Almost...

This was a near-gem from last night's club game in Elmhurst--I was playing with Kenny Zuckerberg. I was third in hand--Kenny dealt and passed and RHO opened a 12-14 notrump which became the final contract. I led a low spade...this is what I saw:
-------Ax
-------Tx
-------8xxx
-------AQTxx
KTxxx
KTx
QJx
Kx
My lead ran to Kenny's jack and declarer's queen. Declarer led the jack of clubs, covered and won in dummy. Declarer continued with the queen of clubs and the ten, Kenny following. Declarer pitched a heart and i did the same. Kenny won the next club, declarer shedding a spade and me a diamond. Dummy won the spade continuation and declarer cashed her last club (her 6th trick), pitching another diamond from her hand as I blanked the king of hearts. She duly took the finesse into my king and I cashed out but in the 3 card ending declarer, pitching behind Kenny who came down to AT of diamonds, threw the ace of hearts from her hand and made the last trick with the king of diamonds. What if I hadn't blanked the king of hearts, throwing a diamond instead? Now, assuming declarer took the heart finesse, when I cashed out, we would have caught her in a legitimate squeeze--here is the 3 card ending--

-
J
AT
-
---- -
---- A
---- K9
---- -
x
T
Q
-
My hand is South in the diagram with dummy's cards immaterial. On the last spade, Kenny would have pitched his heart and declarer would have been bamboozled.

I took a couple of liberties with the spot cards to make the squeeze work (we were actually short a couple of tens to pull it off in real life)...but here is the hypothetical full deal:

------Ax
------87
------8653
------AQT53
KT742-------J95
KT3----------J654
QJ4-----------AT
K7------------9862
------Q86
------AQ95
------K972
------J4

Too Tough...

I just got back from a quick weekend at nationals. I had high hopes for a good showing in the swiss teams, but they were dashed by a non-qualifying first day effort. These two hands from our second round match were kind of typical of the day--
Jxx
AJx
Axx
ATxx

Axx
KQTxx
x
KQxx
My partner and I had a nice auction to 6 Clubs--uncontested it was 1H-2C-3D*-3H-3S-4D-4H-5NT**-6C *=splinter **=choice of slams
After the spade lead my partner cashed the king queen of clubs finding jack-fourth offside and eventually conceded down two. At the other table our opponents bid only game in hearts.

Then this two hands later:
AKx
9xxx
xxx
JTx

QJx
AQT
void
KQxxxxx
I shifted the directions on this one so we were sitting East-West. My partner opened 1 Diamond, South overcalled 2 Clubs, I bid 2 Diamonds. North and East passed and South doubled. North responded 3 Diamonds, South bid 4 Clubs and North bid (gag) 6 Clubs. I'll add that North is a top-ranking expert player...his luck was certainly in this time as both the king and jack of hearts were with the opening bidder...gin. So we got blitzed in that match and never made it back to average. There's always Washington, DC.

2 Problems from GNT Weekend

Here are a couple of problems that came up for me yesterday in GNT qualifying--
game all, I held
xx Axxxxx Axx xx
RHO passed as dealer, I passed and LHO opened 1 Diamond. Partner overcalled 2 Clubs, RHO made a negative double and I tried 2 Hearts. Now LHO bid 2 Spades and partner bid 2 Notrump passed to me. My bid is?

xxx
xx
xx
AQJTxx

KJx
KJ98
AT8x
Kx
I opened the south hand 1 Notrump and partner raised to game. LHO led the 2 of hearts to RHO's queen. Eight tricks are in view but you need nine--how do you plan the play?

Nice Treatment

I have been kibitzing a bit of the Yeh Brothers Championship team event on BBO the last few days...once again it is staggering seeing the results you can generate from very solid agreements that can only come from a lot of partnership discussion and experience. It is more evidence of how difficult it can be for some of us with full-time jobs to compete at the top levels with professionals who devote so much time to system refinement. Here is one of the more useful tools that I just picked up from watching the final. It is a very easy understanding to add to your bag of tricks, and i think it gives a decided advantage over standard methods. The pair using the aggreement was Drijver/Brink of the Netherlands.

After a 1NT opening and a 4-level transfer, they play a double as takeout of the reponder's suit instead of as a general lead/direct or sacrifice try in the transfer suit. This adds quite a bit of safety since partner can cooperate after the notrump opener completes the tranfer but doesn't have to...as in the case where you wait for opener to accept the transfer and then reopen with a double. The method is particularly useful at favorable vulnerability, which was the case on this hand--Brink held:
void
T98xx
AKxx
Qxxx
Fredin of Sweden opened a strong 1NT and Fellenius jumped to 4 Diamonds, a spade transfer in their methods. Brink doubled and Fredin completed the tranfer...but Drijver held a suitable:
Qxx
Kxx
xx
KJxxx
and showed excellent judgement in bidding 5 Clubs. The Swedes had a likely 100 penalty coming for defeating the contract one trick doubled, but reasonably elected to try 5 Spades. Unluckily for them, ten tricks was their limit and the Dutch earned a major swing. Without the agreement, Brink would have had to pass 4 Diamonds and face 4 Spades on the next round...now doubling isn't nearly as safe as you could end up going for a large number or losing redoubled overtricks. Well done--great players have their methods down for these big tournaments and are opportunistic about putting them to use!

These methods could extend to doubles of two-level transfers as well and also to doubles of the drury 2 Clubs.

All the Aces

Early on in my bridge-playing career I gained an appreciation for the power of aces. Four of them in the same hand is "worth" a lot more than 16 points, so when I have that hand and balanced shape, I try my best not to open 1NT. I got a chance to test out the theory this weekend--3rd in hand both white I held:
Axx
Ax
Axx
AT9xx
After two passes I opened 1 Club, not certain what I would do on the next round but knowing that i didn't want to open a strong notrump. Sure enough, I hit the jackpot on this one--LHO doubled and partner bid 4 diamonds, a fit-showing jump. Now I had an easy drive to at least 6 clubs. Partner's hand was:
xxx
void
KQJxxx
QJxx
After a heart lead I banged down the ace of clubs, dropping the stiff king for +940. Though I would likely have gone down on a spade lead, this was a great slam. Maybe we could have reached it after a notrump opening, but this made things much easier.

After a Jump Shift...

My partner and I bid these cards today at rubber bridge:
AKJ9x
A
ATxx
QTx

Tx
Jxxx
x
AKJxxx

Uncontested the auction went:
1S-1NT*-3D-3S-4S-P
*=forcing
how should we bid to this excellent slam? What is 4C over 3D, and should South bid that? And what about 4C over the 3S preference? Is that a cuebid or a fragment?

Jim Linhart

I was sad to hear about Jim Linhart's passing on the ACBL site last week. Unfortunately I didn't know him personally until this last nationals in Boston. On one of the (many) days that I was out of the national events I played with Helen Raleigh and we picked up Jim and Romanian junior Marius Agica as teammates for the knockout. We were decided underdogs in the first round to Carolyn Lynch's powerful squad that would later win the Open Swiss Teams.

Both of our pairings were first-time partnerships with Jim and Marius being quite an odd one...Jim had 53 years on the kid. While Helen and I had some first-time troubles at our table, it seemd that Jim and Marius were rocks. After a dismal set, Helen and I figured that we trailed by 20 IMPs at the half...we were up by 2. Actually my favorite line from Jim came during the first half comparisons--as often happens with me, it took a few re-addings to arrive at the correct margin. After one of my errors "cost" us 3 IMPs, Jim deadpanned, "Stop checking." Sadly, order was restored in the second half, though again we had our chances...we lost the match by 6. Jim, though clearly a fierce competitor, was far from discouraged by the result--rather, he asked what was on schedule for the evening's bridge events--we'd keep our team together and hopefully do better in a side game! This guy, at 72, seemed to have the same enthusiasm for the game that I had in my early 20s when a trip to nationals for me was akin to a kid visiting a candy store. It was great getting to meet this giant of the game (figuratively and literally--he stood about six and a half feet tall) even if it was just for a day.