Month: August 2011

Hi all

Some general updates before I get to the bridge main course:

• Portishead will be performing in the Greek Theatre here in Berkeley, and Trentemøller a week later in SF. Yay!
• Another trip to The Netherlands planned early September to attend multiple weddings.
• I’ve traded in my struggles with CDMA for preliminary testing work on LTE.

Here’s a nice defensive problem. Of course I was unable to solve it at the table. Usually I need at least two windows of opportunity to grab what I want.

West

North

East

South

3

pass

4

.. pass1

a.p.

 

 

 

1. I was close to doubling for takeout, but a small voice in the back of my head said no.

Partner leads the King and this is what I see.

Declarer asks for the Ace, I play my Jack and declarer follows small. Then he takes about three minutes before asking for a small from dummy. Huh! What? I win with the Queen and consider my proceedings. Does declarer have Jack – 4th in and is he looking for his 10th trick? Rectifying some count? A discovery play perhaps?

What’s happening?

I play my King of to find out about my partner’s count. I get the 9 message: odd. I don’t believe he has three, so that leaves declarer with a singleton. I revert back to and declarer ruffs.

Suddenly it hit me like a dumb bag of bricks. Declarer is 1-7-4-1 and combines a 3-3 split in with the possibility of ruffing a with trump Ace.

Yes, declarer plays a to dummy’s Ace (via partner’s Jack) and I win the 3rd perforce (partner pitching his Queen of ). I see that a trump switch is too little too late now, so I try to promote a trump in partner’s hand. But declarer ruffs my with the 8 and partner takes another pitch. Declarer’s fourth gets eaten by trump Ace and the remainder gets claimed quickly.

When I was in with the Queen of I remember fingering the small trump in my hand briefly. In retrospect that was the Decision Point of the deal (apologies for making such a blatant Bush reference). I was so close to finding the deadly defence! I would need partner to be fully alert as well, he’d better ruff my winner (the 3rd ) as entry to be able to play a second round of trumps. Leaving declarer with four losers: three in and one in . And game, set & match for the defence. Alas!, this time it was not to be.

Hi all

I had a blast in Toronto. Pleasant city, nice summer weather that allowed for wearing shorts when staggering home at 2 am and boatloads of bridge. After getting handed the towel in the mini on Thursday, Michael and I played in the A/x pairs. In the afternoon session we made little mistakes and accepted all gifts, so we won our section. In the evening some errors crept in as well as a couple of bad judgment calls and we ended up with 55something% overall. Having pummelled Sadek & Hussein I consider my greatest feat.

Here’s a deal that has been bugging me. I’ve seen several iterations of it, but directors generally refuse to do anything about it, except have supposedly correcting small talk with the offenders.

West

North

East

South

 

 

 

1

DBL

2

2

4

4

pass

pass

51

DBL

a.p.

 

 

1. I just need so little from partner to score 11 tricks, while holding virtually nothing in defence

West pushes a double through the table and leads the Ace. This is what I see:

West takes the first two and then switches to a . Piece of cake, I win the Ace, ruff a with a top trump, cross to dummy with a small one and pass a top to West effectively placing her. After that I had to explain my claim twice (!) and wrote down -200. It’s a perfect save against a no-brainer 4.

This was the full deal:

At the other table South decided his hand was worth a 2 opening, showing a big hand. My teammates interfered with some suction action, but didn’t take out 4 because they were expecting a different type of hand. Fortunately South’s declarer play matched his bidding capabilities, down one and just a loss of 3 imps. Opening 2 on those types of hands, besides making me cringe, really warrants some kind of pre-alert in my opinion.