Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Justin Lall's blog, Go USA2 in the Bermuda Bowl!

I am a forty-something unabashedly rooting for the young lions of bridge, who showed during the selections, defeating Nickell and Diamond that they were forces to be reckoned with. In the Round Robin, a brilliant showing against Italy and Poland sees them in 4th place end of Tuesday, the first week.
Justin Lall blogs that the victory margin against the Poles could have been even higher if he had pulled the right card. His analysis is superb. (Both tables went down in 4H, Lall because of the mechanincal error).
I reproduce the following from his blog justinlall.com
"

I got to 4H with:

Axx
AQT9x
Jxx
AQ

J9x
K8xxx
Qx
Jxx

LHO led a spade and RHO won the king. The bidding made it clear RHO didn’t hold AK of diamonds. RHO now shifted to a club. I now know the spade position is KTxx on my right, Qxx on my left. If LHO had QT of spades RHO would return one, if RHO had KQ he would have crossed to his partner in diamonds for a spade through.

If I cannot build a diamond trick, my only play is a squeeze. This type of “frozen” spade suit lends itself well to a squeeze. Accordingly, I won the club, cashed the AQ of hearts, cashed the club ace, played the ten of hearts to my hand, ruffed a club high, and led a heart. Now when I run trumps, LHO must hold Qx of spades, and RHO must hold Tx of spades, so they both come down to 2 diamonds (if LHO keeps a club, he must stiff his D honor and will be endplayed).

Great! Except, when I played the H4 from dummy, I inexplicably forgot to overtake with the 8. Stranded in dummy, I couldn’t play the squeeze card! This might be the most tilting hand of all time. Luckily I have all night to recover! It would be much better if I didn’t even see any play, but to get through the hard part and then forget to overtake the 4…words cannot describe it.

I have to play slower from now on, that is really just not good enough in the Bermuda Bowl."

A really cute 4-card ending to visualize.

Dont worry about it Justin. What is done is done. More such heavenly analysis ahead

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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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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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