Aug
07

Dumb looks are still free.

Sometimes I think the Mad Scientist is even more clever than I give him credit for; like today when I screwed up a bid in the system and his response was not to get angry but to contemplate aloud changing the system to make my bid correct. The threat worked and I’ll be hitting the book before playing with him again — tricky, very tricky.

Then there was a sequence in which after the auction was over he noted that I had failed to alert his bid and went on to note that my bid wasn’t “in the lexicon” of accepted responses to his artificial bid. I gave him my best deer in headlights look and he attempted to jump-start my failing memory, “Two hearts would show seven or fewer points, two spades would show seven plus ….” None of this, not one word of it was ringing a bell with me. Usually there’s some dim memory of what he’s talking about when I screw up a bid (for example, in the above case in which he threatened to change the system I at least dimly recalled what he was talking about). Of course there is some small chance that he is the one misremembering something for a change. Hang on, I’ll go check … yeah, uhh, that’s all in there, everything he said. I suck.

May
06

In a Flash

The adage “expect seven points” does not apply to playing with the Mad Scientist. The man is profoundly unlucky when it comes to the hands which he is dealt so I’ve come to expect five points and not just any five points but two queens with a mismatched jack and a singleton deuce in my suit.

As a result, his system which is not on in competition, very seldom comes up at the table. Poor thing not only does he have to sit there suffering with terrible cards all afternoon, he has to do so while playing with me. Worse, the less often the system comes up the more often he feels compelled to play with me. When I realized the full extent of his plight I, sympathetic creature that I am, dissolved into giggles and had to struggle to regain my composure.

Anyway, not so very long ago TMS had the rather clever idea of using a hand generator to get some extra practice in. But to be honest simply looking at the hands on the paper wasn’t proving to be a huge improvement over just looking at the system notes. I decided to make up flashcards (I’m the sort of person who almost always has a stash of index cards at hand). Then I had the idea that the auctions on the backs of these cards should reflect possible bids from ones partner and not just a particular auction, something like the world’s most boring “choose your own adventure” story. And so like so many things what started as a simple, quick little project is quickly becoming an unwieldily mess.

Apr
15

Slim Slam

My attitude upon arriving at the bridge club yesterday would best be described as one of grim determination. The bridge gods, fearful after my recent meltdown that they might lose their favorite punching bag entirely, decided to lay-off.

One sees certain patterns over and over again. For example, most of the field is in four, making six, with one or two pairs in six making six. Or most of the room is in six of a major making six or seven, with a few pairs in 6NT making six or seven. What one doesn’t see very often, but which happened today, was most of the room in 4♠ making seven, no one in 6♠ and one pair in 7♠ making seven.

While it was true that the Mad Scientist’s mad system meant I got to start cue-bidding on the 3-level (always a good thing as far as I’m concerned), we sketched out how we would have bid it playing something closer to standard (specifically using a Jacoby 2NT response) and thought we’d get there anyway.

It turns out the only card in my hand that is of questionable value (namely the Kx of diamonds) becomes huge once the opener shows their second suit (which just happens to be, you guessed it, diamonds).

Anyway the opener has a big 5/5 hand in the pointy suits and I have both rounded aces, four spades to the king and the aforementioned king of diamonds. Yes, it’s a 29 HCP grand slam but six is ice cold and seven just needs either (not even both) of the pointy suits to break reasonably well. Of course, had it been left up to the more cowardly half of the partnership (that would be me), we would have only been in six, and strangely that still would have been worth all of the matchpoints. (Link to the hand here.)

Mar
24

Kaboom

The preemptive nature of playing a weak (12-14 HCP) NT was working like a charm yesterday, keeping the opponents out of their fits on hand after hand that belonged to them. There was only one small problem: the reason it was their hand was because the Mad Scientist kept turning up with nothing and I kept going down too many because the opponents weren’t actually making any games their way. It seemed like every hand I opened in NT ended up in a zero.

Throw in a handful of other bidding mistakes and the fact that even when I did manage to make a contract, the result was mediocre at best, and it was the worst game I’ve had in a long time. As readers of this ‘blog will know, that’s really saying something.

Medic!

Lately there has been some grumbling at the club about the system that TMS and I are playing. The vast majority of the complaints are coming from experienced players and really amount to little more than, “You’re doing this to confuse us!” What follows is addressed to them:

Just how did you think the bidding in this game evolved?

Perhaps when the bridge gods tire of watching us wander around in the desert of “standard” bidding, they bless us with new agreements that rain down from on high?

Or maybe when two bridge players love each other very much … and nine months later a stork appears with a bundle of new conventions dangling from its beak?

Everyone knows that bidding is the part of this game that changes and that it does so almost constantly. It’s a language and like language it evolves. The fact is that “Standard American” isn’t the same as it was ten years ago and it won’t be the same ten years from now. You can wax nostalgic all you want for the good ol’ days of the Goren Bidding System, but that dog won’t hunt. There’s a reason almost no one in duplicate plays that way any more and hasn’t in many years. Any reasonable bridge player can see that while the bidding has become more complex over time, it has also vastly improved.

Since clearly, you’ve never given this any thought, I’ll enlighten you. The way in which bidding systems improve is that there are always a handful of stone-cold weirdos out there playing something new and strange. Some of the things they play will work better than what everyone else is doing, but most of them won’t. Eventually the good players will stop laughing just long enough to cherry pick what’s working and incorporate it into their own systems.

And, for the record, as demonstrated by yesterday’s results, this “crazy” system (which isn’t actually all that crazy, it’s mostly just transfer bids — you do know how to compete over a transfer bid, don’t you?) is much more likely to bite us in the ass than it is to damage you; so when you see us getting into yet another muddled sequence your best bet is just to kick back, relax and collect your matchpoints. You may even catch a glimpse of the future.

Mar
12

The Six Million Dollar Convention

On Saturday, the Mad Scientist and I had an auction involving a Michaels cue-bid that went a little sideways on us. We stumbled into the right spot after the typical misunderstanding: I thought my bid was invitational, he thought it was pre-emptive. Luckily he also thought his hand was pretty spiffy so he bid game anyway. We’re just lucky we didn’t miss a slam. Anyway, after the hand, I mentioned Mike Lawrence’s treatment of responses after a Michaels cue-bid, using 2NT as an asking bid. TMS said he had read about it in the ACBL Bulletin awhile back, but asked if I could dig it up and send it to him. I looked it up in my dog-eared copy of Lawrence’s The Complete Book on Overcalls and found that when RHO passes [for example: (1♣)-2♣-(P)-?] a jump to 3 of a major did indeed show an invitational hand with four card support (which is what I had done on the hand in question). I knew what was coming even as I pressed the “Send” button early Sunday morning: the Mad Scientist is going to rebuild it, he has the technology.

Better ... faster ... stronger.

On Sunday afternoon, there was still no response. I pictured TMS toiling away in his laboratory; playing cards suspended in flasks of brightly colored liquid, a smarmy looking guinea pig lounging in his cage with a water bottle full of scotch and a copy of Watson’s Play of the Hand. Evening came, night fell and still silence, could it be that I was wrong? Might this pass without remark? But just moments before midnight I got an eMail.

I have a problem with the unobstructed auction….I threw together something. Let me know what you think. – TMS

Honestly, I would have been a little disappointed if he hadn’t.

Mar
10

Memory

Today found me back at the bridge club, sitting across from the Mad Scientist. He created a new alert, “I.S.R.: If She Remembered”. I was hurt, because naturally he tacked this on to an alert for one of the few bids in his system that I’ve never forgotten, or, at least, I don’t remember ever having forgotten it.

As a matter of fact, during the whole session, I made very few mistakes, but that was probably because I got very few good cards. Of twenty-five hands, I played a grand total of three. TMS only played seven. Which is to say, we played lots and lots of defense so I mostly just had to give count and signal that I didn’t like any suit. If we had a defensive signal for, “You’re on your own, partner!” I would have been using it a lot today. On one hand that TMS actually opened I had 9 HCP AND three card support for his major, but still < 1 cover card. It was hands down the worst 9 HCP I've ever seen with a trump fit.

I did make one bad opening lead, but the correct lead was either my singleton trump or leading away from KJxxx -- neither of which were a very attractive option. Of course, if I do happen to find the correct lead on that hand it would be just enough to push us into first instead of second. Sadly, for us, anyone who thoughtlessly leads fourth from their longest and strongest no matter the auction or the contract will have stumbled upon one of the two leads that beats the damn thing. Figures, doesn't it?

Yesterday I got an e-mail from TMS outlining some new responses he wanted to use over 2♣ openers -- steps: control showing, but rather more specific than the usual nonsense. As I've noted here in the past, I've never been a fan of steps and only play them under protest. My teacher is a big proponent of staying the h_ll out of the way of the 2♣ bidder and that means bidding 2♦ most of the time unless one has a very good suit of ones own. TMS had described this system to me maybe a week ago and noted that he found it superior to using the 2♦ waiting bid and, needless to say, other "step" responses. Anyway I printed it out, glanced it over and stuck it in my system notes binder. Before the session today I teased him about all the words used to describe what boiled down to one very specific holding, "3 of a suit = 6+ card one loser suit (opposite a singleton) off the ace". Me: "Couldn't you just say it has to be KQJxxx?" TMS: "Well, it could also be KQxxxxxx."

What I have just described is the full extent of my study of this new series of responses so when in the third round TMS opened 2♣ I had a terrible realization and that was: He thinks we’re playing the new responses.

I looked at my hand which included exactly and only the AKxxx in diamonds: So a king=1 and an ace=2 so I have three … but wait, they’re in the same suit so that’s something special. 2NT? 2NT… 2NT, no wait that’s the Magi bid or maybe just three but in separate suits … and 2♦ is 0-1 or 4 and 2♥ is 2 or 5 and 3 of anything is that hand I’ll never have so it has to be 2♠. Must be. Uh-oh I’ve been thinking, I almost never stop to think so what if the fact that I’m thinking now makes him think I don’t remember? What if he thinks I have spades? Oh well, here goes. I pulled out the 2♠ card and put it on the table. I was greatly relieved when TMS promptly alerted my bid. After that bidding the slam was relatively easy (well, for me anyway, I didn’t have to do anything except tell him which suit I had the AK in and he did the rest) and just like that I was a convert to the new scheme. I.S.R. indeed.

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
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.

Jan
12

“Why you little …!”

The other day I was playing with a pick-up partner at the club. The opponents sat down and the woman turned to me and said, “No one has as much fun playing bridge together as you and [the Mad Scientist]. You two are just always laughing.” I laughed. I wondered if I ought to explain that most of the laughter is a result of our my completely screwing up on yet another auction. He’s laughing as a means of restraining himself from strangling me รก la Bart and Homer Simpson. I’m laughing because I laugh when I get nervous and I’m worried he might, well, strangle me:

Nowadays whenever I play at the club no matter who I am playing with it seems like at least one opponent is going to grill me about our system, “You’re not playing any of that weird stuff you play with [TMS] are you?” There was a point when I would have had to respond that it depended on their definition of “weird”, I mean, criss-cross inverted minors are kind of weird. But nowadays even the nominally weird conventions are gone and almost nothing I play system-wise with TMS crosses over into my other partnerships, though I wish some of it would. I suppose it’s official, I am the Mad Scientist’s Igor, me and my “Abby Normal” brain:

Undeterred TMS continues to slave away in his laboratory. We’ve been playing a borrowed Modified Puppet Stayman (very similar to Muppet Stayman), the notes for which took up the whole of one page. It took several tries for us to work the kinks out of that one over the course of a couple months (it just didn’t come up that often) and now that we have we’re replacing it with his version of Marionette Stayman the notes for which take up thirteen pages. We may work the kinks out of it too one day approximately five years from now.

And then there’s the seven pages on responses after a 1NT opening. It certainly resembles Stayman and Jacoby transfers, like holding them up to a funhouse mirror. That one … may never get straightened out. In his eMail TMS called it “annoying” and I … haven’t called it anything because shortly after I get to the second page my eyes start to cross, there’s a peculiar throbbing sensation somewhere in my temporal lobe and then I pass out only to awaken with no memory of what I’d read.

Dec
23

Funny Guy

The Mad Scientist has struck again. This time I am partly to blame because I did ask for some clarification on our system in competition. His response came in the form of a color-coded chart (and, of course, the attendant symbol legend).

The title? “Simple Overcalls”.

Update:

I just received an update to the chart. It’s an ungodly hour of the morning and there are six and a half hours until game time.