Appearances at bridge tournaments

Over the last 4 days at the Charleston regional, I received more compliments and complaints than ever at a bridge tournament. It feels really good for people to mention liking this blog when they see me at tournaments, and I rather liked the compliments about my attire as well.

Thursday and Sunday at the Charleston regional, I dressed up (dress pants, dress shoes and blazer) supposedly because I was trying particularly hard to be a good role model for the kids with whom I was playing. The real goal was teaching good bridge and how to be a good trustworthy partner. This includes not gloating, taking time to play hands, trusting partner and playing in such a way that partner can trust you, not bidding rashly, and not psyching, but I saw more psyches Friday and Saturday than I've seen in serious bridge in a long time (but none by Ricoh) and it was bothering me immensely by the end of Saturday. I can't say that this tournament was a big success personally, although today the A/X Swiss with Sean, Ricoh, and William did basically go well. By any standards, 73 VP on a 70 average in the flight A game with them is very good, including a fun win over the Granovetters.

Had we won anything Thursday or Friday, I would likely be winning the unit 114 1000-2500 mini-McKenney but it looks like I'll be a point or two short. Too bad I spent most of Friday and Saturday (New Years Eve and New Years Day) being irritated and grouchy. I'm inclined to blame it on being dressed "normally" those days (jeans, nice tshirt, GT wind breaker). So, next time you see me at a tournament don't be surprised to see me in a suit.

AJB Sweep of District 7 NAP Flight C

For the second straight year, teenagers from the Atlanta area won 1st and 2nd on the flight C district 7 NAP. In fact, this year they took 3rd as well. Congratulations to this year's winners who will represent GA, SC, NC, and eastern TN at the spring NABC in Louisville: 1st Saachi Hingorani and Aashna Choudhary; 2nd Angie Green and Mili Raina, who I was going to play with in B but there's a conflict w/ B and C at the nationals; 3rd Ricoh Das, who I also play with/teach, and Murphy Green.

Atlanta Junior Bridge is clearly doing some good things that will hopefully lead to more success in youth and junior international success in the coming years. I just hope getting beaten by kids doesn't discourage the older players who are new to bridge or duplicate bridge from continuing to learn the game. And I hope that they don't get used to winning every - it gets a harder to win in flight B, and much harder in flight A. The winners have been unable to tell me a favorite hand from the tournament for me to write about but see some of my previous and upcoming posts for a few of my interesting struggles with the same hands in flight A. The results and hand records can be found here.

ATL regional fun

So, as I get close to 2000 masterpoints, I have 18 blue ribbon qualifications, but, until today, had not won a regional knockout. Most times I play maybe 2 days of pairs and the Swiss teams on the final day so it's not that I haven't had success at regionals - just haven't played many knockouts. (correction - I went back and looked at all my records and actually, I was mistaken. I apparently won a KO at the 2006 ATL regional with Coberly, Owen and someone) And to get this win, Bryan and I teamed with Mili and Angie - a team in which my partner and I had 97% of the team total and are nearly double their age. We got to the final against Richard and Andrew Jeng, Zandy, and Murphy and it donned on me that I was in a no-win situation. If we win, it was expected - the kids aren't supposed to stand much chance against two very experienced players like Bryan and I. If we lose, it would be kind of embarrassing for us, or it would make the girls feel bad for "bringing us down". Bringing us down was not how it happened at all. They consistently came back with good results. Anyway, at the half we were up 19 and the second half was looking bad from my end. I felt like we had given up the lead plus about 10 more in the first 4 boards, had a few average-ish boards and then on the last board we didn't get to a cold game with 25hcp. So, to win by 16 for the whole session was a pleasant surprise.

The first 3 matches in the KO were fairly easy victories. It was kind of nice to play low-stress bridge against relatively weak competition and not play very well and still win. I was slightly concerned that we would win up playing against bad players who were also annoying but our opponents were all pleasant and not as bad as they could have been in bracket 2 (out of 2) at the end of the tournament.

Earlier in the weekend, Bryan and I won the Friday night BAM with Jourdain Patchett and Sharon Meng and had a good showing in the flight A pairs Saturday.

Anyway, here is the hand from the final that garnered the most discussion. Board 2, I picked up Qxxx, x, K9xxx, Jxx in 3rd seat favorable vulnerability. I open 1H, Richard doubles, partner bids 2D as 4 card drury, passed back to Richard who doubled again, all pass. We found our 8 card fit and went down 1 to win only 2 because Mili and Angie only got to 3H. 4H their way was pretty much cold.

But my favorite and probably Bryan's favorite hand was this slam we bid in the 2nd round. Our slam bidding success was pretty bad. We went down in 5 slams and made only this one, which could have been beaten

AKx
AK986x
Jx
xx

xx
J7
KQTx
AKQJx

They had just gotten what I fully expected to be lose 13 when he neglected to take a simple trump finesse for the Q, thus picking up my Qx off-side and making the vul game. We bid to 6H, doubled by lho, after bryan opened 1NT. No diamond lead so the contract might have a chance. LHO had all 5 outstanding hearts and clearly shouldn't have doubled because it gave Bryan a hint as to how to play the heart suit. You don't quite have enough entries to shorten dummy's trumps to execute a coup, but when the defender failed to ruff a club until the 5th round (after pitching both of dummy's diamonds), it was pretty easy: CA, HJ covered and won, CK, CQ pitching D, CJ pitching diamonds (lho pitching spade), spade AK-ruff, losing only the heart 10. To exxecute the coup, you would need to trump lots of things in dummy and wind up leading from hand at trick 12 with K9 left in dummy and Tx left with lho but I think the best you legitimately can do is be in hand to lead a good club at trick 11 while dummy still has 3 trumps and lho has only 2. If only it were an actual coup..

U21 USBC

This past weekend I spent a lot of time watching on BBO Vugraph the Under 21 US Bridge Championships rather than the finals of the Open USBC. While the bridge for the most part was noticeably amateurish, I enjoyed it because I know almost everyone in it and want to see them play and mature and want to think that I had something to do with them getting to the 2030 USBC finals but then losing to me. ;)

The favorites - Adam Kaplan, Adam Grossack, John Marriott, Alex Hudson, Jourdain Patchett, and Jesse Stern - had no trouble winning. They are all rather established partnerships and quite experienced players and should do well in the world competition. The second place team, probably most people’s pick to be second, consisted of Zandy Rizzo, Murphy Green, Richard Jeng, and Andrew Jeng. Both teams will represent the USA in the U21 world championships in Philadelphia in October. The Rizzo team fell behind 40-0 in the USA2 final against Ricoh Das, William Dang, Mili Raina, and Angie Green but would up winning 169-90. All of the kids clearly have bright minds and a flare for the game and have potential to be very good. It is experience that was the main distinction between the top three teams. Each pair made their share of good plays but the top pairs were able to avoid bidding misunderstandings and didn’t suffer much from two very common problems of young players today.

The first common mistake is playing too fast. By junior standards, I am a slow player. By average bridge player standards, I play at lightning speed 95% of the time and then at a snail’s pace on an occasional difficult hand. There are some hands that do not require much thought but until you are sure of that, it is best to take some time and play deliberately. Even with the screens, the teams were sometimes finishing 16 board segments in an hour and a half, only about 5.5 minutes per board, while the open teams were only on board 11 or so. Time and time again, we noticed declarers playing too quickly, especially early in the hand, or defenders not pausing for a few seconds to think more about what’s going on. Then just a few seconds later they realize their mistake. Bridge players have big egos, and perhaps playing fast is just another (slightly delusional) way to show off one’s superiority to others but that’s another article. These mistakes happen at all levels – Friday, I saw Bob Hamman forget to pitch a quick loser away on an AK in dummy before leading trumps (missing the A of trumps).

The second major problem players in this phase of learning where people know enough to think about many possibilities but not enough to realize that most of the possibilities are so unlikely to actually happen is that they just bid too much, particularly without having a fit. By the same token, the same players that bid too much without a fit don’t bid enough with a fit. Having a fit with partner in a way, gives you a license to be more aggressive as there is some safety in going to higher levels – it means the opponents probably have a fit and can make more, and taking tricks, whether in NT or a suit, is just easier when you don’t have singletons opposite KJTxx. This is something that one must learn from experience. There are few life lessons that we can just accept from other people telling us – we have to go make the mistakes ourselves to learn. Learning when to quit bidding can be a hard lesson to learn. After going down in 3NT on misfitting hands several times, one slowly learns. Bidding NT is rarely a good way to “rescue” partner from a misfit. Pass and get out while it's still relatively inexpensive is usually best. Occasionally, you’ll get a favorable lie of the cards or have an unexpected club fit and it will work well, but more often than not, passing partner in 2S in a 6-0 fit is the best thing you can do. This is why I don’t like the idea of playing new suit non-forcing opposite partner’s weak two. There’s no reason to think partner will have better support for you than you have for him and you may only be getting yourself a level higher. Hands usually play better in the long suit of the weaker hand anyway. Plus, passing partner without a fit and making him suffer a hopeless contract has a side benefit of making him think twice, then three times, then not at all, about preempting on a T high suit or open 3C on a 5 bagger. There is a reason so few world class bridge players are young and it’s not because young people aren’t as smart or talented – we can’t learn from other people’s mistakes nearly as well as we learn from our own and it takes time to make mistakes (or, if you prefer, gain experience) and improve our neural network of card sense and bidding sanity.

I remember Richard Jeng finding a nice endplay in the last match to score an overtrick in 3S, I believe. Kaplan made a few impressive declarer plays – the play in a 4HX contract Saturday was pretty interesting. There were others, too, but those are two that stuck out in my mind the most. I could go back and write about specific hands but unless someone wants to pay me, I’m not quite that motivated to write about hands that don’t directly involve me, so I’ll leave that to the Bridge Bulletin and Bridge World writers for now. :)

District 7 GNT

While I was struggling through the Sunday Swiss at the Greenville sectional en route to a medicore 9th out of 42, the finals of flights A and C GNTs were going on in the same room. Jon Rice, Doug Dey, Lance Shull, and Audrey Ventura won flight A, no surprise to me. What is surprising is that their average was clearly less than half any other team in the flight A event except mine, yet their average age was still at least double the average age of the flight C winning team. In fact, the finals of the flight C event featured 8 players with a maximum age of 15, all from the Atlanta area. So congratulations to Richard and Andrew Jeng, Murphy Green, and Zandy Rizzo on demolishing the flight C competition.

Junior bridge in Atlanta

Every time I go to a tournament or even a club game in Atlanta now, I see teenagers playing. Lots of them. And I think to myself, why were there no people my age in this area playing when I was a teenager or a college student? I mean, Brian Levy played for awhile and was pretty good but college life took over his life apparently more than it did mine. And at Tech, Mike Rice was there for a year or two while I was and we tried to have a bridge group but it was just too hard to get enough interest. My last year at Tech, Richard Starr and I taught a class at the student center for free. I thought that might drum up some interest, but we had maybe 6 people show up and there was some talk of re-starting a GT bridge club but it never happened. I blame it on computers and tv and the multitude of other things young people can do now.

So, I continue to be impressed by the work Patty Tucker has done with Atlanta Junior Bridge in getting so many kids interested in playing. I guess it is unrealistic to expect many people to stick to it, given the number or people I personally talked to about learning bridge. She got hundreds of kids in summer camps and it seems like a good 10-15% of them actually are playing in tournaments now. I suppose those are good numbers. But simple reaching out to them is a big thing.

In Macon/Warner Robins, it is going to be a lot harder because of the much smaller base of people. If we expect that 10% of the people we teach will actually like it enough to continue, in WR, that's maybe 2 or 3 people. And it's hard for them to continue unless they have more peers.

Middle Georgia Bridge

I suppose the metro area of Macon/Warner Robins has about 250,000 people, so I am still kind of surprised that there is as much bridge as there is here. Nine regular club games a week, including 2 novice games between the 2 bridge clubs. Probably 70 tables per week combined. I mean, this area isn't a whole lot bigger than valdosta, where there were 3 games a week with maybe 20 tables total. Anyway, a little over a month ago, my first bridge class in middle georgia ended. We started with 12 people and after 8 weeks we still had 10 people who seemed interested. 2 had already been playing in the beginner games but I am a little disappointed that I have yet to see any of the others in the club games.

I think we're going to try to offer another set of free beginning bridge classes in the fall, maybe make it more of an attempt to bring party bridge players into duplicate bridge. I'd like to get bridge in schools in houston county at some point. With engineering being such a big industry here, there should be a decent amount of interest from these engineer's kids in middle school or high school. We may have to incorporate it as part of the math team or as a little extracurricular activity geared toward those in the advanced math classes. Or maybe the could have a little elective course, where maybe 6 weeks are devoted to some different activity and bridge could be one of those. The drawback with the last option is that we would be teaching a lot of kids who have no interest at all but if we make it more of a spinoff of math team, at least we'll get kids who are motivated and more likely to be interested. I don't know. It probably won't happen until next year, but we're thinking about it. It has worked so well for Patty Tucker and Atlanta Junior Bridge that we want to try teaching bridge to kids in middle Georgia as well.