Reno!

The Reno NABC last month was in some ways great but in many ways a disappointment. The town and general atmosphere was kind of trashy. I played with 3 partners over 6 days, which is more variety than I like. I had never played with two of them before, and never played with Emory at an NABC. I was honestly happy playing with Emory, Mike, and Jessica, but the results weren’t as hot as they should have been.

The first two days with Jessica were pretty solid bridge except for two major flyers each session where one or both of us just totally screwed up a board. That led to four straight 53% games and a low overall place in the mixed pairs. Respectable, but we both thought we had a pretty good shot at winning. However, this event was unwinnable thanks to Jenni and Greg’s ridiculousness. Next year.

The next two days with Emory the expectations were a good bit lower, largely because the Silodor is noticeably stronger competition than the mixed. However, we didn’t make day two. The theme here was me not getting my diamond ruffs and other defensive blunders. We rebounded with a couple of pretty good sessions in the “consolation” regional pairs.

The final two days were maybe the most disappointing as Mike McNamara and I didn’t Q for day two of the Swiss. The theme with him was declarer play problems that we didn’t get right. I had several tough problems and got kind of screwed by the opponents on a few of them as it’s hard to get tough problems right when the opponents don’t have what they should have for their bids. As with Emory, we rebounded with a nice finish in the consolation regional Swiss.

I expect it won’t be the last time playing with these new partners.

New football rankings and Athens sectional recap

Few things went according to plan with last weekend’s trip to Athens, at least according to the plan in place on Friday morning. Even the other plans that were made as the weekend went along were often changed. Playing 2 sessions of bridge Saturday was the one thing that did. Ironically, that was clearly the worst part of the weekend. Winter, however, got to spent that time having tons of fun with our new friends and I was able to join them after bridge.

If you don’t play bridge, skip this paragraph. Bridge was easy Friday night. We won with ease as everyone was in a gift-giving mood. Saturday was kind of terrible. Twice I attempted to duck smoothly when declarer finessed into my K (behind the ace) to save my entry, cut him off from dummy later, or something like that. In neither case did I score my K later and the plays were costly.  The hand that still baffles me the most is when my partner held Qxx, void, KQxxx, KJTxx. I opened 1H, he responded 1NT, and I rebid 3H. He raised this to 4H. What the heck does it take to bid 3NT? I mean, yes, ideally, the spades would be a tad better but this falls well within the expected spade length/strength for this bidding. Then my LHO doubles 4H and partner still doesn’t bid NT. Obviously now our 6-0 trump fit is getting s 5-2 trump split or worse and you have TWO good sources of tricks outside hearts! 1H-1NT-3H is not like 1H-2C-3H: the latter shows a self sufficient suit because 2H is still forcing with 6+ hearts. In the former (the auction that actually happened), 3H is the only bid you have available to show some extras with 6 hearts so you can’t expect it to be self-sufficient. It could be and if so I may well bid 4H over 3NT.

Non-bridge players who are football fans: start reading again. In other news, college football rankings through week 8 are out. Notre Dame is #1 and UGA is way down at #22 in my computer. Somehow, my algorithms don’t love the SEC as much as usual and certainly not as much as the voters. Here are the top 25 in the Asbury computer followed by some computer predictions for next week.

Rank	Prev	BCS		W	L		Team	Str. of Sch.	Rating
1	1	5		7	0		NOTRE DAME	14	93.881
2	3	2		7	0		FLORIDA	16	93.233
3	2	1		7	0		ALABAMA	52	89.851
4	4	7		6	0		OREGON STATE	34	89.829
5	5	3		7	0		KANSAS STATE	44	87.974
6	10	4		7	0		OREGON	67	81.699
7	11	8		5	1		OKLAHOMA	39	80.155
8	7	14		6	1		TEXAS TECH	26	78.863
9	8	NE		8	0		OHIO STATE	75	77.413
10	17	6		7	1		LSU	54	76.311
11	16	17		5	2		STANFORD	4	75.509
12	15	15		7	0		RUTGERS	117	74.352
13	6	19		5	2		WEST VIRGINIA	17	73.090
14	14	11		7	0		Mississippi State	115	71.423
15	20	12		7	1		FLORIDA STATE	99	70.399
16	13	21		6	1		BOISE STATE	101	70.251
17	12	13		6	2		SOUTH CAROLINA	24	70.159
18	9	20		5	2		TEXAS A&M	22	69.980
19	34	22		5	2		MICHIGAN	38	67.651
20	21	9		6	1		USC	98	67.518
21	28	18		6	1		CLEMSON	97	67.394
22	19	10		6	1		GEORGIA	100	66.975
23	29	23		5	2		TEXAS	25	66.448
24	35	25		6	2		WISCONSIN	51	65.366
25	25	24		7	0		Ohio	124	65.319

This seems odd: my computer has its top-ranked Fighting Irish losing 28-20 to Oklahoma (-9). Then again, it does try to account for home field and momentum from recent games and even adjusts a bit if a team is at the end of a particularly tough stretch of games. Other scores to expect (with the point spreads in parentheses taken from collegefootballpoll.com):

BYU 28 (+2),              @Georgia Tech 24

Florida 33 (-3.5),         Georgia 20

@South Carolina 35 (-14), Tennessee 24

Clemson 37 (-16),   @Wake Forest 24

@Florida State 36 (-26), Duke 24

@Alabama 30 (-24),   Mississippi State 21

@Kansas State 37 (-8), Texas Tech 28

Here’s another anomaly: @Vanderbilt 161, Massachusetts -114. This is undoubtedly because Massachusetts has a negative rating of -2.902 and apparently that throws the prediction algorithm out of whack. Geez, I need to add some home state bias to this program. This business of predicting GT to lose when they're officially the favorite is not cool. Neither is predicting UGA to lose by 13 when they're only 3.5 point underdogs.

Seaside Regional Awesomeness

So, the trip to Seaside, Oregon, was as fun as expected. I thoroughly enjoyed jogging on the boardwalk and playing with Alli and hanging out with all the people I met there. The cards and luck were there for us to rack up 60 or 70 points in 4 days but it took me half a session to get used to playing with Alli again so we didn't take full advantage of all the gifts we were given and finished the 4 days with almost 39 points.

Saturday we played in a bracket 1 compact KO. After winning the first match in a landslide, I found myself in 6NT on the last board of the second match, a match I thought we were slightly leading at that point.
 

Dealer: N Vul: NS	North ♠ AJxx ♥ QT ♦ AKJx ♣ QJx
	South ♠ Kxx ♥ AJ9x ♦ T9 ♣ AKTx

East	South	West	North
			1♦
Pass	1♥	Pass	1♠
Pass	3NT	Pass	4NT
Pass	6NT	Pass	Pass
Pass

West led a standard ♠T. There are 9 top tricks with at least 2 more available in hearts even if that finesse loses, and possibly an extra trick or two in diamonds or spades. Seems like a decent slam to be in and certainly one both tables will bid.

Against my better judgment, I put in the J at trick 1 – probably not the best play because west is more likely to have led from T9xx than QT9 but this time it is irrelevant. The J gets covered I you win the K. Next I cross to dummy with a club to take a heart finesse. It loses to the K and he plays another heart. It seems that I’ll have to take the diamond finesse for the 12^th trick but what other options are there?

After some thought, I realize that if the same person has the ♦Q and 4 spades, he can be squeezed. I apparently didn’t go through the calculations enough or else I would have reached the correct conclusion. After running the ♦A, ♠A, the hearts and clubs, the little spade in hand can be the spade threat while the ♦KJ in dummy poses a diamond threat. I find out that west had 4 hearts, 4 clubs, and at least 2 spades and east 3 hearts and 2 clubs and at least 2 spades. That already places east with more diamonds than west and therefore a more likely candidate to hold the crucial Q. In the two card ending south would be on lead with a small spade and a small diamond while dummy has ♦KJ left. Either the spade will be good or the diamond Q is now singleton... IF the same hand had the ♦Q and 4 spades. The question is whether that is more or less likely than a straight diamond finesse.

Given the heart and club splits, it puts east as a heavy favorite to have started with 4 spades and 4 diamonds. If east has 4 spades, it’s a 57% chance he has the ♦Q (he has 4 out of the 7 outstanding diamonds) and therefore a 57% chance the squeeze will work. But if spades are splitting 3-3 (east therefore being 3-3-5-2), there is no squeeze because either opponent can hold the spade guard. And if west had the Q, it would show up on the second round anyway, so there’s no reason to finesse even in that situation. Then there’s the unlikely scenario that west was 4-4-1-4 and east 2-3-6-2 in which case there is no chance.

Unfortunately, my counterpart was in 3NT making 5 so we lost 13 imps, the entire margin of defeat. The roll Alli and I were on after placing 2^nd and 4^th in the huge open pair games Thursday and Friday came to a halt - should have just played more open pairs. Despite being in an area where we knew very few players, people were noticing that we are good and wanted to play with us and Alli has a hard time saying no. Later, I'll write about another similar slam hand that I went down in at a critical juncture in the Sunday Swiss.

Junior teams in world championships

This year, the USBF refused to send a team to the world University Bridge Championships because it partially overlapped with the NABC. It was July 10-15 while the NABC was July 12-22. Instead, they sent 2 teams each in the U21 and U26 divisions of the World Youth Congress. I was not pleased with this and the people in charge got an earful (or rather, emails full) of complaints from me. Next year the world youth championships run concurrently with the summer NABC. Is the USBF going to refuse to send teams to that? Based on the logic they used in 2012, they absolutely would not but both events are in Atlanta so of course they're going to enter teams.

There really isn't enough depth in junior bridge for 4 teams plus a girls team. However the USA2 teams did respectably in China last month. The U21 USA1 team, comprised of 2 Zacks, 2 Adams and 2 Jengs, brought back a silver medal. Yay!

Then there's the team that competed in the girls division. Apparently no one is happy with how the teams were selected. There may or may not have been an online trial to choose the 6 players and it wound up being whoever had the most political pull. I mean, 4 of the 6 totally deserved to be on the team, albeit one of them only moved to the US a year ago Sonora debatable whether she should be eligible to compete for the USA. Mili Raina still is the best female junior bridge player that no one knows about. I guess if the selection process goes like this next time, I'll have to intervene and make sure the people in charge know that she (and Asya) deserve strong consideration.

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8 Ever, 9 Never - LM Pairs Semi-Final

If I blindly followed the 8 ever 9 never rule, I would have never gone down 7, and would have almost certainly made the third day of the LM pairs, and wouldn't have this cool story about how my play from dummy at trick 3 was a 7 trick swing. If you pay attention to me on Facebook, you've probably already seen this.

At favorable vulnerability against Hampson and Greco, I picked up
ATx, AJxxx, QJxx, Kx.
It went P-3S to me. Pass I think is the correct call here (and I even thought so at the time) but I bid 3NT anyway. In dummy I found
xx, KTxx, Axxx, Jx.

We have a heart fit but 4H is still almost sure to go down while 3NT can make. If I pick up hearts for no losers and diamonds split with the K onside there are 9 easy tricks and even if LHO has 4 diamonds, it will become a fairly easy endplay with Hampson having to give me a club at the end. So after the S9 lead, I pondered at trick 1 for a minute or so before playing both major suit aces and then a heart to the ten. Greco took his Q and 6 spades and Hampson then ran his clubs for down 7 and -350.

Since I'm going to need the DK onside anyway to make, it is probably better to work on that suit first. I would find that the preemptor had a singleton diamond and then I would be much better positioned to get hearts right. -350 was worth 1.5 matchpoints while +400 would have been 86 on a 90 top.

Against the other top seed we played on Saturday (Bob Hamman and Justin Lall), they bid aggressively and went down a couple in a bad 4H contract and then I picked off their spade fit by overcalling with a 12 count and 4 decent spades instead of passing or doubling. That got us -430 instead of -450 and another good score but not enough to overcome all of the less than stellar things we did.

Philadelphia is a very nice city and I would like to have stayed longer but I have used enough vacation this summer and I don't think I could handle the 10 and 3 start times much longer.

DC regional

I am on the way back home from the Washington DC regional where Sean and I won 43 points or so in 14 sessions: placed overall in every event except the KO we entered with Mike Cappelletti and Loretta (lost by 2 in 2nd round).

Having the dog on the long trip was a delight, the house we rented 1 mile from the tournament was great (and cheap), the bridge was interesting, but the drive is too long.

Here is the most hilarious deal I've seen in awhile. I was west in 1st seat all vul. Our auction: P-2D-P-3NT-all pass. I hold A, KQTx, Jxxxx, xxx so I lead HK, dummy (north) has xxxx, Jxx, KQxxxx, void. Declarer cashes 7 clubs and on about the 5th one I realize I need to ditch the ace so I don't get endplayed easily. Shortly thereafter, p realizes this but has already pitched his low diamond, which would have been the diamond threat card in the dummy squeeze. Declarer's hand: QTxxx, A, void, AKQxxxx. Wows.

At Mikey's table, west opens a precision 1D, Mike finds a 1S overcall and Loretta with a 2 loser hand and Q fifth in partner's suit manages to bid 5S, which gets doubled. Trumps come in due 2 losers and we win 6. Crazy.

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Slam auctions in Gatlinburg

Jumps to a small slam such as 1C-1H; 1NT-6NT are not too uncommon but jumps to a grand slam without any ace- or control-asking bids are pretty rare. In the A/X Swiss yesterday, I got to jump to 7H. I was dealt AKJTx, AKJT9xx, A, void. Our auction: 2C-2D; 2H-4H; 7H-P. How do find out about a 3^rd round spade control? I decided I couldn’t find out so I just bid grand. Alli had both major suit queens and nothing else so it was a trick 1 claimer.

Here’s another slam auction that came up. 1D-1H; 4C-4H; 5D. 4C is certainly a splinter but what does 5D mean? I assumed it was showing a control and basically denying a spade control. Therefore, I expected partner to go on to slam with a spade control. However, 5H should ask for a spade control. If you need good trumps, you can bid blackwood easily enough. At first thought, nearly everyone said that 5D should be asking for a spade control, but Capp Jr. brightly thought otherwise. You don’t need 2 ways to ask partner for a control of the unbid suit so 5D should ask for a diamond control. Since opener did not make the picture bid of 4D, which shows a very good 6+ card diamond suit and 4 hearts, it is not unreasonable to think that opener’s diamonds are not so strong, a hand such as AKx, AKQx, QJxxxx, void. Then again, with something like that, you could cue 5C to make it easy for partner to cue 5D.  Another lesser pro argued that 5D should have slam interest but lack both a spade control and good trumps, something neither blackwood nor normal cuebidding would help with – a hand such as xx, KJxx, AKQxxx, A. While that makes a bit of sense, I think if you need a spade control and a couple of heart honors for it to be a good slam, you should be passing 4H because partner did, after all, sign off over the splinter.

Another auction that people interpreted differently: 1D-1H-1S-1NT; X. Is this a penalty double or a support double? How about 1D-P-1S-1NT; X? In the second, more common auction, it is best for X to be support when 1NT is sandwich but may be good to have a penalty double available when they bid 1NT to play. Likewise, 1NT in the first auction is certainly to play so I think X should be for penalty (just showing some extra values) but Alli thought it was a support double situation. In this case, opener (my LHO) rebid 2D and nothing really mattered. We just made different inferences from opener’s lack of a double but it all led to 2D going down 1.

Anyway, it was a fun 3 days in Gatlinburg. Alli and I played great together and for the most part had teammates who didn’t screw things up. We won a KO Fri-Sat worth 30 points. Sunday we were in good position to win the Swiss if we beat the Lynch team but they blitzed us. I guess I finished with just under 50 points because I sat out 2 matches Sunday and therefore only get 5/7 of the masterpoint award. I was grateful for the 2 extra hours of sleep, though.

Memphis NABC fun

I feel like I should update this blog because I have returned from another NABC but I'm really not sure what I want to say. Sean and I had 3 decent sessions (+15, +7, +21) and 1 really bad session in the imp pairs to not make the overalls but finish with a positive score.

Sunday was A/X Swiss with Josh and Alex, which started horribly. At the half, we had 37VP on a 60 average. We dominated the evening session, bringing our total to 142 and 3^rd in X and 15^th overall. The split 1NT (simultaneously 8-10 or 15-17) and split 2NT ranges (20-21 or both minors preemptive) worked well again. Maybe this should become part of our regular system rather than something we do when we want to take bridge a little less seriously. I did feel a bit bad when we beat our junior European friends with this. Oh well.

I didn't mark down any deals that are blog-worthy.

As usual, I returned home from the NABC after just 4 days, emotionally drained and exhausted, halfway wanting to go back for the second weekend and halfway looking forward to being somewhat anti-social again rather than the social butterfly that I tend to transform into during such events.

Sean seems to like using bridge terms to describe various other things in life and it has caught on to some of us less creative people. Sunday we had some big disagreements about how these metaphors should be used.

Charlotte sectional recap

I'm on the drive home from Charlotte, where Sean and I played in our warmup tournament for the NABC next week. Although, calling it a warmup is barely accurate because there were no imp pair or midchart games so we weren't even playing our regular system.

It was my first time at a Charlotte sectional and was equivalently as nice if not nicer than their regionals. The food was good, playing space pleasant. The park right outside made for more pleasant breaks. Our results were meh - just scratched in pairs Saturday and finished 3rd or 4th in the Swiss with 40 or so teams.

I've been a big proponent of late starting times and have previously tried to avoid tournaments with only 2 sessions at 10 and 3 or something similar. I think I'm changing my opinion if this, especially if tournaments will make a habit of providing fruit, donuts, and biscuits to snack on throughout the morning session (as Charlotte had), thereby eliminating the need to wake up even earlier to get breakfast. Getting up for a 10:00 game is still a bit tough but once up, I think I like being able to do things like team trivia over dinner.

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Santa Clara regional

Wow. It's been almost 2 weeks since I updated! I haven't really played bridge in that time until the last 3 days in Santa Clara. It was 3 days of pairs with Meg - definitely not a good weekend of bridge for her and not so great for me either. It took 5 sessions before we scratched with a 3rd in the section of the Sunday imp pairs. We followed it up with just barely scratching in the evening to miss the overalls. I have a slew of defensive hands I can write about and add to the collection for my future book.

It was a good trip and one I think I will want to make more often in the future. Flying into San Jose is really convenient and even though there is only 1 direct flight per day between SJC and ATL, it's an ideal time - departs ATL at 7:10pm and coming back it's a red eye leaving at 10:40. If there are any readers here in Silicon Valley who want to hire me as an EE or software engineer and give me lots of freedom to take time off for travel and to play bridge, I'd happily consider such a job.

Anyway, one of our best boards the first day was when I overcalled 1NT after my RHO opened 1C and got to play it there.
Dummy (south):
873
Q43
A852
QT4

           RHO (west):
           QJT6
           KT
           Q93
           KJ97

Put yourself in my RHO's position. The opening lead was a low diamond to the Q and K. Next came DJ, SA, SK from declarer, and spade to you. You cash the last spade. Partner discards a discouraging H7, and the C5 while dummy sheds a heart. You safely exit the D9 to dummy's A. Declarer pitches a heart. Now dummy plays CQ, you cover, declarer and partner contribute the 2 and 6. This deal has reached a critical point. What now? It appears that declarer is trying to endplay you. That's assuming he has both rounded aces. He's already shown up with 11 points in the pointed suits so that would give him a 19-count. My RHO played the HK, playing his partner to have the ace. However, that gave up a heart trick and allowed me to take 2 hearts and throw him in with a club, forcing him to give me a club trick too (well, it put me with A8 over 97 at trick 12).

A low club at the critical point (trick 8), a low club does no better. Declarer can win with dummy's 10 and then endplay you again by throwing you in with either suit, thus forcing you to again how to lead into a tenace at trick 12. The winning play here is the CJ. Declarer must win this in hand with the ace but now has no successful counter because the good CT is now stiff in dummy. He can cash the club but then has no club to throw you in with the lead away from the HK. And throwing you in with a heart before cashing CT can't work because it sets up your C9.

If declarer doesn't have the HA, can it cost to lead the CJ? Yes because partner has a good diamond he could cash.

2012 in bridge has started out opposite of 2011

My first tournament of 2011 saw me win over 23 points at the Macon sectional. The first tournament this year yielded only a little more than 6 points, most of which was won in a pair game that I had estimated at 49% (but was actually 65%). Anyway, I got the 6.47 points that I needed for the next masterpoint milestone (2500 and Gold LM) by coming back from a miserable start to squeak into a tie for 9th in the Swiss.

It continually amazes me that Emory and I (and especially other top players who have played together for decades) still have so many disagreements about what certain bids mean. On the first deal of the tournament for me, I doubled a weak NT and LHO bid 2C. What is this? If you play strong notrumps, there isn't a great need for runouts so you would assume systems are on and this is stayman. Playing weak notrumps (good 11-14), it is common to have some sort of runout structure when they make a penalty double directly behind the 1NT opener. So, in addition to stayman, common ways to play 2C are that is is drop dead showing a 5 card suit or to show 4-4 in clubs and another suit. Strangely this pair with a decades-long partnership and 25000 mp combined did not know their agreement.

Another auction that apparently has no consensus of meaning is 4th suit by a passed hand. I had never had any discussion about what this means until yesterday. The specific auction was an uncontested P-1C; 1H-1S; 2D. I thought Emory probably thought it would be naturalish and forward going, something like a 2-5-4-2 10 count and was right. I can definitely see a good argument for it being an artificial 1 round force and playing Walsh-style responses to 1C, I can definitely see good arguments for 2D being drop dead (a minimum response with 4 hearts and 6+ diamonds).

Another one that came up was 2C-2NT; 3NT-4D. 2NT showed 5+ hearts with 2 of the top 3 honors. Should 4D be natural or a transfer? At the time I thought it should be a transfer (I am unlikely to bid over 3NT without extra heart length and if we play hearts, the big hand should be declarer) but in retrospect, it may make more sense to play it as natural and forcing. You lose right-siding a heart contract but gain the ability to explore for a diamond slam. Again, opinions were very divided even amongst us people who play together frequently.

Won 3 events but overall it was a bad tournament

It's a fact that team games award about double the number of masterpoints as pair games. And among team games, bracketed knockouts award the most points. The exact numbers are that pair games pay about .43 masterpoints per person per session while team games pay .87 per person per session. A couple of weeks ago I did a little analysis of the masterpoints I won and found a huge disparity. I win significantly more in pair games than in team games: 3.46 per session in pair games but only 2.84 in Swiss and KO's. I certainly do consider myself better at matchpoints than imps but that much better? Eventually I decided to wait until getting back from Myrtle Beach to see if that would change things, as Sean and I would be in Knockouts all week supposedly with better teammates than we usually have. We played in 5 different knockouts (6 sessions) and won only one match. They were all fairly close matches and in the final match we lost by the handicap. While we didn't play any pair games, our only real success was in the board a match, where we won 10.6 points in 3 sessions of BAM. We finished with a win in the Sunday night BAM but the theme of terrible slam bidding continued.

Anyway, it seems that I got just barely enough masterpoints to keep 1st in the district in the 1000-2500 category with 533 total. That also was not quite enough to make me a Gold LM, so I guess I'll be passing that milestone at the Macon sectional next week.

It was a fun trip to Myrtle Beach despite having a terrible record in KOs. It felt like a bad week of bridge but we did win 3 events (2 BAMs and a compack KO) so I guess it wasn't all bad. I'll sort through my scorecards and find a good hand to write about when I get some time.

Seattle NABC

While many people are just getting into the swing of things at the fall NABC I am on my way back home after 3+ days there. Richard Popper and I started with a good session in the Nail LM Pairs and ended with a great session in the consolation (regional A/X pairs). Unfortunately the two middle sessions were pretty terrible, on both our parts as well as luck. Additionally I scratched with my dad in 2 side games. Strangely, in this my 16th NABC, it is the first one in which I played in no midnight games. Drinking with Mikey and Alli won out one night and kibitzing/wandering around aimlessly won out the other night.

My favorite part of the tournament was certainly our round against Curtis Cheek and Lynn Deas in the LM pairs. We collected 47 out of 50 matchpoints against them. Here is first deal against them (board 9 Friday afternoon):

x
JT9x
Axxx
AKxx

AQx
Qx
KQJx
xxxx
 
I opened 1D and wound up in 3NT after Curtis on my left overcalled 1S and was raised. He led away from the SK at trick 1, which gives me trick #8. Trick 9 would have to come from either clubs or hearts. At first it seems that I would have to rely on clubs splitting 3-2 since there isn't adequate time to set up a heart. However, I ran diamonds immediately to see if there would be any interesting discards. Sure enough, Curtis ditched a heart and a spade.

This allowed me to be able to set up a heart trick and lose only 2 spades abs 2 hearts, assuming spades were originally 5-4 as had been indicated. A club pitch from his initial holding of QJxx would have allowed me to set up a 3rd trick easily but had he pitched both of his hearts, I probably would have gone down as relying on a good club split would be the only reasonable option.
 
Popper and I ran into a couple of situations where we were not on the same page on auctions that cost us dearly. 1NT-2C-X-3C; 3D-P-3H sounds like Smolen to me, and the continuation P-3NT-P-4S sounds like responder is 6-4. Of course, I could have just bid 4S over 3D as that cannot be misinterpreted - it could just wrong side the contract. 1S-P-2S-X; 4S-4NT-P-5D; P. Is this a forcing pass situation? I think so but I suppose there is a good argument for it being not forcing since 4S could be based on a more preemptive hand with playing strength but not much defense.

Back to reality

The return trip from a long bridge tournament is always sad. At NABCs (and most mid-Atlantic regionals) I can't keep still and rest. It's ten days of non-stop social activity and mental stimulation. Tomorrow resumes a much more mundane life but I still have a lot going on in August including 2 bridge tournaments and a tennis tournament.

Personal totals for the tournament:
26 sessions of bridge, including 8 midnight games
208 deals in matchpoint games
336 deals in imp scoring
32 masterpoints won (3 platinum, 22 gold, 7 red)
3 different partners (6 deals each with Josh and Shaz, the rest with Sean)
34 alcoholic drinks
5 visits to Chipotle
4 meals of Indian food

We managed 2nd place four times (in a bracketed KO and 3 midnight games) but did not win anything so did not come back with any of the maple syrup section top prizes.

A wise top-notch bridge player (jlall) has said that in matchpoints when the auction goes 2NT-P-P, you should double. When the opponents have 20hcp opposite a near yarborough, they go down much more often then they make because of having to lead from hand so often. In side games on the last day, I got a chance to try this theory out twice. Both times dummy hit with a nice 4-count and we wound up giving up an extra overtrick in desperation, scoring -1090 and -690. Maybe next time we'll get +800.

We now have at least one more person on board the Swedish Canape train. Yay.

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Splinters Abound

This was my first time attending the regional in Greenville - strange because it's so close. I was pleasantly surprised at how well attended it was but I guess I shouldn't have been. Greenville is one of the nicest cities I've been to, particularly downtown, where the tournament was held.

David Coberly and I played in the A/X pairs Saturday and the field was stronger than I am used to seeing in the pair game. I guess that's mostly because there wasn't a full KO starting that day. Sunday we played the Swiss with the Sherwoods. I must say, I played some fine bridge both days on all but about 2 boards. David played well, too, with the exception of most of Saturday afternoon.

Part of the way through the evening session of the pair game, I thought we might win the event after having a 46.62% afternoon session, but we got several averages and one or two average-minuses in the last 3 rounds and only had a 61.33% the 2nd session.

Sunday was fun and had a doozy of matches after lunch. The team of Jerry Helms, Bill Wisdom, and the Joyces was the weakest of our final 3 matches, which we nearly blitzed. Then after being blitzed by the Fireman team including a pair of Poles and Seamon-ShannonCapp we got Meckwell, Allan Graves, and Curtis Cheek the last round. Somehow we came out with 15 out of 20 VP against them to win X and finish 4th in A.

Here is one of our team's worst boards of the day but a fascinating one.
Well, the actual hands aren't so important as the auction.

East	South	West	North
1♦	Pass	1♥	2♣
4♣	4♦	5♥	6♣
X	Pass	Pass	Pass

South, one of the Polish experts, got his lead directing bid of 4♦ in so we kind of knew that they were getting a diamond ruff at trick 1 against a heart contract. We were also off a spade trick so 6♥ shouldn't make. At the other table, south didn't make a lead directing 4♦ call and EW bid 6♥, which is ice, once the diamond ruff is avoided. North would never lead a diamond at trick one from Qxxx unless told to via a lead-directing bid or a lighner double, and I'm not sure lightner would apply to this auction anyway. The opponents had a 12 card club fit - partner had splintered in the suit I was void of! The only defensive tricks we had were the major suit aces so +200 at our table was the best we could do. However, -1430 at the other table was good for losign 15 imps. More hands to come soon.