Aug
09

“… and they’re spectacular.”

Some of my bridge friends took me out for dinner tonight. (“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” “Which word?” “Friends.” “I have friends!”) In between playing bridge in the afternoon and dinner, I went home and changed my shirt. This exchange took place in the parking lot between me and a very classy woman in her sixties as we were walking into the restaurant:

Her: “You changed your clothes.”

Me: “Yeah, I didn’t think I should wear my ‘Scream Show’ gorilla t-shirt.”

Her: “That would have been okay. We like you for what’s under your shirt.”

Me: *somewhat awkward pause as I glance back over my shoulder at her*

Her: “I wasn’t talking about your boobs.”

Me: “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Then we both started laughing.

This afternoon I played with Washington and we had a lousy session. One major bidding misunderstanding and a bad bid by yours truly grabbed us two absolute zeroes in one round. In general the hands were running the other direction and our defense ran the gamut from uninspired to idiotic. But nothing that either of us did could compete in terms of pure stupidity to a piece of defense I witnessed from my partner tonight. It had been awhile since I had called the club to pick up a partner and now I remember why. At unfavorable vulnerability my LHO opened the bidding with a weak 2♦ bid. My partner overcalled 2♠. While I was contemplating what the hell to do with this hand:

♠ AT
♥ JTxx
♦ Axx
♣ Txxx

My RHO bid 3♦. My partner must have a decent hand for his bid and while I don’t think they’re making 3♦, I’m not at all sure that we have a game our way so I double, thinking it shows some values and something in the round suits. If my partner is good enough for us to make a game our way, I think we’re likely to beat them two if he leaves it in. If he has a very distributional hand with long spades and no defense, he’ll probably pull. My ambiguous double ends the auction. My partner leads the ace of clubs and this is the dummy:

♠ Qxx
♥ xxx
♦ KT
♣ KQJ9x!

My partner makes a joke about leading at strength. I drop the ten of clubs, we happen to be playing upside down count and attitude so this would be taken as discouraging, but in this case a shift to any other suit is so clearly advisable that I actually meant this as suit preference, which is to say I want a spade shift. Either way, it can not be the case that I want clubs continued, but I’m not really concerned about a club continuation because that ace must be stiff.

Declarer follows suit and I’m thinking, “Right, gotta be a stiff ace,” and then my partner leads another club. I’ll let that sink in … not only did he lead the ace from Axx against 3♦X, he continued the clubs with KQJ9 in dummy, when the declarer is marked with a long suit and a weak hand.

I can tell you that the declarer pitched two spades on the KQ of clubs and in so doing made her 3♦ contract which should be down three (the club continuation cost us two spade tricks and a spade ruff). I don’t clearly remember the rest of the hand because I was blind with rage. Our teammates (it was a small IMP game) were down two in 2♦ at the other table. They were not well pleased with the -670 we brought back for a total of -870 or 13 IMPs on a hand that can only make a part score either way. I totally lost it at the end of the hand. My partner claimed his error lay in not taking note of my discard. “Even if I gave you a ‘come-on’ in clubs, you should decide I’ve lost my f_cking mind and switch to something else!” I replied. And later, once I regained my composure, I had the thought which I’ve had many times before when a partner has done something so hopelessly dumb that I’m too astonished to be angry, “This must be what it feels like for [the Mad Scientist] when he’s playing with me.”

Jul
26

“Bridge players do it with finesse.”

Some poor soul came to this ‘blog by way of a Google search for: “Pick up lines for bridge clubs”. He or she didn’t find what they were looking for and, clearly, that’s an oversight on my part. So without further ado:

The Top Ten Pick Up Lines for Bridge Clubs

10. “Do you play Precision? Because you are precisely what I’m looking for.”
9. “Would you be my main squeeze?”
8. “You’ve just executed a coup of my heart.”
7. “How would you like to come play rubber bridge at my country club? They’ve never even heard of Stayman.”
6. “If you were a convention, which convention would you be?”
5. “You could be the queen of my heart.”
4. “Play here often?”
3. “If you give me your heart, I’ll buy you a diamond.”
2. “When it comes to looks, you’ve got them in spades.”

And the number one pick-up line used in a bridge club …

“I have 10,000 masterpoints and most of my teeth.”

Jul
16

Birds of a Feather

I sat down across from Doc for the first time in almost a year and picked up:

♠ QJxx
♥ xx
♦ Axxx
♣ AT

Doc opened 1♣. I bid 1♠. He reversed into 2♦. I raised to 3♦ and was thinking that a slam was a vague possibility when he jumped to 6♦. There are a number of bids that would have been better, but considering the fact that he felt his hand was worth a jump to 6♦ and I’m looking at both of his minor suit aces I felt that I had to bid 7♦. It’s a very poor percentage slam, but it happens to make.

Our opponents looked despondent, but I knew their teammates and I told them, “If anyone else in this room would go to seven it’s the guy who’s sitting in my seat at the other table.” They looked unconvinced, but that guy is a lunatic (takes one to know one) and that terrible 30% grand slam was the only push of the match.

Jul
04

“You can’t miss the bear.”

In the first episode of the television show Weeds, the two sons of the main character are obsessed with a fictional bear-hunting show entitled “Bear Hunt”. The catch phrase of that show which gets repeated through-out that first episode is, “You can’t miss the bear.” Take your shot, don’t take your shot, but whatever you do you can’t miss the bear.

Both sides vulnerable, the bidding had gone (P)-P-(1♣)- to me. I over-called 1♦ with:

♠ xxx
♥ AKJ
♦ ATxxx
♣ xx

I would have liked at least one four card major to double. My LHO doubled (which should be a negative double showing both majors). The long-suffering Washington redoubled and the opening bidder passed, so did I and, surprisingly, so did my LHO. So that left me in 1♦XX.

The opening lead was a small club. The dummy hit with:

♠ KTx
♥ xxxx
♦ KJ
♣ QTxx

The opponents took two club tricks and led a third one which I ruffed in my hand and was somewhat surprised that it held. I led a small diamond to my king and now my RHO dropped the queen which strongly suggested to me that my LHO actually had five diamonds, which meant he could not have both majors. This is where I went terribly terribly wrong. I led a small heart back to my hand and took the finesse.

Instead of a negative double my LHO doesn’t have anything in the majors he is instead 3=2=5=3 and no values in spades so my king of spades is dead and he got to ruff my king of hearts. On the other hand, my RHO (who opened) has both majors, he’s 4=4=1=4 so he passed assuming his partner would reopen with the better of his two majors.

You’ll note of course that if at trick four I had instead just taken my AK of hearts and my remaining good diamonds I would have had seven tricks right then (1 club ruff, AKJT of diamonds and the AK of hearts). Instead I was down 1 for -400. I’m an idiot. I missed the bear.

Jul
02

Slammed by the ‘Bots

I’ve spent a significant amount of time playing bridge with the ‘bots on BBO, enough that I have seen some incredibly glitchy bidding and playing from them. Still nothing even approaches the glitch that I’m about to describe.

This didn’t happen at my table, but I noticed a scoring aberration that made me curious about what was going on at the other tables and I found that somewhere an East-West pair had played the contract in 7NTXX … down twelve (or -7000 for those of you keeping score at home). At our table, the E-W pair had been in 3♣ off two, I’d been expecting +200 to be a pretty good score for us even at IMPs.

I assumed it was someone goofing off, but when I took a closer look at what in the h_ll was going on at that table I found it was a ‘bot that had made the 7NT overcall — a bid that was alerted as being unusual for the minors. Unusual indeed, but what is even more unusual is the redouble! (Link to hand: here.)

Jun
29

Tangled Web

Not vulnerable against not vulnerable, in 4th seat I pick up the following hand:

♠ KJxx
♥ Tx
♦ AKQJ
♣ AKT

Twenty-one high card points so pretty that I’m leaning toward opening it 2♣ and rebidding 2NT rather than opening it 2NT. These thoughts turn out to be embryonic chickens, my LHO opens the bidding 3♣. My partner dips in to the tank briefly and while he’s there I’ve already decided that when it gets passed around to me I’ll bid 3NT. It’s the perfect hand for it, but then my partner bids 3♥ and I know we have a slam, maybe even a grand, because his bid promises a good opening hand. If it’s only 12 or 13 HCP, then a very good suit.

In the time it takes for my RHO to pass I decided that the only thing I really care about is aces. My partner and I are not playing last suit bid for Roman-Keycard, so I feel safe in jumping to 4NT because no trump suit has been agreed upon.

He responds 5♦ showing only one ace. I’m surprised because there isn’t much room left for him to have an opening hand without both aces. Now I’m the one who goes into the tank a bit.

He can have no points in diamonds. Realistically, he likely has no points in clubs (my opponent could have opened 3♣ with six to the ten, but it isn’t likely even at this vulnerability). That means he must have the queen of spades, either the ace of hearts or the ace of spades, so he has to have the king, queen and jack of hearts to get up to twelve high-card points. Absolute worst case scenario he doesn’t have the jack of hearts and he made this bid with only eleven HCP.

I wonder briefly if maybe he made the wrong bid, maybe he meant 5♥. But I’m confident he understood my Blackwood bid to be standard because had he taken it as RKC he would have shown me at least two keycards — he can’t possibly make his bid without either both of the aces or an ace and the king of hearts so I’m not worried about it being on a finesse when I bid 6NT.

All that said, when the dummy came down with:

♠ QTxx
♥ KQJxxxx
♦ xx
♣ (void)

I was surprised to say the least. He was surprised when I was down one missing both major suit aces. I yelled about him preempting over a preempt. He yelled about me bidding 6NT off two aces. It was the second time that time we’d gone down one in a small slam (the first time the culprit was a small heart doubleton and the oh-so-hard to find lead of the ace of hearts, followed by the king).

Of course, had he passed, I would have bid 3NT (as planned) and now he could placed the contract in 4♥. I’ll know that he knows that I have a monster hand and won’t worry (much) about missing a slam. Or maybe I’ll get cute and bid 5♣ and then he’ll bid 5♥ and then I’ll shut up. Either way, we get a plus score and a warm fuzzy feeling. Instead he’s sending it off to his expert who always agrees with him; I suppose I’m going to have to become an expert just so I can have one of those too.

May
08

Your cards have no clothes.

The bridge gods continued their campaign of messing with my head today. This afternoon when I played with the Mad Scientist, he got decent cards; we both did in fact and a good time was had by all.

I went back for this evening’s game which I ended up running. Luckily I had come prepared for that eventuality by wearing my “Now Panic and Freak Out” t-shirt. I managed to stay relatively calm even as I set up a truly terrible Mitchell movement that included a North-South sit-out, a skip and a “revenge round”. But the cards were awful; one hand really did freak me out just a little. I opened 1♦ in first seat vulnerable with:

♠ AJxx
♥ xx
♦ AKQTxx
♣ K

My high hopes for the hand were dashed when my opening bid was followed by three passes. The opening lead was the queen of clubs. The dummy came down with a singleton diamond and no card higher than an “8″ and only one of those. Even TMS has never devised a dummy quite that disappointing.

Earlier in the evening, my partner had wisely chosen to leave me in 2♠ with a void in spades, but at least on that hand he had the ace of clubs and the KJT9xx of hearts (a suit in which I was void). I was able to make five for a top when the lead was a small heart and I played the jack followed by my RHO playing his ace.

On the hand in question with the sub-Yarborough for a dummy I made my one for a good score when I won five diamonds and two spades (unfortunately for me, my RHO followed the Rabbi’s Rule on the opening lead making the hand just that much more panic-worthy).

Apr
28

Loaded Banana

“Oh good, we’re skipping [the Mad Scientist],” one of the better players muttered to his partner as they walked by our table. One day some player I have a healthy respect for will say, “Oh good, we’re skipping her.” Probably I won’t hear it because I’ll be too busy listening to my partner call me names and I’ll miss what is actually the sincerest form of flattery.

Those of us who play bridge with a chip on our shoulder, as if we have something to prove, are always looking to lock horns with the best players in the room. The good players, of course, aren’t typically even aware that they’ve been targeted. At best, the up-and-coming player is viewed as a minor annoyance; at worst, they are seen as a mere conduit to the next top. It’s a sign that you’ve arrived when the old guard cease to enthusiastically embrace these skirmishes. The next best thing to being someone the good players are wary of, is playing with someone the good players are wary of, but one day I too will stop giving out more tops than bottoms and will rise to the level of fearsome adversary minor annoyance.

Speaking of chips on shoulders, the Hen was there today. On our first hand against her, I opened the bidding, the Hen’s partner over-called, TMS raised and then the Hen raised her partner. I accidentally pulled out two pass cards at once. She made a remark about how that was an extra weak bid, “She has a terrible suit.” In fact, I had a good suit, but a terrible hand, not that it mattered. On the next hand the same thing happened (one of the pass cards was bent and was catching the card next to it). She said something again. At the end of the bidding I shoved the offending pass card toward the back of the box. Though she would have claimed to be joking she was actually insinuating that I meant something by it, which, needless to say, I did not. While she’s hated me ever since I made that alleged psyche bid, she seems genuinely fond of TMS (who isn’t?) so I doubt she thinks he would take part in such a harebrained scheme which makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. Or maybe she really was joking, chickens aren’t known for their sense of humor.

The Mad Scientist and I came in 2nd by one lousy matchpoint. I surrendered both the tying and winning points dozens of times today, but the last two rounds were especially bad. I got lazy on defense and botched things on a hand when I had only roughly sketched in the count without really working it out. TMS noted that I should have known it was safe to tap declarer in my long suit because even though she had length she’d be forced to ruff in front of me on subsequent tricks, never setting up her honor in that suit. I explained that I hadn’t wanted to risk setting up her jack, but I guess I looked stricken because when I was done he said, “It’s okay.” I said, “It’s really not.” And he said, “You’re right; you’re a f_ckin’ kumquat.” And with that status quo was restored. At times, TMS has threatened to bring a banana with him to give to me whenever I’ve really blown it (a nod to my suggesting he might do better training a monkey to play bridge). This seems like a good plan, mostly because when enacted I’ll have a life-time supply of free bananas.

Yin and I have been working on not becoming demonstrably angry with one another at the table. Perhaps he and I should adopt something like the banana system. Since we’re far closer in skill level than the TMS and I, my thinking is that we should exchange the “banana” whenever one of us commits a grievous error. Like a game of hot potato in slow motion, the goal will be not to be the person stuck with the banana at the end of the session. (Errors induced by partner, presumably so that they can unburden themselves of the banana will not count.) Of course, it doesn’t have to be a banana (which would almost certainly get bruised and smelly in the process), it could be a loaded die or a plastic figurine, something small, useless and funny that would both express our displeasure but sting less for the receiver than nasty remarks.

While I didn’t win at the club today, I still feel like a winner because I won an eBay auction for a first edition of The Four Aces System of Contract Bridge that was signed by all Four Aces (Oswald Jacoby, David Burnstine, Howard Schenken and Michael T. Vanderbilt). This particular copy was “awarded to Mr. Myer S. Kripke for correct solution of the Four Aces’ problem published in the Playbill.” I am a very happy kumquat.

Mar
24

“What have they got that I ain’t got?”

The following comic strip has been hanging on my refrigerator door for some years now:

I’m quite prone to err on the side of overbidding rather than under; for reasons I can’t quite explain, it bothers me FAR more when I’ve been cowardly. I’ve always said, and it’s true, that I’d much rather be -50 than +170. But today I failed to bid a very cold grand slam even though I had an absolute monster and the Mad Scientist opened the bidding.

My hand:

♠ AT
♥ AKJxxx
♦ Axxx
♣ K

He opened 1♣ which is either clubs or a big NT (very little doubt in my mind which it was). I transferred to hearts showing 4+ hearts. He showed that he had long clubs (surprise, surprise). I bid 2♦ which shows something in diamonds, but is mostly just noise (and forcing) on this auction. He now bid 2♥ showing three hearts. I jumped to 4♠ which is RKC Blackwood. He showed one ace. I asked if he had the queen of trump and he responded that he did and that he also had the king of diamonds (denying that he had the king of spades in the process).

Clearly, I would never have bothered to ask about the queen of trump if I wasn’t interested in seven, but in the moment of truth, I faltered and signed out in 6♥. I couldn’t count 13 top tricks, but was failing to take into account the fact that he would almost certainly be able to set up his clubs with my holding the stiff king even if he had to ruff a couple of them to do so. I had been worried about the diamonds, but he can’t possibly also have long diamonds on the auction. TMS humored me a bit by not claiming at trick one, but even the opponent wondered aloud why we weren’t in seven. “I’m a chicken,” I said. “It isn’t just that you’re chicken,” said TMS, “but I question your mental acuity.” “I’m a stupid chicken,” I squawked and he agreed.

On an unrelated note, I stopped for a chicken sandwich on the way home. It was delicious.

Mar
19

A Stretch

“We can’t win if I don’t play any of the hands.” I write one nice thing about the Mad Scientist’s declaring ability and it goes straight to his head. Not that he doesn’t have reason to cringe when his system fails and I end up as the declarer, but I really did play a hand well … once.

The fact that women-only bridge events still exist boggles the mind. (Is it our lack of upper body strength?) There is undeniably a strange shifting that takes place. At the club level there are more women than men playing this game; but at at the national level, the men dominate the field. I could chalk this up to biological reasons, testosterone driving men to be more competitive. Or sociological reasons, women often get stuck at some key point in their career (bridge or otherwise) raising children. It’s probably both, but today a factor that I had never before considered came into play: bras.

There are a few different stances I’ve noticed that I slip into when I’m playing a hand. Lots of people have commented that declarers all have a somewhat similar “about to claim” posture: sitting forward in their chair with their cards ever so slightly tipped forward in preparation of showing their hand to the opponents. I’ve also felt myself slip into a defeated slouch that roughly translates to I’m going down 200 or 500 or 1100 and all that remains is to find out just how much blood is to be lost. Then there’s my “going in for the kill” stance, for once I know precisely what the opponents’ have in their hands, I’m about to force them to do something they aren’t going to like one bit and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. This one is an aggressive forward lean, but with my hand tipped at a sharp angle back toward me. It’s weird to me that I’ve developed these bad habits, but I just don’t have the mental energy to play and keep a “poker face” on most of the time. So today I felt myself slipping into “kill” mode, reaching out my right hand to drop the key card on the table and at the same time something gave way under my shirt followed by a very unpleasant, pointy sensation. After I had completed my mission, I scampered off to the restroom to find that my bra had failed in a most peculiar way and that I now had a bare wire digging into my chest. Had this happened at a tournament, I would have been faced with a number of bad options — the best of which would likely have been to discard the infernal contraption altogether; it really was that distracting. Could it be that our unmentionables are keeping women in the bridge community down?