Month: February 2010

Hi all

On Monday I played with Drew Hoskins in the Burlingame Regionals. I thought our setup (a 6-bagger consisting of Jason Rosenfeld, Foster Geng, Ari Greenberg and David Grainger) was already a force to be reckoned with, but when I saw Mike Lawrence at the playsite I felt tiny again. If I had known he was going to be there I would have brought half a dozen books for him to sign.

Here’s me picking up eleven imp:

The auction was short: 1NT – 3NT.

I can count six solid tricks, but when East shows out on the small lead I have seven already. I can play truly va banque and finesse in and play a towards the Queen for nine. But I don’t like to put all my eggs in one basket.

The finesse is almost unavoidable so I take it immediately. I’m glad to see the Jack wins the trick, that’s number eight.

I’m going to assume East is 4-5-4-0, for he pitched he a small on the first trick. My plan is to remove all of East’s idle cards and then place him to grant a trick to the Queen.

So I continued by cashing Ace and King of and the King, ending in dummy. I got off lead with the Ten of to West. West saw his partner’s pain too on the run of and decided not to cash his last . Instead he switched to the Ten of . I ducked and East won his Queen.

East exited with his remaining small and dummy took it with the Ace. I crossed to my Ace of and put East on lead again with my  Jack, discarding the from dummy. East sighs and grants the smiling Queen a trick. Nine!

At the other table declarer was less inspired and collected his eight tricks. I agree the defence looks less than optimal (East could have kept a , for example), but after a long day most players get a little soft. Capable declarers and defenders can and will take advantage of that.

Hi all

I’m counting down on my days of freedom & slacking. On Monday I’ll start my QA job at Newfield Wireless, a service provider for large telecom companies. A bonus for me is that it’s really, really just around the corner. I’m happy. And I can confess that again bridge has proven to be the vital key in me finding a job. Seriously, one day scientists will discover bridge cures diseases too, I’m positive.

Here’s a small deal from a Piedmont Monday night game.

All vulnerable l opened the South hand with a 12-14 NT and got to play there. Of course the opponents found a lead and damage control was priority one, as I could only count two solid tricks. My RHO won the King of and returned a small one. I had nothing to think about and threw my Queen which won the trick to my surprise. 

Processing the information at the table. RHO has both honors, honors are probably split, so West is the favourite candidate for holding the Ace. I proceeded accordingly and played my Ten to the Queen. She survived, and when I finessed against the Jack on the way back West won it with the Ace. So far so good, I can count five tricks now: two , two and a . The opponents take their and I discard to this position:

West now annoyingly switched to a . I don’t want to chuck up the sponge for -200. So after I’ve cashed the King of I go after the . I play my small to dummy’s 9 and East wins with the King. I take the continuation and sacrifice my Queen of to West who grinds his teeth and surrenders his Ten to dummy’s Jack. Well, who would have thought that anemic dummy was actually going to take two tricks?

The defence was correct up to the point where I played my small towards dummy. If West had risen with the Ace to continue setting up a winner, then his partner would still have the King as an entry. I was happy with -100, as a lot of pairs made eight or nine tricks in .