Month: November 2007

Hi all

This teams season didn’t start that well for us, some bad play and equivalent results. During clubnights Hoek and I are quite in sync already, but in serious teams matches there seems to be a bit of stress and tension around. It’s difficult to score when the fragile and precious trust you’ve built up is under heavy fire. Here’s a problem Hoek had to face from a recent teams match, against the top dog from our pool. Let’s bark. Let’s play.

1. Fitshowing jump
2. Cue
3. Bark!

Vulnerable against not it wouldn’t be my choice to follow on such a meager suit, then again you do have full opening values and a strong sidesuit. Too bad we don’t play ELC or Raptor.

So plenty of tricks to take, but there’s this little voice coming from the speaker saying:"Houston, we’ve got a problem!" We’re missing a King. Unfortunately we don’t have time to put out a warrant or contact Homeland Security for his whereabouts. You’ve gotta find him, and find him now.

Hoek looked at the bidding sequence and divided the 14 missing points between both opponents. Without the King of East doesn’t come close to an opening bid, so the only chance is that he’s sitting naked in East’s hand. First Hoek tried to get some information by advancing the Queen, but when West smoothly played small, Hoek took a deep breath and went for the drop.

Too bad. I have to agree the drop looks very appealing, but Kees worked out the odds are about 3 to 1 against the drop. Roughly there are 28,000 distributions with a bare King against 81,000 distributions with him onside (forget about nasty 4-0 splits and/or voids). Maybe it’s more a slam for me to play, I am a simple bridgeplayer, I take a finesse when I see one.

The rest of the match was solid and we had some small gains here and there, so the loss was only 14-16. But it easily could have been a (large) victory for us.

Hi all

Your RHO (North) opens 1. Yawn…

1. All blacks takeout
2. What else?
3. I’m fairly certain this is too high, but I don’t dare…

Partner starts with the Ace and switches to a .

Surprising developments. And things get better when declarer tries the King of . I take the trick with the Ace and return the Jack of as Lavinthal. Hoek ruffs and returns a for my Ten. Partner surely doesn’t have five (he would have bid them) so I cash the Jack too and give Hoek another ruff, with a heartwarming Ten of (!). Hoek puts the cherry on the cake by throwing the Queen (number thirteen) into the arena, promoting my trump possession to three tricks. Down five.

Evidently there’s no question whether I should have doubled. Could I have known the fish was this big? Declarer scampered away with -250, wiping away his sweaty relief for not getting doubled.

Hi all

I was playing some online BBO-tournament last week and this deal came up.

1. Unbalanced or a preparing for a strong NT
2. Weak (?)

Partner kicks off with a small and things look bad, for it has a free run to declarer’s Jack.  

Declarer immediately finesses again in and next come four rounds of partner winning the last one with his Jack. He ponders for a while and cashes both his top (declarer discarding two ) before exiting in . Declarer repeats the finesse leading to this position.  

On the Ace of I’m in big trouble. I have to keep my guard else declarer is home already, but that means my holding doesn’t pull any weight anymore. Declarer plays a towards his hand and within mere seconds the next deal is on the table already. We had a substantial lead, but ten imp just evaporated from our scorecard.

Partner’s lead was unlucky, as far as I can see any other lead leaves declarer with grim perspective. At the table it felt like partner handed over medieval torture equipment to the enemy with clear instructions how to apply them to me. I was wondering if this particular squeeze is the one Terence Reese calls "The Vice".