Changing movements

My technical director skills were put to the test today. Started with a 6.5 table Mitchell, and about 20 minutes into the game one pair (not the pair that was sitting out first) has a medical emergency and has to leave. How do you reorganize the game?

One simple solution would be to put a 5th board on each table and play a 5x5 skip Mitchell. The would mean only 25 boards and the board sets would be 1-4 and 29, 5-8 and 30, etc... Plus 6 table Mitchells bother me. 6.5 or 7 table Mitchells bother me, too, but the Macon club doesn't have guide cards for the 9x3 3/4 7 table Howell (only the 13x2 which isn't good for the amount of crippled people here. The pair opposing the pair that left would play the pair sitting out and probably get 2 or 3 no plays for the first round but mainly this is just a terrible movement as far as fairness is concerned. Another option is to set up a relay and play 6x4 Mitchell. One set of boards would inevitably be out of order and people would complain about not playing enough boards - most would play 24 but one or two only 20. And I'm certainly not running a 6x5 game for a 30 board session that would keep us here close to 4 hours. The third option (and the one I chose) was to change to a 9x3 Howell. Since most tables had played the first 3 of each 4 board set, I had everyone move for round 2 according to the guide cards and I personally moved the boards until i got the bridgemates reconfigured to show the correct boards. For this option, boards with west dealer wouldn't get played because I was pretty much forced into using board sets 1-3, 5-7, 9-11, etc. and having a board set of 4,8,12 seems silly. For about 10 minutes, everyone except me was confused but they continued to play without interruption and all was fine. It's 2 hours 10 minutes after we started and now moving into round 7 so right on time with only one NP. I think this was the most difficult of the 3 options I considered but definitely allowed for the best game once people got over the wacky board sequences. Thankfully the bridgemates are good at knowing which boards to expect because they're way off from the printed guide cards.So while the whole room was confused and complaining a couple of hours ago, now they are impressed at how well it all worked out with no delay.

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.

Bidding after your side has preempted

Generally, it is good to raise partner’s preempt when you have 3 card support or better, to extend the preempt and make it even more difficult for the opposition to find the right level and right strain. Therefore, when the auction proceeds with two passes after a preempt, it’s a good bet that preemptor’s partner does not have much heart support.

 

Another general rule of preempting is that once you preempt, you should not bid again (unless partner makes a forcing bid). From time to time we may preempt with a freak 6-5 hand and then we may be justified in bidding again.

 

Case #1: void, Q9xxxxx, AKxx, xx. 3H-3S-4H-4S. Matchpoints, favorable vulnerability. Do you trot out 5H here? I did, but I’m not sure I should despite needing very little from partner to make 5 (AKJ of hearts and a doubleton diamond or the Q makes it pretty much cold, as does both round aces). However, 4S was going down 1 while 4H also should be down 1 as well.

 

Case #2: JTxx, Txxx, xxx, Qx. None vul. 2S-P. I bid 4S but really this isn’t worth more than 3S. The shape is terrible and it’s too likely that 4S will go down for more than their game. As it turns out, 4S went down 3 but the other side was cold for 7 (C, D, or NT). -500 wasn’t a great score, though, because a few north-souths played 5 of a minor for 440.

 

Case #3: xx, Axxxx, KTx, Qxx. 2H-P. Both vul. This one is worth 4H. 11 card fit, plus some other values. The shape still isn’t great but this is definitely better than the previous hand. They missed a cold 4H.

 

Case #4: Kxx, KQJxxx, xxxx, void. 2H-P-P-2S. This is marginally freaky enough to warrant another bid. I doubt I would but it worked out well for this person to bid 3H over 2S.

 

Case 3 and 4 hands go together and put me in a tough spot with Ax, xx, QJxx, KJxxx behind the 2H opener. Double is clearly business, not responsive, 4C doesn’t seem right, 4H seems like a bit of an overbid, 3S is a possibility that may work out well. In retrospect I think 3S may be best, but I don’t know. I doubled, expecting partner to have 2 or 3 hearts and us to just have lots of values with no real fit.

Interesting tournament schedules

From time to time I like to check out tournament schedules from other parts of the country (and occasionally go to tournaments that aren't NABCs or in the Mid-Atlantic). Sometime last year I believe I wrote about how I admired the fact that a DC area tournament had a Board-a-match for flight A on Sunday of a sectional. Flight B was Swiss, which is reasonable. I still plan on attending that tournament some day, assuming they still have the Sunday BAM. Here are a few upcoming tournaments across the country that have interesting schedules.

 

This one in Halifax isn't so much an interesting schedule (although I am a fan of the 2-session pair game Saturday rather than single sessions) but take a look at the Friday evening schedule: No Midnight game. And they really thought it was important to specify that. Sure enough, they had a midnight game at the last Halifax sectional in November. They even had the finals of a proper 3 session KO starting at 11pm.

 

This Hawaii tournament is doing things backwards: 2 session Swiss on Saturday and 2 one session pair games Sunday, starting at 9am both days. Yuck. Meanwhile, this tournament in Toledo also has a 2 session Swiss Saturday but also has a 2 session Swiss on Sunday. Double yuck. At least they start at 11am. Needless to say, those are tournaments I will not be attending. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Charleston, WV sectional, where there are no team games. Sunday you get a 10:30 IMP pairs and a 3pm matchpoint pairs/BAM. If it was some place nicer than West Virginia, I might consider going out of my way to support this. All 3 of these are the first weekend in March.

 

The flyer for this tournament in Rochester, MN is lacking a bit. For 1:00 and 6:30 sessions, it says Pair/Team Games and that's all. What does that mean? I went back and looked at least year's results from this tournament and found that all those are pair games with computer-assigned teammates to score it as a BAM as well. And then I got confused because I thought masterpoint formulas for first in a 1 session event were the same regardless of whether it's matchpoint pairs, imp pairs, Swiss, or BAM, but apparently I am wrong. Winning in BAM somehow is worth more than winning a pair game of the same size. Well, technically a 28 table BAM is half as big as a 28 table pair game but first in the BAM paid 6.97 while first in the pair game paid the familiar 6.33. I like BAM but that is an injustice.

Gripes about tournament schedules

Organizing bridge tournament is hard. I get that and it's impossible to make everyone happy, but the schedule of relevant bridge tournaments for me coming up is just awful.

 

There never is a tournament in D7 that goes over President's Day weekend – maybe a small sectional somewhere not particularly close to me but that's all. Thus, I will be going to California for a tournament for that long weekend. It should be a nice change from the usual Georgia/South Carolina crowds. All holiday weekends should have a bridge tournament but the fact that there's no bridge on the MLK holiday is fine because it's just a couple weeks after the New Year's regional and the local Macon tournament is that Friday-Sunday.

 

Apparently the USBF is not sending a team to the FISU university bridge championships. This is the first time the USA will not be represented there. The excuse? It overlaps slightly with the Summer NABC (July 10-15 compared with July 12-22). I can sort of see that as a reason (even though I still think the USA should be represented there) but why would any world bridge competition be scheduled to conflict with an NABC, by far the biggest bridge event that is not technically international? Instead the USBF is sending entirely too many people (35) to the Youth Bridge Championships in China at the end of July. And the FISU competition is in France – wouldn't everyone rather go to France than China anyway? Or is it just me?

 

GNT scheduling irks me too. This happens every year – district 7 has the district final around the first of May so that it conflicts with final exams and graduation but it hasn't really affected me lately because I haven't had any school affiliation for the last 4 years. Since Stephen graduating with his Ph.D. is kind of a big deal, I guess I'm supposed to go to Ann Arbor for that, but it's the same weekend as the flight A GNT finals. I could play in the superflight GNT the following week but that is in Morganton which is kind of far and the odds of winning that are much much lower than in flight A.

 

I'm not even sure I'll be able to go to superflight GNT either because according to the school calendar, the final for my Wednesday evening class is supposed to be Saturday May 5 at 7pm. WTF? The syllabus says it's Wednesday May 2 at the normal class time, though, which makes sense. Why does the finals schedule have exams scheduled for Monday through Saturday but has nothing for Wednesday?

 

Then there's the NABC schedule with its starting times of 10:30 and 3:30 instead of 1 and 7:30. That's really going to cut into my sleeping time on ym vacation but I guess that's okay - the drinking can start 4 hours earlier but still likely not end much earlier.

 

Then there's the summer sectional in Atlanta, a Monday to Friday affair. What's wrong with the typical Wednesday to Sunday schedule so that us working people can still play 3 days without using any vacation time? I guess since July 4^th falls on a Wednesday and the NABC starts on the 12th… I dunno. It doesn't make sense and pisses me off.

 

On a lighter note, things are rolling toward planning the first Macon regional to take place just over a year from now. Since I might have some influence on the schedule for this, maybe I can get a BAM KO or a Sunday BAM instead of a Sunday Swiss (at least for flight A) on the schedule.

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.

I Heart Moysians

Last night was a comedy of errors all-around. It started with a -670 on the first board and didn't get much better the rest of the session. Emory and I each faced some tough defensive and bidding situations and guessed wrong almost every time but it's this declarer play problem that upset me the most. I found myself in 3SX after RHO opened 1H and lho hit 3S.

7xx
KQx
xx
AJ9xx

AKT9
x
Kxxxx
Q8x

The defense started with the HA lead, D to the A, DQ covered and ruffed. I Rabbi'ed on the club shift and now I should be home free. LHO is marked with 1-4 in the minors so could have 5 spades 3 hearts or 4 of each. With 4-4, he probably would not have doubled. However, if that's how the suits are splitting, there's an easy path to make - draw 2 rounds if trumps, then try to run clubs taking the marked finesse for the T.

But if LHO started with 5 spades (more likely given the budding), I need to draw only 1 round of trumps, then take 3 rounds of clubs and two hearts. LHO will have to follow to all the clubs and hearts so in the 3 card ending, I will have KT9 of spades in hand and lho will have QJx. Therefore, if I play a spade to my 9, he will be endlayed to lead into my KT tenace at trick 12. I wound up going down 1 by playing for lho to be 4-4-1-4 and rho 2-5-5-1. Not a smart plan given the double.