Catching Up...

Regrettably I wasn't able to attend the World Championships that are currently concluding in Philadelphia. Congrats to John Diamond, Brian Platnick, Fred Gitleman, Brad Moss, Eric Greco and Geoff Hampson, winners of the main event! They bested an incredibly strong field of well over 100 teams.

Actually after a flurry of cards in early September I haven't played much. The last month or so I've been focusing more on the Northwestern football Saturdays and some home renovations. The most notable accomplishment from the flurry was a qualification for the North American Pair, to be contested at the March NABC in Louisville. My partner, Sangarapil Mohan, and I finished 3rd in the district. The first and second place pairs receive funding from the ACBL to attend the national event--as third place finishers we are invited to compete but will pay for the trip ourselves (my usual pro-quo for nationals anyway). Congrats to Nik Demirev-Ralph Katz and David Yang-Xiaodong Shi, our district's first two pairs.

The field was a particularly strong one, so Mohan and I were very happy to place so well. I recall several interesting hands, but a lot of the finer details are escaping me (as usual, I have lost track of my hand records). Here is one that we got lucky on...any suggestions for a better auction are welcome.
A
AKJxxx
xxx
AK

KTxxxx
void
AQxxx
xx
Our auction, starting with the North hand, was 2C-2S-3H-3S-4S-5D-6C-6S-P
This was not a great contract but it had the virtue of keeping the diamond tenace protected, which proved crucial. Spades were 3-3 and hearts 4-3, so the play was pretty easy--I won the club lead, ruffed 2 hearts while drawing trumps and hoping for the best...the other high club was left as an entry to the hearts once the spade loser was punched out.

More concerning is the bidding...I took a number of dubious actions, the first being the 2 Spade response, ostensibly showing 2 of the top 3 honors. I thought that this hand would be tough to describe without starting with a positive response. Over my partner's 3 Hearts, 4 Diamonds seems normal, but is it certain to be interpreted correctly? These days introducing minors naturally at the 4-level is not in style...how do you show a good raise to 4 Hearts here? Anyway, I further muddied the waters with 3 Spades and could certainly have passed 4 Spades as well...but things worked out. On the same hand Katz opened only 1 Heart on the North cards and the pair still reached 6 Spades, so perhaps it isn't so easy to stop short of slam.

The Right Time?

Suppose you pick up this hand in 4th seat:
Jxxx AJ98x A54 x
LHO starts the auction with 1 Spade, partner passes and RHO responds 1 Notrump. You make a dubious 2 Heart overcall which is followed by 2 passes. Now RHO reopens with 3 Clubs and is promptly raised to 5 by the opener. What do you lead?


I generally don't have a great flair for the dramatic on opening lead, but this hand seemed worthy of some thought. I figured that the opening bidder would be prepared for a heart lead considering his aggressive raise, so apparently our best hope was to make 2 tricks in diamonds to go with my ace of hearts. My best chance was to find the king of diamonds in my partner's hand, in which case it didn't matter which diamond i led...however, if partner didn't have the king of diamonds, LHO was a big favorite to hold it on this auction (RHO should have a good club suit and something less than 10 HCP). My analysis pretty much ended there and I managed to lead my 4 of diamonds reasonably in tempo. I have to admit that my heart started pounding when i saw the dummy:
AQTxx
Kx
KJ
Kxxx
Declarer took quite a while to play to trick one...I'm still not sure if he was suspicious or just taking his time examining his assets, but finally he played the jack. My partner took the queen and returned a diamond to my ace. I cashed the ace of hearts and continued a heart for a one-trick set. Actually if I had played my third diamond we would likely have scored another trick, for declarer's hand was a surprising:
void
Qx
Txxxxx
AQ98x
His choice of 3 Clubs instead of 3 Diamonds seems a bit odd but isn't crazy and this time it led to a pretty good contract. I'm confident that he would have gotten the diamond right if I hadn't led it right away because I had overcalled.

In fact, I had a small extra edge in coming up with the lead--I was playing last night at the local club where the bidding in general isn't precise enough to locate good minor suit games. My goal was to beat the contract, and it seemed likely that the underlead, if wrong, would cost at most an overtrick. Sure enough, our opponents were the only pair in game!

Which Strain?--Updated

As promised, here is one interesting hand from the recent NABC in New Orleans. It comes from the swiss teams--you are vul vs not and partner opens 1 Heart.
A9xx
K
9xxx
A9xx
The auction begins simply enough--with the opponents silent, you respond 1 Spade, partner bids 2 Diamonds and you bid 3 Diamonds. Now partner bids 3 Spades. Apparently he has a good shapely hand, but is there a range? Could he be 2-5-4-2 without a club stop? And, perhaps more importantly, what do you bid now?

--------
Thanks for all of the comments on this hand. I was planning on updating sooner, but figured I'd let you guys run with it for a while. As stated, I faced this problem in the Swiss. I made a poor bid of 4 spades that had a happy ending when I managed to emerge with 10 tricks. One thing that I did consider that was not brought up in the comments was that hearts could still easily be the right strain. Our stiff king is actually quite a fine holding. My 4 spade bid amounted to a guess, and a bad one, as the comments indicate--although we can control the first round of clubs and will be able to ruff the second round in the shorter trump hand, our trump are not the robust type that you like to have to play a 4-3 fit...not to mention the possibility that partner is 2-5-5-1.

In the postmortem my partner suggested the 4 Club cuebid. Assuming you are willing to give up on notrump at this point (I know that Kenny is!), the cuebid stands out. My partner thinks that 4 Clubs says, "I have a good hand but am not sure where to go with it yet." Over 4 Clubs, partner has an easy 4 Heart bid--his hand actually was: JT7 AQJxxx AQxx void.

To finish the story, 4 Spades needed some luck, including the diamond finesse. We gained an imp on this one when the other table played in 3nt with 9 toppers when the hearts split 4-2...the opposing declarer didn't take the diamond finesse and was duly punished.

Intuitive Bid

My girlfriend Alice and I arrived back in Chicago yesterday morning exhausted from a long weekend of partying in New Orleans. It was a great time, though the partying went better than the bridge for the most part...I'll try to post a few hands in the next few days. I was planning an afternoon sleeping my way out of the daze and then a relaxing dinner/cards night with friends including Dan Wilderman, who is visiting from New York. The sleeping part of that plan was put aside when I heard from Dan that he and Kenny were planning on playing the afternoon game at the local club--Alice and I decided to join in the fun and soon found ourselves sitting North-South at table 3!

Alice has still played less than 10 rounds of duplicate and our convention card includes nothing more than 16-18 notrumps, Stayman, and forcing double-raises. You might imagine my trepidation, then, when I held this hand in 3rd seat with none vul and faced a challenging auction:
AJ9x
Jx
K9
KJ98x
The opponents were silent throughout. I opened 1 Club and Alice responded 2 Diamonds. We had not discussed passed hand jump shifts so I tried to imagine what she had--I came up with a maximum pass with an excellent diamond suit. Going on this assumption, I had a few options--I could pass if I thought we were high enough, I could raise diamonds, or I could mention my spades. I figured that my hand was minimum, but the king of diamonds was likely to be a big card, so I wanted to keep bidding and decided to bid 2 Spades on the way. Alice bid a prompt 4 Spades and again I was concerned, mostly because I thought that I had overbid. LHO led a low heart and Alice produced this fine dummy:
KQT
xx
AJTxxx
Qx
I was delighted to be in the only game contract with a legitimate chance! Normal splits led to making 4--the only +420 in our direction. I was proud of Alice's evaluation of her cards on this one--she could tell that they were all pulling full weight. Well done partner!

Light Negative Doubles

A couple of hands came up while I was playing online last night that presented opportunities to make light negative doubles of a preemptive bid. Are these long-run winning tactics or is it better to "stay fixed" with these hands? Some style is certainly involved, with the daring, gambling type of player favoring the double while the conservative passes without much thought. Here are the 2 hands and situations. Assume neither vul and you are 3rd to act.

QJxx
Kxxx
Qx
xxx
Partner opens 1 Diamond, RHO overcalls 3 Clubs.

QJxx
Qxxx
x
Qxxx
Partner opens 1 Club, RHO overcalls 3 Diamonds.

Too Much Info

Our team emerged from the recent International Team Trial event without distinction, but at least built some experience playing against some of the country's best players. As you all know, the event is concluding as I write, with some 50 boards yet to be played in the final between the Diamond and Fleishcer squads. Congratulations to my friends on the Weinstein team which defeated the powerful Meltzer and Welland squads on their way to a spot in the semifinal. Well done!

The event actually started well for our team--we won our first match and followed with two close matches, putting us above average at the first break. Unfortunately things headed south from there. Here's one hand from the second match where I broke one of my own hard rules--don't give away too much information in the bidding. I held this hand:
Kx
AQxx
KT9xx
Jx
I opened 1 Diamond, heard a game-forcing 2 Clubs from my partner and rebid 2 Diamonds. He raised to 3 Diamonds...your call?

On the auction it isn't totally clear yet what the "right" contract is. One thing that is clear to me now is that making a lot of bids with this so-so minimum, semi-balanced hand is asking for trouble. A practical 3 Notrump bid here doesn't neccessarily end the auction--partner already knows that I have a fair hand with 5 diamonds. At the table, I chose to show my hearts and the wheels started to fall off. The player to my left, who happened to be ACBL hall-of-famer Peter Weichsel, doubled. This came back around to me and now, belatedly, I bid the obvious 3 Notrump. Weichsel found a killing spade lead from Qxx instead of leading from his KJxxx of hearts. We lost 11 IMPs on the hand and the match by 3. (As a side, I've been re-reading Zia's book "Bridge my Way" this weekend and I'm sure he would suggest an occasional 3 Heart bid on my hand if my major suit holdings were reversed--see Chapter 5)

All in all the team trials were a good experience and one that hopefully I will be repeating with more success in future years.

After 2 Way New Minor Forcing

This hand caused me a problem at the regional in Lake Geneva. Playing IMPs I held
Tx
KJx
AQJxx
Qxx
I opened 1 Diamond, my partner responded 1 Spade and I rebid 1 Notrump. Now my partner bid 2 Diamonds showing some game-forcing hand. This is a nice convention because it allows you to pass information back and forth at a conveniently low level to decide on a strain for your game, or perhaps to investigate slam. Still, you can't be lazy with your bids here. This is apparently a very simple situation, but what do you bid at your 3rd turn?


I didn't think much about this one beyond the fact that I held 5 diamonds to the ace-queen-jack and hadn't shown them yet. So 3 Diamonds it was. I failed to imagine my partner's possible problem on this auction...over 3 Diamonds, his 3 Heart bid looks natural here and 3 Spades is definitely natural, so space is suddenly at a premium. Forced into a guess, my partner reasonably went with 5 Diamonds holding Qxxx x Kxxx AKJx. This was a silly contract, down off the top with 3 Notrump cold on most layouts and difficult to defend on the layouts where it is beatable. What was the problem?

On the theory of game before slam, my hand looks very well-suited to notrump play. I have slow honors in both of the unbid suits and really don't want to play diamonds unless my partner suggests it (and insists on it over my 3 Heart continuation). I now believe that I should have continued with 2 Notrump over 2 Diamonds--the auction is still low enough that we can reach diamonds if that is where the hand belongs. I thought this was an interesting problem because it is so easy to get lazy during these auctions--even when it looks like you have plenty of space, you have to imagine partner's problems and make sure you are making the most descriptive, economical bid.