Defensive Hands From the Local Club

I've been wanting to write about defense for awhile because it is the most important part of bridge and the hardest. And that is probably because people don't teach defense as much as they do declarer play or bidding. because it is hard to find good examples. So, even though I don't have many good ones to write about, I'm going to anyway.

So, let's start off easy. I was on lead against the auction 1NT-2C; 2D-3NT holding: xx, xx, A9xx, AKQxx. Dummy hits with a 4=3=4=2 10 count with the T9 doubleton of clubs. Partner plays the 8 which should be count. (We were playing standard signals so 2 or 4) When partner leads an Ace you're normally supposed to unblock an honor or give count. So at this point I can almost surely place declarer with Jxxx of clubs. Without the stayman auction, it might be reasonable to exit with a major and hope declarer misguesses something and lets partner score the Q he might have. But knowing declarer doesn't have a 4 card major, I can safely give her a club and all she can come to is 4 spades, 3 hearts, and a club.

This second hand kind of bugged me. I was declarer in 4H against the only pair in the room that defended decently. First try to look only at the north hand and the bidding. What would you lead against 4H?

No lead looks attractive but the black cards look most unattractive. As long as the defense never leads a black suit, declarer needs an endplay and then maybe a good guess to bring in 4H. So, I thought 4H making 4 should be at least average. At the club, there were 4 pairs in 4H making 5, 1 in 3NT making 4, and me, in 4H down 1. Is it really that tempting to ever lead a black card against 4H? The opening lead against me was the 8 of diamonds. I won in hand with the A and led the 10 of hearts, LHO rose with the ace and led another red card. After pulling a 2nd round of trumps and cashing the diamonds, I led a spade to the K. They won the ace and played a spade to the 10 and then the Q, and I was stuck with a club loser now for down 1. Leading AK and another club is probably a better way to endplay someone but then I still have to guess whether south is leading from the A or Q when she is in the the CQ.

Moral of the story: when the bidding tells you partner has next to nothing, be passive on defense, especially when dummy is balanced, and just accept the fact that in weak fields, there is no field protection and some bad defenders will screw you over sometimes.

I think 3NT making 4 is actually somewhat reasonable. If east passes and west opens a 15-17 1NT, a club lead from north is the norm. With that start, declarer should come to 4 hearts, 3 clubs, 3 diamonds.

Best Hand I've Ever Held

A
AKQJ974
AKQJ9
void

I had this in money bridge in BBO earlier today.
Partner opened 2S and eventually I bid 7H, making when hearts and diamonds both split 4-1 or better.

This one had some real potential to be a good swing for us. Result was down 3 for -1600, but if I don't redouble and just play the 4-1 fit, -500 would have won a couple of imps against the Dana and Jon's 4H or 3NT. Of course, they can defend a trick or two better. And we're really in business if Sean pulls to 3S, down 2 if they get 2 diamond ruffs.

To finesse or squeeze

Slam Hands are fun to write about, especially when there's a squeeze. In this hand, Ramesh and I got to 6D. 1C was 16+, 2C was diamonds and game-force, 2H natural denying 3D, 4D keycard for diamonds, 4H 1 or 4. Taking 4H as 0 or 3 and forgetting that I would have bid 2D earlier with any 3 card support, he signed off. 7NT is a good contract. too bad diamonds split 5-1, leaving you with only 12 tricks.
The question is, in 7NT, do you play for a straight up heart finesse for the 13th trick or try some other line of play?

Once you run the 4 diamonds and spades, you find spades to be 5-2 and then on the run of the clubs, you find west with 4, meaning hearts started out 3-3. You need to cash all 11 winners except the A of hearts, ending in the south hand. The 3 card ending looks like this:
N - S5, HA, HQ
E - HK, H6, DT
S - HT, D3, CT
W - ST, HJ, H7

When south plays the good club, west must hold his good spade or north's 5 will be the 13th trick. So when west discards a heart, north discards a spade. East must hold the good diamond or south's 3 will score the 13th trick. So when south leads a heart at trick 12, the K is surely dropping under the ace regardless of who has it because each defender had to hold another winner and therefore has only 1 heart. A double squeeze!

Of course, if west had been on opening lead and led a heart, that kills the squeeze immediately because declarer needs to heart ace as an entry late in the hand.

Out of 16 tables, only 2 made 7 - 1 got a heart lead away from the king and one got east to pitch a diamond on the 3rd spade. The vast majority got a spade lead and only made 6. Not one west out of 9 led a heart. A club lead also cuts cummunication enough to defeat 7NT, but not if declarer is really thinking ahead and cashes the KQ of spades immediately, goes over the the diamond K, and cashed the A of spades, pitching a heart, before testing diamonds. Really, that can't lose anything, except maybe a minute or two when diamonds split nicely.

Some things I learned this weekend

Okay, so this is actually about relationships, but it kind of is entirely about bridge. Bridge players need to be with other bridge players. They are a strange set of people. In a way, I feel like bridge has stunted my growth socially. In another way, I feel like bridge has made it easier for me to be sociable and fit in somewhere. I don't know. Yes, I have tennis but there's something about the mutual intellectual stimulation and the ability to always have something to say about bridge. I like tennis and many other things a lot but many days or even weeks there just isn't much to say about it, but there's always a bridge hand or bidding sequence or new convention that I want to discuss. I can't imagine what I would be like without bridge. Regardless, trying to hang out a whole weekend with a fellow bridge player without playing any bridge, especially someone I know almost entirely in a bridge setting, is not a good idea. While in the long run, getting along away from the bridge table is important, it should start at the bridge table because bridge is one (and maybe the only) part of life in which we are truly comfortable and confident and functioning like a normal person (well, normal for a given activity).

Anderson sectional

So, after a late night being a bad wingman in Atlanta, Ramesh and I
left at 7:30 to play in the Anderson, SC sectional on 4 hours of
sleep. Round one of the KO goes okay and we were fortunate to draw
owen/Warren again in the 2nd round (we played them in a 3 way the 1st
session). Disastrous.
A few more beers later, ramesh and i put together a nice 61.46% game.
It was the biggest jump i've seen in the last round - from about 56 to
over 61%, and our last round was only 16 out of 24 matchpoints.
Sunday, the good bridge continued as Ramesh (godot79) and I and Jim
Gentry and his partner came from behind to win the Swiss. Our system
worked well for us this day and slipping defenseive tricks was kept to
a minimum. One thing I like about our system is that it sort of makes
us, my partners especially, be disciplined. Our 1NT is 13-15 so
basically you have to pass all flat 11 and 12 points hands. And due to
the canape style, it at least seems harder to cheat a little on your
point count or distribution.
My favorite hand was when we got to double the opponents in 1S. I
opened a big club with AQT8x, Ax, Qxx, AJx. LHO stuck in a 1S bid and
partner doubled, showing any 5-7 hcp. All pass and she scraped up 4
tricks for 500 to us. At the other table, my hand played 4SX, also
down 3 for 500.

Pet Peeves at the Bridge Table

Today I’d like to share some of the things that really bother me in bridge, mainly with people and their mannerisms, in no particular order.

1. I hate when people hold a card out like they are about to play it but then keep it there, face down just above the table. This gets me reaching for my cards and I’d really rather have my hands more relaxed while waiting for you to play a card. When I see you pull a card out of your hand, I expect it to be on the table as a played card within a second.

2. Turning the boards upside down after they have been played or shuffled. Are you afraid you’re going to forget that you’ve played board 1 if you simply move it to the bottom of the stack? Turning the board over tends to get them out of order and some of the boards have those interlocking grooves that really don’t fit well when some boards are turned over. Plus, you can sometimes see parts of the cards from the bottom of the board. The ladder part applies more to turning them over when shuffling. So, I’d like to start a trend of a board face down (or a card turned up) means it needs to be shuffled and a board face up means it is done.

3. I hate people giving lessons at the table. Maybe between rounds is okay if there is time, but one should have the courtesy to save personal discussions of the hands until the opponents are done. At the conclusion of the hand, it is okay to ask about a particular person’s holding if you didn’t get have it quite figured out but if it’s going to be condescending or take longer than 10 seconds, save it.

4. Declarers who call a card from dummy before the whole dummy is on the table are really annoying. It’s in the laws somewhere they everyone should take time at trick one before playing from dummy. That means before dummy plays, not when it’s rho’s turn to play because it may look like rho is hesitating because of a problem with what to play at trick 1 when he really is formulating a plan for the whole hand. I never complain about this because the people that do this are the ones who don’t know what they’re doing anyway.

5. Dummies who pull a card from dummy before it is called, even if it’s a singleton for the same reasons mentioned above.

6. Spending a lot of time looking at the traveler. I know, you’re all curious to see what the other people did, but it slows down the game, and you can study the traveler after the game. In fact, I think travelers shouldn’t be used except maybe in a teaching or mentoring game.

7. Pulling your cards out before everyone is at the table is rude. I know, the vast majority of people wouldn’t cheat but it’s just bad manners. What’s there to gain by looking at your hand 30 seconds longer than your opponent? I suppose it’s okay if 1 opponent is at the table, but when the other opponent comes, he may come from behind you and inadvertently see your cards.

8. Asking for a detailed explanation of every alert during an auction rather than waiting until the end of the bidding. Yes, you’re probably always going to want to know what RHO’s 2D call meant after partner opened 1NT, and you are totally justified in asking what the alerts are for the first couple of bids in a precision auction, but after that, if it’s clearly an uncontested auction, quit interrupting and wait for the explanation at the end of the bidding.

9. 6 ½ table and 7 ½ table Mitchell movements and the 4 board sitouts that go along with those movements. I make every effort to not have a 4 board sitout in any game I direct. Even if it means a little more inconvenience and a little more work for the director, people overall much prefer 3 board sitouts for 4 board sitouts. Not to mention, in club games more masterpoints are won if you have 1 group of 13 or 15 pairs than 2 groups of 7 or so.

10. Tardiness. This irks me more than just about anything else because I am habitually early everywhere I go and I expect everyone else to be the same way.