve elevated procrastination to an art form), the thought occurred to me that for the next couple of months aside from whatever new conventions/system updates the Mad Scientist throws my way, I can and should dedicate most of my effort toward declarer play. Or, to put it another way, I thought that my defense had been pretty good of late, despite all the evidence (namely, my results) to the contrary. Of course, the moment I had this thought my fate was sealed.

I made two unspeakably stupid mistakes on defense in the first three rounds this afternoon. The first one was when TMS led a low heart, Qx came down in dummy and I played the king from KTx. Of course, TMS is not leading away from the ace of hearts and, perhaps more to the point, if in the worst case scenario the declarer has AJxx, then at least I can keep the queen from becoming an entry to the board. Of course TMS had the jack and my boneheaded play gave the declarer a trick allowing them to make their contract.

Next up, defending against 3NT, despite having a clear count on the club suit which contains the only possibly entry to the dummy for a running spade suit, I went up with my ace too early, way too early. When TMS realized I had another club (in fact I had three more), he looked bewildered then angry, “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“To ask if I have lost my mind suggests I ever had it to begin with, so NOW who’s the crazy one?”
“Still you.”
“Right you are!” *inexplicable puff of smoke*
“Were you supposed to disappear in that?”
“Yes, yes I was.”

Okay, so none of that actually happened … well, the club play happened, sad to say, that part was all too real. Later, when the Mad Scientist had regained his powers of speech (the club play in combination with the earlier heart one was so dumb it rendered him temporarily, if mercifully, speechless), he restricted his comments to calling me a “doofus” and mused aloud that he couldn’t decide which one of these plays was worse. I submit, that it was the club play. Reaching into a box in which one is very likely to find a snake is stupid, but reaching into a box in which one can see the snake and the snake is looking back is even more stupid.

Still, I did manage to fight back from these two mistakes to play like a human being for most of the rest of the session. Had I managed to avoid those two errors we would have had a very good game indeed, but as it was, we managed to scrape up a fraction of a masterpoint for our efforts.

Apr
06

No Escape

I’ve only ever found one solution for playing a lot of bad bridge and that is to play even more (bad) bridge, eventually something has to give. My alarm went off this morning and the first thought that entered my head was: It’s matchpoints; just do the best you can one board at a time, one card at a time.

Sounded simple enough, but in practice it was anything but. There were a number of strikes against me from the get-go, the first being that my immune system is trying to sneeze me to death; second, my allergy medication allows me to wander around not sneezing (much) but does so by stuffing my head with cotton and third the cluckier of the two hens was sitting nearby with a different partner who was also quite clucky (Where does she find these people that are so easily provoked and yet tolerate her?!) so I had to tune them out as well.

In that very first round I hit a simple three-card ending that my brain simply refused to unravel, I probably spent 30 seconds on it, which for me is an eternity, and then I played the wrong card. The sickening thing is had I not given it any thought at all I would have played it correctly. There really is nothing like making the wrong play after careful consideration to make yourself feel like a complete f_cking moron. The Mad Scientist was nice about it, but was clearly flabbergasted that I could have made such a brain-dead play at all, much less, after thinking about it. If after my performance on Monday he still thought there might yet be hope for me, that play removed all doubt. Time to bring out the guinea pig.

We seemed to be having a lot of weird misunderstandings with the bidding today and were stumbling along with mixed results. Finally I told TMS that my new goal was not to give the Troll any good boards. The bridge gods must have heard me, and as much as they hate me they love the Troll, so on the second board in I made a bad discard and as a result we gave them an overtrick in a contract they had no business being in in the first place (looking at the hand record, I have to admit I would have bid it the same way, but it wouldn’t have worked for me) for a cold top. The discard brought up some interesting issues though, one of which is when playing odd-even discards and one is stuck with a hand full of bad options, which is the least encouraging, encouraging signal one can make? For reasons I’ve not explored, I’ve always felt that an odd card in a suit is a stronger “come on” than an even card in a suit I don’t like.

After leaving the club, grateful to have cracked 50% (my expectations are realistically low at this point), I went to the grocery store. I’d forgotten it was a holiday and the place was packed. Mostly I just wandered around trying to remember what I needed besides pickles and anti-allergy eye drops. At one point I glanced up from staring lustfully at a display of cakes in the bakery and came face-to-face with the Troll! I took that as my cue to get out of there before the Hen showed up too, I mean, throw in Mr. Snuffles and that foursome would make for the perfect bridge game in h_ll. Speaking of h_ll, I’ll be back at the bridge club tomorrow screwing it all up one board at a time, one card at a time, only this time I’ll be wearing bunny ears.