Nov
30

An Early New Year’s Resolution

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11

You know things have taken a turn for the bizarre when I start quoting Biblical aphorisms. Still hurtling through the air, approximately 30,000 feet above New Mexico those were the words that popped into my head.

Before I continue I feel I should note that I refuse to completely put aside childish things. I recently got a “Recommended for You” e-mail list from Amazon that was made up in it’s entirety of bridge books and SpongeBob SquarePants DVDs. I refuse to give up SpongeBob (this study will come as no surprise to my bridge partners); but when it comes to bridge, the time has come for me to grow up.

I won a lot of masterpoints very quickly playing an off-the-wall kind of a game, always looking for the unusual contract or the unusual play that might just work on that particular hand. It leads to wildly inconsistent bidding, vacillating between overly conservative and overly aggressive, only rarely dipping into a bidding “sweet spot” and many, many bikini games – all tops and bottoms. It is impossible for ones partner to calibrate for that kind of action. A lot of frustration for both myself and my partners resulted from the fact that I felt that I caught a lot of flak when this strategy didn’t work, but it seemed to me that they were playing with me because it just as often did – I find, in retrospect, that they were playing with me despite the gambles that paid off, not because of them.

“This is bridge, not poker!” I heard obscenity-laced variations on this theme from both the Mad Scientist and Yin. Doc, who put up with more than either of them (but is so much more level-headed), managed not to lob this particular insult my way, but I bet he was thinking it. Still it wasn’t sinking in because as crazy-making as playing with me was (and is) it was (but now isn’t) a successful strategy. I’ve taken it about as far as it will go, maybe a little further even, and I’m not anywhere near the player that I would like to be.

Which brings me back to the airspace above New Mexico. I spent six days in San Francisco at the NABC and while I didn’t get a chance to play very often, the times I did play I was repeatedly confronted by the limitations of my skill-set. My first night there I played in a side-game with Washington, I was exhausted after traveling all day and the time-zone change made the 7:30 PM start time feel like 9:30 to my addled brain. Things did not go smoothly. We repeatedly zigged when we should have zagged. On one hand Washington made a less than ideal opening lead and apologized. I jokingly responded, “Now we’re even,” and he scoffed, which was my first inkling that perhaps I was making even more mistakes than I realized. The Kid decided to kibitz the second half and after the game ended at around 11:00 PM (read: 1:00 AM) we were looking over the hand records. I asked about a particular hand, he answered but it seemed like when he was done answering my specific question there was more he wanted to say. I knew better than to push the big red “Don’t push!” button, but I did it anyway. “Was there anything else?” I asked.

Twenty minutes worth of bad plays, and errors in judgment, all casually observed from somewhere behind my right shoulder and only then did he reach the play that “really bothered” him. To wit, there was a very small chance on one hand for me to make the contract, it was a cost free play to find out if in fact my LHO held specifically the Kx of diamonds on-side and instead I conceded the trick. My face burned with the realization, it isn’t like me to just give up on a hand. At the time I didn’t learn that the one holding I needed to make the contract was in fact the holding my opponent had, but it would literally have cost nothing to find out, just cross my fingers and plunk down the diamond ace after the finesse to the queen worked. Suddenly the unsupported Jack in my hand would have been good. Instead I had led a small card back toward the jack, a zero percentage play, zero, zip, no chance – I’d just given up. I felt disgusted, vaguely nauseous and suddenly very, very tired. I limped back to my hotel room and found I couldn’t sleep. When I would drift off to sleep, the King of Diamonds haunted my dreams.

The next night, after working all day on very little sleep, I played with my boss for the first time. I found myself in the uncomfortable position of really wishing I could be up in my room in bed instead of forcing my eyes open at the table. Adding to my misery, the cards were not going our way and hand after hand we found ourselves on defense. When we did get into the bidding the best we could manage was a part-score. We said very little to one another between rounds, except to ask if the other would like a cup of coffee when we left to refill our own cups. This time it was my partner who had a kibitzer, but the hands were so boring that even he lost interest and wandered off after awhile. We had a decent game, nothing earth shattering, but no disasters either.

The Kid and I filled in the movement for one session of a fast pairs game on Sunday. My favorite disaster of the session involved my doubling a vulnerable 5♦ contract that should have been down three only to find the one defense that would allow it to make. White against red, my partner opened the bidding in second seat:

(P)-1♣-(1♥)-1♠-
(P)-2♠-(3♦)-4♠-
(5♦)-P-(P)-X-
All Pass

This was my hand:

♠ AQxxx
♥ x
♦ J9x
♣ KQxx

I am pretty sure my RHO is 5-4 in the red suits, because otherwise she could have used Michael’s so the good news is that I think we have probably two spade tricks coming to us but there’s nothing saying she doesn’t have the Kx of spades. A club lead might be right, but I really would like to get a ruff with my anemic diamonds if at all possible so I try the singleton heart lead even though it is the declarer’s first bid suit.

My partner plays the ♥8 and not surprisingly the declarer wins and switches to a diamond, my partner wins his stiff ace and returns the ♥2 which I interpreted as asking for a club return. I ruff the heart and return a low club. The declarer wins with her J of clubs and the hand is over when the finesse for the missing heart honors is on-side. My poor partner had the KJxx of hearts. The declarer started with the AJ tight of clubs and the Tx of spades. I can see why my partner might not have wanted to return either the K or J of hearts and it is of note that if I return the ♣Q instead my partner will still overtake with the ace (if he had it) to return another heart and it would protect against the declarer having both missing club honors. We would have at least beat it (though not by as much as if I had instead returned a spade to my partner’s king.) Minus 750 is a big fat zero.

My declaring was as enlightened as my defense. Earlier in the session I had gotten completely tangled up in a 1NT contract and went down one when I should have made it and then there was a hand on which the correct line eluded me both at the table and for what felt like ten minutes after the Kid pointed it out to me. He noted the diamond suit. I stared at him blankly, wondering what exactly he wanted me to do with the moth-eaten diamonds. He looked at me wondering what planet I was on. Finally it dawned on me that the answer was to ruff them. (Oh is that what a trump suit is for?) Another zero when I’m in 2 down one when I should have made three. And the less said about the hand where we ended up down one in 3NT when we were cold for 6♦ the better. So for the record, Red Vines followed by a 5-Hour Energy shot is not the breakfast of champions.

On Monday night, I played for the first time with another co-worker of mine and we had a very decent, solid game with only one real exception. In first seat, both side vulnerable, I picked up this:

♠ AJTxxxx
♥ x
♦ xx
♣ ATx

I only really considered opening it 1♠ for the briefest of moments before coming to my senses and opening it 3♠. Everyone passed.

The opening lead was the ♥Q. and the dummy came down with:

♠ xx
♥ AKx
♦ AKJxxx
♣ xx

You know you have a reputation for opening light when you open 3♠ vulnerable in first seat and your partner with a spade fit and four quick tricks, passes. Unfortunately it makes five all day long and with minimal effort once my RHO turns up with the QT tight of diamonds. I will admit that had I been playing with my teacher that would have been exactly what either of us would have done with her hand since our three-level openers are such garbage we alert them, but then we probably would have opened that hand 4♠ instead.

It’s hard to say exactly how these four games led to my realization in the sky that whatever I was doing wasn’t working for me anymore, and really they were just the culmination of a longer process. Upon reflection, the strides I’ve made up until this point have come pretty easy though it didn’t always seem so at the time. The real work is ahead of me now, and I’m not entirely sure that I’ll succeed. I worry that I’m just not smart enough to play this game at the level I would like to, but I feel I must at least try and circumstances are such that I’m not playing as much as I was before and so I have the time to put into really studying card play and developing a different bidding philosophy. Breakthrough or breakdown, in the end, there will be transformation.

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.

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.

Feb
17

Sleepwalking

I often find myself forgoing sleep in order to play bridge, in fact that’s the normal state of affairs for me, but tonight I was playing bridge to keep myself from falling asleep. After I got home from the bridge club this afternoon I was, not surprisingly, rather tired; but since I had taken tonight off from work in preparation for the Swiss Pairs event tomorrow, the last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep only to later find myself wide awake, at say 3 AM or so, and unable to fall back asleep.

I figured I could pick up a partner for the evening game, and I can’t emphasize this enough, because I didn’t want to inflict my even-more-sleep-deprived-than-usual self on any of my regular partners. I like them too much for that. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to inflict myself on a pick-up partner, but even after I went out for dinner I couldn’t think of a better plan to stay awake and I was fairly certain I could at least follow suit. (An aside, Yin’s version of how we starting playing together is hilarious because he claims that after the club had put him with a string of little old ladies who couldn’t even follow suit, he figured I couldn’t do any worse so he asked me to play — little did he know.) Anyway I could have sworn that Paul Dano, rocking a Jesus beard and long wavy hair no less, was sitting at the table next to mine at Qdoba and, since I’m not one who consistently recognizes my own reflection, the thought that I could spot an incognito movie star at a fast food restaurant probably should have persuaded me to go home.

Instead I called the club from the restaurant and my teacher, who was running the game, assured me he could find me a partner so off I went. When I arrived he told me that one of my regular partners was coming in to play with me … so much for that idea. My teacher sat in on the first hand. The opponents stretched to a game and we managed to beat it one. That was the last good result for quite some time.

Washington arrived and I wondered if I should just apologize up front for nodding off at the table during a lull in the action, like when I was declaring. It was a three table Howell movement and the cards simply weren’t going our way, no matter where we were sitting. In the second round we watched helplessly as the opponents bid to four ice cold games (one of which they really should be in a small slam) that the N-S pair before them simply had not bid (well, in one case they made it to a game, but it was the wrong one so they went down). We just bled IMPs that round through no real fault of our own. The third round was okay, but we weren’t picking up the sort of points we needed to recuperate. In the fourth round I found myself with all of the points for the defense on lead against 3NT and my haphazardly scrabbling around cost us dearly. I was definitely feeling mentally fatigued and by that time there had been a hundred unforced errors. The other two pairs were in 2NT off one, but I let our opponents make 3NT. I did, however, manage to follow suit consistently. I really did feel bad for Washington coming out to play with me.

Finally in the last round we got some points and this by far was my best hand of the night:

♠ Ax
♥ KQJxxx
♦ KQJx
♣ K

I opened the bidding in second seat, both sides non-vulnerable:

(P)-1♥-(P)-1NT*-
(P)-3♦-(X!)-P-(P!)-
P**

* Forcing
** (looking around at the bids on the table, wondering if I nodded off and missed something during the bidding) “Am I really getting to play 3♦X?”

My partner came down with everything and the kitchen sink for his forcing NT bid:

♠ Qxx
♥ x
♦ AT9xx
♣ Axxx

Needless to say I made six, which was good for +770. We might have made it to 6♦ without the interference, but the others were playing it in 4♥ making 6 so this was a very good result (certainly with an assured big plus score, it wouldn’t have been worth the risk to explore further). I wish I could say that (and the 3NT that we set 5 tricks on the next board) was enough to bring us back to life, but I don’t think it was and I wasn’t in the mood to stick around to find out. Though perhaps I should have as now I’m at home and still awake as evidenced by this entry.

Feb
13

Common Sense

My mood is about what one would expect considering that I’m awake on the wrong-side of 8 AM and the temperature outside is a full ten degrees on the wrong-side of freezing. I’ve got to find my way to some under-heated hall on the outskirts of nowhere I’m familiar with, and I have to do so long before my brain is awake. I stop to buy a coffee because the last time I went to one of these things there was none ready when I arrived and I simply can not play without caffeine in my system. My partner arrives right around the time I’ve concluded that he’s finally come to his senses about playing with me.

Mostly we do what we’re supposed to do, and even when I take temporary leave of my senses and decide that a 3♠ bid is a splinter bid instead of a spade suit (which has the effect of pushing us to the five-level) my partner manages to pull us out of the fire by making five. It’s so rare that my screw-ups don’t end in catastrophe that I’m feeling positively quixotic. Still our teammates are steadfastly refusing to bid their games and a series of +170 and 200s at their table is killing us six and ten IMPS at a time.

Lunch was provided … sort of. I’m pretty sure it was the same salad they served at the last sectional tournament over a month ago. I don’t mean the same kind of salad, I mean, the same salad. I must admit I’m a little baffled by my Unit’s inability to put together a decent lunch at these things. Last time it was the salad and lukewarm kugel. This time it was the zombie salad plus tuna and/or egg salad. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but in general food that is not ice cream being served with an ice cream scoop is best to be avoided. Certainly undead salad should be avoided at all cost.

After lunch, I’m the one giving up a fistful of IMPS for no good reason (oh you knew there had to be catastrophic screw-up in here somewhere, didn’t you?) when I lost track of the nine of trump, resulting in down four vulnerable instead of down one. (Ironically, many hours later I’ll be perfectly capable of sequentially reconstructing the trump spots played on the hand, but at the table, in the moment, when it actually mattered, I would have sworn I’d seen the damned nine on the first trump trick.) That was on the second hand of the match and it was the second time the trump split particularly badly for me.

On the first hand of the round, in second seat my partner opened a weak 1NT and my RHO made a two-suited overcall showing hearts and an unspecified minor. We’re playing Lebensohl and a jump to 3♠ (the bid I radically misinterpreted earlier in the day) would show a game-forcing hand with spades, to show the invitational hand I have to go through 2NT (forcing partner to bid 3♣ at which point I can define my hand). My LHO had an awful lot of questions about my bid of 2NT, but managed to pass quickly after confirming that my 3♠ bid showed spades. Partner deliberated for a moment before passing and that’s where the hand was played. With a two suited over-call to my right, it was no great feat of deduction to realize the spades were to my left. I barely make it out for down one when the spades split 5-1, I have K9xxx in my hand and QT on the board, my LHO has the AJxxx. At the other table, our teammate opened my LHO’s hand 2♠ and with a big misfit our other teammate pulled to 3♥ which doesn’t make either. So on the first two boards we’re down 12 IMPS and the next six are all ties. We could have saved some time if we’d just quit after those two boards. My partner was probably ready to quit altogether after I went -400 on that hand.

Due to some computer related scoring delays they decided to only play six matches instead of seven. We ended the day beating up on a team of novices and, given another round, we might have gotten above par, as it was we ended the day just below. But even when the results are disappointing and frustrating, I really do enjoy playing in tournaments much more than playing at the club. I’m not the only one who feels that way. Once when playing at a regional in Pittsburgh the fire alarm went off in the middle of a session, and in a huge ballroom full of people, no one got up to leave. Someone commented that the alarm was probably pulled by someone having a bad round. The general consensus seemed to be that we’d leave if we could smell smoke AND see flames.

Lucky me, the next few weeks hold two more tournaments (a sectional and a regional). I’m especially excited about this coming weekend. I’ve been looking forward to the Swiss Pairs event for months and now it’s less than a week away.

Jan
23

The Talking Cure

Yesterday when I walked into the bridge club, almost immediately my teacher stopped what he was saying to his class to tell me that he had installed a couch in the back in case I needed to lie down and talk. Clearly, he had checked the scores from the day before. I said I’d have to book him for at least three hours. He offered to bring the Mad Scientist in for a joint session, but I figured TMS would probably need three hours of his own just to vent about me. Suffices to say, I played the first seven boards and managed to get us a zero on four of them. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get The Rainbow Connection out of my head, “Have you been half asleep? And have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name.” Of course, in at least one case, the voices I was hearing were those of the opponents trashing me as soon as I walked away from the table (people seem to forget that not everyone in a bridge club is losing their hearing); and, let’s face it, it wasn’t as if I’d just given them a bad board.

During that last session we had a somewhat complicated auction utilizing the Mad Scientist’s system (it comes up so rarely that it was notable just for that reason alone) which enabled me to thoroughly describe my hand so that when TMS eventually put us in 3NT, he was not guessing that it was the right spot (he may have been wondering if I knew what the hell I was doing, but that’s another story). Of course, everyone else got to 3NT too, no doubt by way of a much simpler auction. On the bright side, had 6♦ or 4♠ been the right contract our maddening methods would have gotten us there, while everyone else would have been in … 3NT. I don’t know if the opponents were at all impressed when my dummy was precisely what TMS had said it would be when explaining the alerts (and it was pretty damn specific), but I was impressed that the system worked so well. Still it was a struggle just to get to an average result; it was that kind of a day.

Yesterday the results were better, but it was still a struggle. In this case, I was mostly wrestling with a system I know, but that I don’t really get. We’re playing a weak NT and whenever one opens 1♣ or 1♦ it is either a strong NT (15-17 HCP) or an unbalanced hand that is likely to be weak. That’s all fine. The part that throws me is the rebid by opener when there is competition. With no fit and no interference, rebidding 1NT with the big hand and 2♣/♦ with the weak, shapely hand makes perfect sense. But here’s a hand from yesterday:

♠ xx
♥ AQxx
♦ xx
♣ KQTxx

It seems pretty clear to me that this hand should be opened (especially at favorable vulnerability) and that it is better opened 1♣ than 1NT. So the auction went:

1♣-(1♦)-X-(1♠)-
?

Partner had made it very clear that any bid including raising hearts or passing at this juncture would show the 15-17 NT type hand so my only option was to bid 2♣ which goes against every instinct I have. Not surprisingly the bidding continued:

1♣-(1♦)-X-(1♠)-
2♣- All Pass

And, of course, I end up playing in the 5-1 club fit instead of the 4-4 heart fit. Regardless of the fact that 2♣ made giving us a top (other pairs were in 3♥ off one), and partner confirmed after the fact that my bid was systemically correct, 2♣ just isn’t where I want to play that hand.

On an unrelated note, when I first came across a reference to 5-suited bridge I was immediately intrigued. The possibilities for the extra bidding room are particularly interesting to me. Recently on eBay I won an auction for a “Royal” suit that was produced to be added to a regular deck of cards specifically for the purpose of playing five-suited bridge:

Royal Suit for Five-Suited Bridge

I think these are pretty neat. Of course now I want to track down a deck of cards produced by that company with the same back as these, even though I’m not likely to ever play with them, in part because doing so will help me narrow down just when these might have been produced. The work of a collector is never done.

Speaking of bridge oddities, for the bridge hostess who has everything:

I know what you’re thinking, “Are those 80 year old sugar cubes shaped like playing card symbols?” Yes, yes they are.