Gatinburg Squeeze/Endplay

I only made it to Gatlinburg for the weekend. I thought I had a reasonable plans for the weekend but all such plans somehow fell though and I would up playing the Saturday-Sunday KO with Jim, Wendy, and Tom, who kept me down in bracket 3 (out of 4). It’s kind of amazing how much attendance drops off – the KO that started Friday had 15 brackets but only 4 in the KO starting Saturday. The midnight games were fun as always as well and I was on the winning team both nights. I also enjoyed playing against a Quebecois couple thrice in full KO and found a new favorite liquor - Fireball (cinnamon whiskey). This was an interesting declarer play problem from Sunday.

Dealer: N Vul: None		North ♠ J8 ♥ T9xx ♦ Q ♣ KT98xx
		South ♠ KT7x ♥ QJ8x ♦ AKx ♣ Qx
West	North		East	South
—	Pass		2♠	Pass
Pass	3♣		Pass	3NT
Pass	Pass		Pass

Dummy wasn’t as promising as I expected but there’s still a play for 3NT. 4♥ has no play being off 4 tops plus a spade ruff and a possible club ruff. The play started with a low spade to the A, then ♠Q to my K with LHO discarding a discouraging diamond.

My ♣Q held trick 3 and LHO rose with the ♣A for trick 4 as RHO shed a spade. Next was a diamond to dummy, taking out the entry to the clubs. There appear to be 9 tricks via 2 spades, 2 hearts, 3 diamonds, and 2 clubs if I knock out the heart honors now. The last 2 hearts would provide the transportation to cash the ♣K in dummy and the pointed honors in hand. I can’t afford to cash any of those before the hearts are knocked out because that would set up the defense’s 5^th trick to go along with the ♠A, ♥AK, and ♣A. However, my HQ was allowed to win trick 6 so I have to arrange some sort of squeeze/endplay or have the good fortune of LHO having both heart honors and no 4^th diamond.

Not quite sure where I wanted to end up after the last heart, I played low to the T and RHO’s K at trick 7. She continued diamonds. Now I play LHO for the ♥A so cash the ♠T at trick 9. LHO is known to have to discard from ♠-, ♥A, ♦xx, ♣Jx. Obviously he can’t throw a heart but if he throws a diamond, I cash my last diamond and throw him in with a heart, forcing him to give dummy the last 2 club tricks. If he throws a club, I play HJ to throw him before taking the last diamond with the HT as an entry to the now-good clubs.

Traveling with Winter

Having Winter with me brought a new appreciation for the winter season. Obviously, Siberian Huskies love the cold weather and even though I do not, I could tell she was happy with the cold weather, often staying outside all night. Plus, she was easier to handle because I didn’t need to worry about leaving her in the car during dinner or a bridge game or a shopping trip and she would be fine. She certainly likes that better than being left home alone or in the crate at a hotel.

Winter is still coming with me on some bridge trips but simply coming along on day trips or while I run errands around town won’t be happening so much because of the heat. I have 1 week trips to regionals in Richmond regional at the end of May and 1 week at the Greenville SC regional in the middle June, and I plan to take Winter on both of those trips. I’m sure I will have other trips this summer but I haven’t planned those – I’m waiting to see what the actual days of the impending furlough will be and whether we will have any flexibility on when to take them.

As I think I have mentioned before, there are so many places I’d like to visit but most of them probably won’t happen this year. Things I haven’t mentioned are bridge festivals. Several European cities have tournaments with substantial cash prizes. I wish the ACBL or some other bridge organization would run more cash prize tournaments in the US. These tournaments have late starting times or sometimes only 1 session per day at about 4pm.  The one I’m looking at most is the one in Biarritz the first week of July.  Who wants to help pay my way to that?

The warm weather has reignited my desire to run and play tennis. Actually, the last time Winter escaped, about 4 weeks ago, I discovered a nice trail through the woods in my neighborhood. It’s down in a valley and shaded so should be good for a late afternoon 1.2 mile jog a few times per week. It certainly beats running on the street.

Bridge hands from Tuesday night!

In case there are eager readers who have been checking this site regularly awaiting a new bridge deal, the time has come. If you read this blog for the non-technical bridge articles, check back tomorrow - there will be something for you!

Last night I had some interesting problems. The most interesting to me was this defensive hand.

Dealer: N Vul: None			North ♠ AQJx ♥ T8x ♦ xx ♣ KQTx
West ♠ 543 ♥ AJ96 ♦ KTx ♣ 973						East ♠ KTxx ♥ K7 ♦ J9xx ♣ AJ8
			South ♠ xx ♥ Qxxx ♦ AQ8x ♣ xxx
West	North		East	South
—	1♣		Pass	1♦
Pass	1♠		Pass	1NT
Pass	Pass		Pass

I, west, started out with my 4^th best heart. I really wanted to lead a spade against this auction but decided to go with the field this time. Declarer only has 4 sure tricks – 2 spades, a club, and a diamond – and with best defense, that’s all he can take. However, we take the first 3 tricks in hearts while setting up declarer’s Q, so that’s 5 tricks for declarer. There’s no way to really know that south had 4 hearts rather than the suit being 4333. I would have held off playing the 3^rd round of hearts (with a sure diamond entry, there’s no way the ♥A could go away), but didn’t know which suit to lead next. At trick 3, on the ♥A partner played the ♦9. Well, that tells me not to lead a diamond but I don’t think I was going to do that anyway.

Now I guess to lead a club and select the 7. Dummy wins the K and comes off with the ♠Q. Partner takes this and fires a diamond through and my ten takes the trick. By now we both know declarer is at least 4-4 in the red suits and east “knows” that declarer has 3 clubs – my lead of the 7 could hardly have been from a 4 card suit and declarer’s spade play sort of implies that he has a doubleton. Anyway, now I put the ♣9 on the table, clearing up the club count, sort of. At least it guarantees that I have a 3^rd club or else I would have led the 9 first. Declarer finesses and when partner wins the J, it is tempting to cash the A. However, he can safely lead another diamond, knowing that he still has spades stopped and that I am kind of marked with another diamond honor. Plus, since I now am “known” to have 3 clubs, we’ll still be able to take the club later. I guess it could go away if declarer’s initial diamond holding was AKxxx because the early diamond discard now means declarer’s 4^th diamond would be a winner. But with that, he may have tried to set up diamonds on his own.

My second most interesting problem of the night was an opening lead against 2♠. RHO had opened a 15-17 1NT and LHO transferred to spades while my p stuck in a lead-directing double of 2♥. I held ♠QTx, ♥AJTx, ♦xx, ♣J9xx. Obviously I’m going to lead a heart and if partner has the KQ, it doesn’t really matter which heart I lead. However, if partner has only the K (say Kxxxx), it may be necessary to let p win the first heart trick so we can finesse declarer out of the Q and start tapping dummy. If I start with the ♥A, we may not be able to effectively make dummy ruff without setting up declarer’s Q. I will not even consider the possibility that partner does not have the ♥K – Kxxxx is the bare minimum for a lead-directing double at the 2-level (in fact, I actually think that suit is too weak but I won’t argue much against it).

So, the question is: will the J, T, or x be more likely to get partner to play the K at trick 1? I figured if I lead the J or T, he may let it go with K-empty, thinking we may not have adequate spots to be wasting 2 honors. If I lead low, at least it could be from the Q so he’ll surely play 3^rd hand high. So, I selected the small heart it was a revolting development when dummy tabled Qx and it went low, 8, 9.

My third interesting problem was what to do with QJxx, AQJ9xx, J, Jx after it went 1♠-2♦ to me. There are four reasonable options:

a) 2♥, planning to bid 4♠ next time (or 5♠ if they take an advance save).

b) 3♦, a limit raise or better, but then how do I know whether I have the right hand to move if partner just jumps to game.

c) 4♦, a splinter, putting things in partner’s hands.

d) 3♥, a fit-showing jump-shift. This is really the best option if you are playing a jump-shift this way. I’m not sure if Emory and I are or not so I didn’t bid it.

This is more of a bidding theory/style kind of problem – nothing interesting actually happened on this deal.