Some hands from tonight

Tonight, David Grainger and I played a pleasant match against Jason Chiu and Harmon Edgar.

The match went well, with both sides playing very well. We ended up getting slightly the better of it, largely on the back of these three slam deals:




I was kind of stuck for a bid over 3H, so I decided to compromise with a 3S bid, which at least gave David space to describe what his hand was all about. Thinking we probably had no heart stopper, David told me about the club fit with his 4C bid. 4D was a cuebid, and 4S was passable, but also sort of a cuebid, since he had to have good spades. My 4NT bid was a bit of an oddity: in our system, when the auction gets very crowded, 4NT is not blackwood. It was intended merely as forward-going with clubs, promising a heart control and David took it as such. He bid 5H on the way to 6C just in case we had a grand slam (he knew that I couldn't misconstrue his 5H bid).

With everything breaking, there was nothing to the play and we chalked up +920 for +10.7 IMPs.


Then:





My double of 1H showed 4 or 5 spades in our system, and Jason's leap to 4H really put the wood to David. He thought for a while and eventually decided to take a shot at 6C. He knew that I would know he couldn't have a heart loser, and this sort of sequence (opening at the 1 level, then blasting to the moon opposite a simple 1-level response) usually shows a good fit for partner's suit. Therefore, had I held the sAQ and the cA I would have been able to find the good raise to 7C based on this logic. In any case, he bought very well from me and we played in 6C making, for +8.5 IMPs. Note that the 4-4 spade fit goes down if the defense finds its club ruff, which it should probably find because declarer can't just pull trump and knock out the cA on the bad spade break.

I saved the best for last. This is the kind of result you dream about having when an important match is on the line; too bad it came up in an online fun match.




We play a 4C response to any preempt as a keycard asking bid. I decided to trot it out on the theory that a 2NT inquiry didn't rate to help me much, and if we had enough trump solidity we might be cold for 6S even if there was work to do elsewhere. David's unusual 4D response promised 1 keycard but also a diamond void. I asked for the sQ with 5H, and he denied it with his 5S bid.

At this point it would be easy to give up, figuring on a trump loser (or two!) and maybe even another loser in the wash, but I tried to picture his hand. He was vulnerable, so he wouldn't have garbage, and he should probably not have a 4-card heart suit on the side. Therefore, he was very likely to be 6=3=0=4 (6=2=0=5 is possible also, but I would not complain if he had that either!!), and we probably had a 4-4 club fit that may play a lot better than spades.

So I bid 6C, which David worked out was an offer to play (based on the fact that we both knew we were off the sQ, I was not trying for a grand slam).

I got the s4 lead to the s2, s5, and sK. Based on the lead, it seemed very likely that spades were 5-1 one way or the other. I thought for a long time and eventually decided I was probably just dead in the water if Jason was leading a singleton spade. I played the hand on a crossruff, eventually coming to 12 tricks easily when the cK was onside. True, a trump lead might set 6C based on the vicious spade split, but Jason understandably thought his partner was probably ruffing the first spade (a trump lead doesn't look very dynamic in any case). Well, this was +1370 and +14.7 IMPs, as nobody else who attempted a slam made it (nobody was in clubs, as a matter of fact).

In my opinion, slams are the hardest part of bridge and it's always nice to get some of the harder ones right and know what you are doing.

Gatlinburg 2008 Recap

This year, in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I played on a team with David Grainger, Mike and Jon Rice, and Joyce Hampton and Lucas Lebioda. As it turned out, our masterpoints averaged out to about 3200 per person, so we ended up in bracket 4 every event. Gatlinburg is really a huge tournament; every knockout had about 30 (!) brackets (that means that close to 480 teams were entering each knockout every day!). Bracket 1 is filled with household name players and is very tough, and even down in bracket 4 where we were, your average opponent is comfortably a Gold Life Master.

Here is a picture of our team:




The Rice brothers are twins, but they are not identical twins, believe it or not. (If you have trouble telling them apart, Jon always wears a hat).
We started out with a bang, winning the first match on Monday evening handily, then cruising to victory to win the first event. Here is a slam from the final where we won a swing:




I had a problem how to treat my hand, since it didn't fall neatly into any particular category. Probably the right sequence is 2C then 3C, but because my hand was so great for either major I decided to treat it as a game-forcing balanced hand (2H forced 2S, then 2NT showed that hand type). In any case, David knew his hand was enough to drive to slam, and he was probably disappointed that we were off a keycard. The hK was onside, though, and we were a little worried about losing 11 IMPs, since this occurred in the second half and we were substantially ahead in the first half, so our opponents might be swinging. However, they failed to reach even the small slam at the other table and we chalked up 11 IMPs instead.


Unfortunately, the next morning was a bit of a hiccup as we lost in the morning KO to some members of the same team that we had dismantled the night before in the final.

In the second primetime KO, we won our first match handily, then came back from a 16 IMP deficit to win by 7 against a strong team of both local and South American players. Here was a board where everyone did well:




David Grainger, as West, did very well not to bid 4H, a contract that many pairs might get to. The defense against 3S doubled was tricky, however; David found the best lead of his doubleton diamond, and I won trick 1 to try to cash the hA at trick 2. When this got ruffed, we both knew declarer was 7=0=2=4 and that beating this contract would be difficult. Declarer led a spade toward dummy's jack, and David found his first excellent play of rising with the sA. He then returned his other diamond to me, and I played a third diamond, which declarer ruffed. David continued his excellent defense by overruffing, and exiting in trumps, leaving declarer to open up the club suit. We collected a nervous +100 for down 1.

At the other table, Joyce Hampton played 3S nicely, and when the defense didn't find one of the necessary sequences of plays to set the contract, she took full advantage. +530 and +100 added up to 12 IMPs for the good guys.

Our team was in good form in the 3rd match of this KO. Here is a hand from that match where David and I did remarkably well:




This slam is neither easy to get to nor laydown, and as it turns out a lot of IMPs were riding on whether I could guess the queen of trumps after a heart lead to RHO's hA. It is at times like these that I am grateful for my hours at the poker table, as I just got the vibe that my LHO had the sQ. Accordingly, I ran the s8 on the first round, and when the rest of the hand was friendly, quickly claimed +1430 for a 13 IMP gain.

In the final match of this KO, we played against a tough team that did almost everything right against us in the first half of the match. David and I had one soft board and we found ourselves stuck 31 IMPs at the half. The second set of boards were pretty flat, although we had nothing bad and a few good boards, but we were still all surprised to pick up 33 IMPs and win the match by 2! Needless to say, our opponents were not exactly happy after this match.

I will show you the fateful final board on which we won 15 IMPs:



At our table, I led a club from the West hand based on the opponents' informative auction. Declarer ducked the first round, won the second in dummy with the Ace, and unblocked the hQ. He then crossed to hand with a third round of clubs, tried to drop the hJ, then finessed the sQ. When that lost, we had the rest of the tricks for +400.

Did you spot the 100% line? Our teammate Jon Rice did, after a few moments' thought: winning the first (or second) club in dummy, unblocking the hQ, and leading a low spade toward the sT. This preserves all the needed communication (if the sT holds, you can power out the hJ for a ninth trick).

We were all thrilled to have won this match after being down 31, but the rest of the tournament wasn't as sweet.

We lost in the 1st round the next day after being up 25 at the half! (Ouch.) That was not one of our better sets. In the evening, we played in the huge 1-session swiss and ended up winning X. Actually, nobody on the team made a mistake in the entire event, but we were cursed with flat boards in our final two matches (we won them both by ONE imp against strong expert teams) so we never had a shot at winning the event. Here is a hilarious story from the Swiss:

The auction at our table ended with us defending 3Dx. We took six tricks for a 2-trick set, +300. This was a strong result but it didn't seem all that remarkable at the time -- until we got back to compare with Joyce and Lucas. "Plus 300," read Joyce. Plus 300? We took a peek at her scorecard: 3D -3. We asked, "You mean minus 300?" "No," she repeated, "Plus 300." So we scored it up as win 12 IMPs.

I have a hard and fast rule during comparisons never to discuss a board until all the boards have been compared and the result of the match is known, but this time I could barely restrain myself. Finally the comparison was done, and David and I simultaneously asked, "What happened on this hand??" Well, the opponents had a major mixup, ending up in their 4-0 fit, and Joyce was right on the money not doubling, knowing that she had them right where she wanted them!

It's not very often at all that both tables play the same contract in each direction for the same result!


Joyce and the Rices left the tournament a day early so that was that, but winning 2 Regional events can never be considered bad! I really had a great time (Tennessee is a beautiful place full of friendly people) and look forward to more tournaments with this bunch.

My next tournament is the Winnipeg regional, starting on May 6, where I will be playing with Jonathan Steinberg. I'll post an update most likely after the tournament (not owning a laptop makes it very difficult to do on the spot updates, unfortunately).

GNT Qualifier

Last night myself, Robert Lebi, Darren Wolpert, and Nader Hanna arrived at Hazel's bridge club at 7:00pm sharp in order to qualify for the Grand National Teams event (held in Las Vegas at the start of the Nationals in the summer). To be honest, we weren't even sure any other team was going to show up -- up to the night before, we were the only registered team in the Championship Flight!

It turns out that there was another team, consisting of Paul Janicki - Ian Findlay, Barry Senesky - Richard Chan, so we ended up playing against them for 28 boards to determine the District 2 representative.

Our team played extremely well and we won the match 86-12.

Here is a hand that is a good defensive problem:




Firstly, Robert Lebi (as West) had a difficult lead problem and it took him quite some time to settle on the d8. This card told me that declarer had the whole diamond suit between him and dummy (we lead 2nd-highest from bad holdings).

What is the best line of play? The three contenders are, a) go after hearts, b) go after spades, c) go after clubs. Going after clubs will usually need a 3-3 break there, and going after hearts will usually need the hT to fall in three rounds if the defenders aren't asleep. Running the sT at trick 2 seems like as good a shot as any, making the contract whenever 2 honours are on your left, or one honour is tripleton or shorter on your left.

In any case, the declarer at the table won the diamond in hand to lead the hQ at trick 2. I stared at this (as East) a long time before winning the hK. Declarer was marked with the hAQJ, dAJ for the play up until now (there was no way he's going after hearts without the hA when I was looking at the hT). Therefore, I thought it reasonable to place partner with the sK and cQ to give us a chance of setting this contract.

I switched to the cK (in case declarer had a singleton Q), and when that held the trick, shifted to the sQ. Declarer could have gotten home by ducking that trick, but he did not, so we were able to untangle our black suit tricks for one down. As it turns out, to beat the contract legitimately at that point I have to switch to the sQ immediately, and if that is ducked, switch to a low club (to put partner in for another spade play, after which I have to switch back to clubs!). Not an easy hand. If you spotted the optimal sequence of plays, well done. In practice, the cK was good enough for 12 IMPs.

Toronto Regional Recap

After Detroit, it was one day's rest and then back to the bridge scene. This week was the Toronto Regional, where I had games lined up with four different players.

On Wednesday I played half of the Swiss, as a replacement player (Andy Stark needed some time off to do work). I played two matches with Andy, and then two matches with John Carruthers. Mike Roche and John Rayner were at the other table.

After four matches, we had the incredible score of 119/120 VPs! Everything was going our way, and in fact we won the fourth match 28-1 (if we had scored one more IMP we would have been at a perfect 120).

On a high note, we had dinner and then I went home. I found out the next day that the team had won easily with a score of 195 (things didn't go as well in the evening, but it didn't matter to our chances of winning!).

Thursday through Saturday was the Regional's premier event, the Sheardown Knockouts. Unlike most KOs, this event is seeded by masterpoints and is a 3-day event. We drew the #2 seed. I played with David Grainger, and our teammates were Boris Baran - Robert Lebi, George Mittelman - Arno Hobart. We managed to make it through the 3-way in the first match and then decimated our 3-way in the second match.

Our quarterfinal match was against a local Toronto team. David and I sat out the first half and found our team tied at 23. In the second half, both we and Robert/Boris had killer sets and we won the second half 89-2!

The semi-final match was against Joan Eaton - Barb Clinton, Don Kersey - Mickie Chambers. This was one of the all-around most solid matches I have played in quite a while. Nobody was giving anything away and it turned out to be a very low-scoring affair. We won both halves by a few IMPs, which meant we would play in the final against Joey Silver - John Carruthers, John Gowdy - Eric Murray, Larry Mori - Jim Green.

You may recall that Joey and JC were members of the Seniors team I captained in Shanghai. So it was fun to play against them in the final.

On another note, win or lose this match, Eric Murray went over 10000 masterpoints by coming in at least 2nd in this event, making him a grand life master. He is without any doubt one of the very best Canadian players ever to play the game and a legend. He truly deserved this honour and it's high time he got it. I think it's disgraceful for the ACBL to have such rigid masterpoint requirements to bestow its highest rank; surely if someone has won, say 3 National Championships or, say, 1 or 2 World Championships they deserve the Grand LM title. And they'll deserve it a lot more than some longtime bridge enthusiast with 13000 masterpoints who won a random Mixed title at some point and never again.

Anyway, the final match was painfully close. Eric Murray played great (to play as well and be as hilariously sharp as he is for someone his age is remarkable) and left his team up 18 at the half. We clawed back 9 IMPs in the second half but it wasn't enough. Anyway, congrats to the winners, they played 9 IMPs better than us and deserved the win.

Here's a hand from the first round robin that I thought was super:




Despite playing a 15-17 notrump, I decided to open 1C since my hand was so good for either major (I was afraid of playing in 1NT when 4M was a good contract).

This time, it allowed West to bid 2H, which actually simplified our auction and gave me clues in the play.

West led the hK which I ducked, but I won the second round in order to avoid making more than one discard from dummy. What do you discard from dummy?

The answer is: a spade! Don't throw a diamond, the natural play. I'll show you why:

You lead cK and another club, ducking to East's cJ when your LHO shows out, throwing a discouraging diamond. When East returns a low spade and your sQ holds, you know a lot about the hand: East has the dK for sure, and West is probably either 3=6=3=1 or 2=6=4=1. Either way, you now have a 100% solution to this hand:

Just run dummy's clubs, throwing two hearts from your hand. On the final club, East, Andy Altay (an expert) throws the sK on this layout, trying to create an entry to his partner's sJ. But you have a counter, because you saved dummy's fourth diamond.

Cash the sA, and play dA, and another diamond, ducking to East. He will be forced to let dummy score a diamond trick at the end.

Observe there is nothing the defense can do on this layout to set you. If East doesn't discard the sK, you simply lead toward the sA, ducking if the sK appears and winning otherwise. This ensures that only East can ever win a spade trick, and lets you make the contract regardless of the breaks assuming East has the dK. Try it for yourself!

I really like that hand.

The final day I played with Darren Wolpert on a team with David Grainger - Arno Hobart. We were steaming along until we played against Joe Grue's team (Melanie Tucker, John Hurt - Vince Demuy). Joe Grue "got" us on one board (opening 2NT with 15 points and seven diamonds), and our teammates got too high on one board and we got blitzed in match 4.

We could never really recover and finished 4th overall. All in all, a good week, but congratulations to Joe Grue's team who won the tournament, also winning a couple other events throughout the week!

Detroit NABC, Days Ten and Eleven

Saturday March 15th marked the qualifying day of the 2-day swiss teams event. There were 114 teams entered into the event, with 58 qualifying through to the next day (50% + 1 to even out the field and avoid 3-way matches).

Jonathan and I played with Doug Baxter and respected bridge author Andy Stark. Doug was one of our teammates in San Francisco when we finished 9th in the 3-day North American Swiss event.

We started out well, garnering 69 VPs in our first 6 matches. It looked like 81 VPs would be a shoo-in to qualify with 80 very likely, so all we needed was 11 or 12 more VPs in our final two matches to get in. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

We lost a low-scoring match 11-7 in the 7th match to get 8 VPs and sit at 77. All we needed was to avoid getting crushed in the last match to guarantee we'd be playing the next day.

Well, we got crushed. We lost 22-0 against a strong team (Grant Baze - Gary Cohler were at our table). This left us despondent at 79 VPs, unlikely to qualify. We made a date with Doug and Andy to play in the Regional Swiss event the next day.

But wait! Jonathan returned to the playing site an hour later and found we had actually won a tiebreaker and were the 58th team still in the event! There were 3 teams tied at 79 VPS, and 2 of them got in. We would start against the other team the next day with 0.00 carryover IMPs.

(Coincidentally, our teammates for the Vanderbilt, John Stiefel - Rich DeMartino, Betty Bloom - Steve Bloom, were leading the event after day 1. They would have 30 VPs carryover on us, making it almost impossible for us to catch them).

Well, on Sunday we started against the other 58th place team, which included the IMP Pairs winners Doug Doub and Adam Wildavsky. We played against Steve Beatty and Bill Pollack at our table.

This match was a great success for our team, and after the match the other team was still sitting at 0.00 VPs. Here are two hands from the match (back to back, in fact) where Jonathan made better decisions than his counterpart.



Jonathan started the North hand with a Michaels cuebid, and followed it up with another cuebid and then a 5-level bid. Knowing my sKx and dJx were golden, I had no difficulty bidding a slam. As it turns out, 6S, 6D, and even 7D (with spades 3-3) are laydown on this deal. At the other table, the auction went:



+190 was not a spectacular result and we gained a bushel of IMPs.

The hand immediately after, Jonathan used a Michaels cuebid again, but then wisely kept silent at adverse vulnerability when I couldn't make a noise. The opponents bid up to the 5-level on power and quickly went two down. At the other table, the North player, perhaps suffering the after effects of writing down +190 on the previous deal, not only used Michaels but then bid again at the 5-level! This was a quick +500 for our teammates and 12 more IMPs.

In the second match we played Ron Smith - Billy Cohen at our table, and Gavin Wolpert - Warren Spector at the other table.

We beat them 18-0 to take another 17 VPs -- suddenly we were sitting at 37 VPs, among the top 15 teams!

The third match didn't go so well, but in the fourth match we played against David Grainger's team (at our table we had a rematch against Bryan Maksymetz and Ziggy Marcinski from our Vanderbilt encounter). We managed to beat them 23-2 to take another 18 VPs.

Here was a big swing deal:





The 1D opening could be short, and 2H showed spades. Ziggy had a short mental lapse and splintered into 4C, "setting" spades as trumps, instead of flexing with 3D to allow for a high diamond contract. The damage was done and it was too difficult now to back into 7D.

At the other table, our teammates' auction was simpler:



That was 12 IMPs to us.


We were top 15 at the dinner break and felt good about our chances for a strong finish. Unfortunately, the evening session was not one of the team's stronger ones and we eventually dropped off the board. In any case, it was a successful and fun NABC, and thanks to Jonathan Steinberg as well as all our excellent and very pleasant teammates for making that experience so enjoyable.

Now it's off to Toronto where I get one day's rest, then another tournament!

Detroit NABC, Days Eight and Nine

The second last event on the schedule was the National IMP Pairs. I'm usually a bit ambivalent about playing in an IMP pairs, and here's why: more than any other event, luck plays a large factor in IMP pairs. Here's an example:

Let's say you are sitting North South, and there are 6 medium-difficulty slams dealt E/W. Let's further say the other 20 boards are fairly flat. It doesn't take a genius to work out that your score is going to be based in large part on how the East-West pairs do against you on their 6 slam hands, with the other 20 boards taking a back seat. Now, out of all the N/S pairs in the room, there are going to be some that get very lucky in that their particular E/W pairs on those slam deals miss all (or all but one) of the slams. So, their score is going to far higher than a N/S pair whose E/W pairs bid 4, or even 5 or all 6 of those slams. Unlike matchpoints, where if the opponents do well against you you can get it back on other boards, even partscores, or a team game, where presumably if your opponents are playing that well against you they deserve to win unless your teammates are playing just as well and also bid the slams, in IMP Pairs there is an enormous luck factor.

Well, we couldn't complain about the luck factor on the first day. Jonathan and I played very well in the afternoon session, although we did lose 12 IMPs on a board where we bid a difficult board to a slam that was exactly 50%. Had it made, we would have won 12 IMPs (presumably almost nobody was in it).

Other than that, our card was excellent. Our biggest swing, at +13 IMPs, was this board:




Both sides were vulnerable, and Jonathan got to open the East hand 1C (could be a doubleton) in fourth seat. After South's 1H overcall, I put in a 3D fit-showing jump (invitational values with diamonds and clubs). I did this mainly to preempt the auction and to show three of the key features of my hand (invitational hand, diamonds , clubs). The North hand, under pressure, cannot really be faulted for his 3H bid. Jonathan passed this around to me, and when I doubled again, showing some defense, he made the excellent decision to leave in the double. (He said later that at Matchpoints he would have doubled himself in a heartbeat, but at IMPs he didn't want me to leave in his double if I had a heart void -- which I might have done on another deal). I think Jonathan handled this situation just right.

Tipped off by the auction, I led my trump. Declarer won in dummy, and instead of ensuring a diamond ruff, next led a spade. Jonathan was able to win this and play another trump, and when the smoke cleared, declarer was 4 down for +1100 and 13 IMPs for us. Note that even had declarer ruffed a diamond it would have been +800 which would still have been worth a lot of IMPs to us, as the majority of the field was not bidding and making a game.

We finished +40.31 IMPs on the session, 6th in our direction.

In the evening we were +16.51 to finish at +56.59 IMPs for the day, which was good for 21st overall and a nice carryover (carryover can be very important in these events).

The second day of the IMP pairs we had a mediocre afternoon session where we basically wiped out our carryover. The evening, however, was another story. In the evening we had a very good session, finishing at +37 IMPs for a final tally of +34.25
and 36th overall.

Remember what I said earlier about IMP pairs not always being pretty? I'm going to show you our biggest two boards of the evening now, and I guarantee your reaction will be, "those lucky $@#%#$%!" This just goes to show you the random nature of IMP pairs. Also, I guarantee you that every pair finishing in the plus column had a few results like these on their scorecard.

Our second biggest score:




A top pair had this abortion of an auction against us. Actually, North thought 3S was Stayman with no spade stopper, whereas South thought 3S was simply a spade stop ask with a decent hand. Thus, South took North's 4H bid to show extra length there and passed. So, N/S played in 4H, down 2 for -200, cold for 3NT or 6C. (In truth, 4H can be made double dummy -- do you see how?) True to form, the strong North player declared his silly contract well and gave himself an excellent chance to make 4H -- but the cards lay foul for his line of play. This board was worth 12 IMPs to us.

Our biggest score:




I have no idea what possessed North to lead a low heart from that hand. In any case, when he did, I could afford to cash the sK to safety-play the trumps, and was rewarded on the actual layout. I led a spade toward the East hand, intending to insert the s8, but North split with the s9. At this board I ruffed a club with the sJ in my hand as North discarded a diamond, and led a trump toward the dummy. North rose with the sQ and played the hK to my ace, but I was able to cross to dummy with a diamond and claim.

A low heart (or a ridiculous trump) is the only lead to allow this slam to make. We won 14 IMPs for this result as the most common score around the room was -100, with some -200s and a very rare +650. The slam is not particularly hard to bid with East opening the bidding, but only ONE other pair was +1430.

You can see why IMP Pairs is not my favourite event.

In any case, we played okay and finished in the overalls. Tomorrow is the 2-day North American Swiss Teams which is always a fun event.

Detroit NABC, Day Seven

Today we played in a compact (1-day) KO with Jeff Smith and David Sabourin. We breezed through the first 12 board match, then played a reasonably tough team in the second round matchup. Our opponents bid two slams against us so we were a little nervous, but Jeff and Scooter came through in a big way. They duplicated one slam, and we actually WON 13 IMPs on the other slam! Here is the deal:




Their system worked wonders here as they were able to bounce into 7S without breathing hard. At our table, we got in the auction all the way up to 5H and all the opponents could do was bid the small slam. Let me explain their auction for you.

The 2S opening bid in their style showed at least 6 spades and 10-14 HCP. 2NT was asking, and the 4D response showed a singleton diamond, a minimum hand, and a seventh spade. 5H asked for keycards outside of hearts, and North showed 2 without the sQ. South then made a general 7-try with his 6D bid which North happily accepted, knowing the cQJ were fantastic cards.

Scary, isn't it?

Unfortunately, we lost a squeaker to the Bulgarians (a.k.a. team Maidman), but demolished our final match to finish 3rd in the compact. A fun day all in all.