Month: December 2010

Hi all

First you’ve got to check out this YouTube movie. It’s incredibly funny.

Alright, back to semi-serious business. Last deal (probably) and story of 2010, it all happened on a Wednesday Piedmont teams night. I’m holding a fairly good hand:

West

North

East

South

 

 

pass

1

pass

2NT1

pass

32

pass

43

pass

43

pass

44

pass

55

pass

6

pass

pass

Double

pass

pass

Redouble6

a.p.

 

 

 

1. GF, 4+ support
2. More than average (we play step responses to 2NT)
3. Cue
4. RKC
5. Two keycards with trump Queen, or extra length
6. You’ve got to be kidding me!

Over 4 I decided not to show my void in because partner made a cue bid in that suit. Perhaps I should have Void-wooded myself instead of handing the captaincy to partner. West decided not to trust our bidding and for reasons only known to him pulled a pretty experimental and expensive double from his bidding box. The full deal proved to be like this:

I claim 13 tricks in trick one and I am pretty certain I haven’t seen a +1820 score before. West, though, screams for the director. It seems we should not have alerted during the keycard sequence [as we did], but inform our opponents that we had a keycard sequence [as we did not].

I felt the ground crumbling under my feet. What’s wrong with bridge in the US? Can’t people think for themselves anymore?

Anyway, when the director asked the player agreed he wasn’t hurt during the play, and that he asked for clarification up to the cue bids but then disregarded the rest of the auction. So the director maintained the result. Yay! I got to keep my 6!! result!

Happy & merry holidays to you all.

Hi all

Quick Tricks in San Francisco has a team game every last Monday of the month. Each time it has proven to be a pleasant and challenging night, with interesting deals. Here’s me (South) suffering in 3NT.

Yes, NS have 25 HCP together.
Yes, the lack of spot cards is slightly unsettling.
Yes, you only have four top tricks.

An early (not very thorough) analysis shows that you need to find the Ace of onside, and the suit splitting 3-3. Then if the Jack is located on your left, everything adds up to a fortunate nine.

Well, none of that happened. Both black Aces were in West together with a stinking surprise in . So I’m already down two and I can’t claim yet …

When West cashes the master I pitch a from dummy and the criss-cross position has materialized. It’s pretty clear that East has started with a 4-5-2-2. East discards a seemingly sweaty .

West switches back to for my Ace and I know that my 3 isn’t good. I play a small to dummy’s King confident that the suicide criss-cross squeeze will have been executed properly. Who needs a finesse anyway when you have a nice squeeze?

Already knee-deep in a hellhole, and East doesn’t even have the friggin’ Jack. Really, the odds were 4-3 in my favor! My efforts lead to a nauseating down 3, vulnerable of course.

To add insult to injury, at the other table they took an early finesse against the Jack and ended up down 1. Sigh.