Monday, March 30, 2009

Rushing in where angels fear to tread

See how you would develop the bidding on this hand. FOURTH SEAT, ALL VUL, S:Q 8 2 H: J 8 6 3 D: A K 9 C: A J 9.
Lefty ONE HEART, Partner ONE SPADE, Righty TWO CLUBS. Your bid?
I prefer a cue TWO HEARTS to TWO SPADES, Lefty passes, partner bids TWO SPADES (a minimum? ) RHO bids THREE CLUBS.
Your bid? We may be on for FOUR SPADES. How much is the penalty likely to be? I like my Diamond controls both on defense and offense. The lack of a fourth spade says defend, I chose DOUBLE. all passing. The full hand.




Dlr: W
Vul: All




KJ10654

A109

J4

87




A7

KQ542

Q7632

3



93

7

1085

KQ106542




Q82

J863

AK9

AJ9




By attacking spades and taking our diamond ruff, we got DAK, D ruff, one spade, one heart, and two clubs for down three doubled, or 800. Since we have game, this was worth 5 odd IMPS.

An interesting bidding decision, and a unusually brutal punishment for a sevenbagger opposite a opener.

Demon Double of 3NT




Dlr: E
Vul: All




J98

AJ72

62

Q1096




10762

Q9

A75

AK75



AQ4

K64

Q9843

42




K53

10853

KJ10

J83




After TWO PASSes W (my Lefty) opens proeceedings with ONE DIAMOND. Partner, an action player introduces a DOUBLE. Righty brushes this aside with THREE NOTRUMP. I think this is based on minor length and I think partner must hold club honors for his DOUBLE, and I have diamonds well under control, Partner is implying the majors and we should have tempo and quantity. So I make a penalty DOUBLE, all passing.

I lead H3, declarer plays the Q (nine would have forced partner to put in the J) parter wins The Ace, and returns the deuce showing a four card suit. I chuck the 8 under the nine as declar wins just in case it is a five card suit, T3, Diamond to T and A, partner playing the 2. T4. Diamond back to myJ. T.5 T6 hearts ending in partner's hand (he overtakes to cash) two clubs pitched from dummy and a spade from declarer's hand. Partner switches to 8 of spades Q , King,
and having already taken FIVE tricks, I am on lead in this position.




Dlr: E
Vul: All




J9

none

none

QT96




T76

none

7

AK



A

none

Q94

42




53

none

K

J83




Well, two things should be clear now. A. Partner's double was comic. B.The score we are going to get is excellent, be it 200, 500 or 800. Therefore, one need not cash the DK now, since declarer and dummy are marked with diamonds, and declarer with the Ace of spades, setting up a spade is the right thing to do.

I pondered in the speedball tournament, and gave up on the spade play, as the position was not clear enough in my mind. A mistake! I cashed the DK for 500, simply worried I might not get my DK, and now declarer took his diamond tricks and clubs and SA for down 2 doubled.

These are the situations where you have a declarer on the ropes and you have to deliver the knockout by careful calculation. Only 9.44 IMPs won on this hand instead of 12.44 IMPs.

What to say about partner's action? At duplicate, needing swings, one can do all sorts of things, some of which of course have the potential to backfire, say E redoubles and then I hold a Yarborough and they double all runouts for 1100?

Friday, March 27, 2009

Matchpoint Tricks by Axelsen, B. and Dam, V.

A book that I just got in the mail. A mixed bag of hands in terms of difficulty. One very cute trick from one of the hands: The following is a side suit in which East has preempted at the three level. In the closed hand is the singleton Ace of the side suit. The layout is:
......... North
......... QT9
West........................... East
xx .......................... KJxxxxx
......... South
......... A
With plenty of entries to dummy, You advance the Queen of the sidesuit, East covers, you win perforce, Now a ruffing finesse situation sets up a winner for a discard in yet another suit.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Won't you defend this hand with me, partner? (II)

























































EastSouthWestNorth







Pass

Pass
1Double
3DoublePass4
Pass4Pass4 All Pass
After two PASSes Lefty opens ONE SPADE, Partner DOUBLES, RHO bids THREE SPADES, and I make a DOUBLE. I am a passed hand.

Partner decides to pull the double (actually to FOUR CLUBS, I bid FOUR DIAMONDS, he bids FOUR HEARTS, a funny route, but after much agony, we take +650, a decent result for +6 IMPs.)

The truth is that in this modern world of responsive doubles, and no penalty doubles ever, EW were going for -4 and -5 undoubled all over the place for -200 and -250.

A double and -5 for -1200 ANYBODY??? That would have been worth a juicy 12+ IMPs.

Won't you defend this hand with me partner? (I)

It chagrins me, how, otherwise good players will not take an easy penalty of three spades or four clubs of the opponents, instead, rebidding their shown values, and putting themselves in a tough or hopeless contract.

Case example ONE. From Cross-IMP 12 board tourney.





Dlr: W
Vul: Nil




102

AK10872

K3

QJ2


AQJ4

96

Q1074

A94


973

J5

A86

87653


K865

Q43

J952

K10



The partscore competition was fierce. LHO ONE DIAMOND, partner ONE HEART, Righty PASS, moi TWO DIAMONDS (I meant to bid TWO HEARTS but misclicked, the cue bid was ok if it represented a trump more than I had, values about there.) Lefty TWO SPADES. Partner THREE HEARTS. Righty FOUR DIAMONDS. I now DOUBLE. Lefty passes. Should partner pass or bid FOUR HEARTS? He chose to bid on. I feel sorry about the cue bid, but should my double be a deterrent here? I think so. +500 for -3 is easy.

Instead we went -50.

Welcome to Ramesh's BRIDGE BLOG

In these pages, I comment on hands from Bridge Base Online ACBL tourneys. I play in these with a variety of partners with different degrees of skill. I might present a hand or two from my collection of bridge books, every now and then. I am more interested in play and defense than in complex bidding systems, but I do follow the cut and thrust of Vanderbilt and World Championship Vugraph and try to keep abreast of expert practice in the obstructive and constructive bidding system department. I may also feature, newspaper-style, famous hands from important matches that I saw on Vugraph.

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About Me

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Bridge expert for 20 years. I started blogging about bridge only in 2009. Chess follower. Problem fan. Studied hundreds of composition themes in two-movers, fairy chess, the former from the Good Companion era to the modern style of virtual play. Big collector of chess and bridge rare books. My two game blogs bridge blog, and my chess problem themes blog chess expo

My alter ego, The Hideous Hog

My alter ego, The Hideous Hog

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