Korbel Bridge Adventures

We're still alive!

2009-11-01T06:36:00.004-05:00

I know it's been a while since this blog was updated but we've been very busy in our personal lives and haven't had the time to work on posts.

We'd also like to share the news that Matthew Alexander Korbel was born on October 2nd, weighing 6lbs 14.5oz and was 19 inches long. His hands are still too little to hold cards but we'll see when he gets bigger!

We'll try and update with more bridge related things when we can, but right now sleep has been a little more of a priority!

Congratulations to the CNTC Winners!

2009-06-15T11:58:00.006-04:00

Photo courtesy of Ross Taylor

Congratulations to Dan Korbel, David Grainger, Nick L'Ecuyer, Kamel Fergani, Darren Wolpert, and Jurek Czyzowicz on winning the Canadian National Team Championship! They played team Carruthers in the two day final (John Carruthers, Joseph Silver, David Turner, Roy Hughes, Nader Hanna, Jim Green) and won with a final score of 288 to 224.

For more results, please visit the CBF Bridge Week website.

Dan will update with hands from the event when he returns home from the Penticton Regional this week!

Winnipeg Regional

2009-04-25T23:58:00.002-04:00

This week Jonathan and I are at the Winnipeg regional, playing all week with Danny Miles and Dave Colbert. Although we haven't had a great week, we have placed in a few KOs and won the Thursday Swiss. Here are three wild slams from this week:

I decided to evaluate the South hand as a limit raise of spades and bid 3H (which is our systemic bid). When Jonathan tried 4C, implying club length, I judged that my hand was golden and decided (dubiously, perhaps) to bid 4NT to simplify the auction. Jonathan went into the tank and a smile crept across his face. I said to the opponents, "He's never had 5 keycards before on this auction!" Indeed that was the case -- he had five keycards and the queen of trumps! Jonathan just bid 7S over 4NT, trusting that we couldn't have a late loser anywhere if I was sane, and we scored an easy +1510. Amazingly, this was worth 11.5/12 matchpoints.

This was a really wild hand. I decided to open the South cards with Flannery 2D, conventionally showing 4 spades, 5 or 6 hearts, and 11-16 HCP (Yes, I was a little light). Look at Jonathan's hand! He must have thought I had forgotten the convention and opened a weak 2D by mistake. Nonetheless, Jonathan responded 3S, which is forcing and a slam try in our style. RHO tried 3NT for the minors, vulnerable vs. not, and I rebid 4S, intending to show a minimum 4=5=2=2 (I had overbid enough already!) but accidentally showing a 4=5=2=2 maximum. My LHO bid 4NT for the minors, and Jonathan decided to take a shot at slam.

Because the opponents were vulnerable and we were not, they subsided and Jonathan bought the hand. My RHO led the dA, and quickly tried the dK -- oops! Jonathan ruffed and claimed +980. Notice that yet again the opponents are cold for 6 of either minor, and can make 7 if we don't lead a heart! An amazing hand.

Just to show how tough high-level freak hands are, our teammates doubled 6S and then perpetrated the same defense for -1230. Despite the vulnerability, bidding 7 of a minor has a lot going for it, as it's very cheap and will make whenever they lead a spade for a humongous swing.

This hand was pretty amazing too. Jonathan made a vulnerable 1S overcall and I was looking at that South hand. Incidentally, compare this hand to the problem hand in Part 1 of the Toronto Regional post a few posts ago. The situations (although here at a much lower level) are nearly identical! I said in that post that I would comment what the right approach was, and I think that against most opposition you would be best off just blasting a grand slam. It's tough for your opponents to lead the suit they have bid in the face of your grand slam blast, so they will often lead a trump or the unbid suit. Yes, a thinking opponent may call your bluff and lead the suit they have bid, so against a smart opponent you will actually want to have a void in diamonds most of the time! Note that you aren't even sure of making a small slam if partner doesn't have a diamond control so it's not like you're necessarily throwing away a bird in hand.

An added benefit of this approach is the bonus to your reputation. I remember one time I used Exclusion Blackwood with a void in their other suit and two small cards in the suit I ERKCB'd in; they led my void and we made our slam despite having two top diamond losers. A month later, I played against someone who knew about this hand, and I used ERKCB against him, honestly this time. They led the Ace of my EKCB suit, not trusting my bidding, and this gave away the slam!

In any case, my RHO led the cQ and Jonathan picked the spade suit for +2210 and a big pickup.

Am I crazy? Probably. But it sure is fun!

Toronto Regional (Part 2)

2009-04-20T00:46:00.002-04:00

Starting on Thursday was the premier event of the Toronto Regional, the Percy Sheardown Knockouts (Percy was a legendary Canadian player). I had the good fortune to be playing with Darren Wolpert as my partner, and David Grainger and Joel Wooldridge as our teammates. (David is my partner for the CNTC coming up in June, and Darren is one of our teammates. Joel, unfortunately, lives in Buffalo).

Unlike most regional knockouts nowadays, this knockout was seeded, and despite our team's youth we managed to draw the #1 seed (I suspect one of the directors may have fudged the numbers a little bit as we were probably the #2 seed by masterpoints).

We drew a 3-way match in the first round, and beat one team 45-0 over 14 boards, and beat the other team 50-32 to advance. Here was a hand in the closer match that won us 11 IMPs:

West led a fourth best spade and I tried the sJ from dummy, not overly pleased to see the queen from East. I needed the cK onside to have any chance at the contract, and that pretty much marked the dK offside with my left hand opponent. Accordingly, the right play is to win the first spade with the Ace, for an obscure reason I'll show you a bit later. I crossed to dummy's hA to run four rounds of clubs ending in my hand with the aid of the finesse. I judged West to be 6-3-3-1 from her discards (1 early diamond pitch, then a spade and a fumbled heart). I cashed the hK, stripping West's last heart, and played a spade, claiming the last two tricks as she had to lead from the Kx of diamonds at trick 12.

Do you see why winning the first spade is the correct play? Because you don't have a high heart honour in your hand, if there is no spade in dummy it becomes impossible to strip West's last heart and then lead a spade next unless there is one in dummy to lead! So, if West discards the way she did, she will beat you unless you win the first trick.

In the second round we found ourselves in another 3-way match. This one didn't go so well -- we found ourselves +6 at the half in one match, and -45 at the half in the other!! If the second half didn't go better, we might find ourselves out of the event.

Happily, our team regained its form in the second half, not giving up a single IMP. Against the team we were +6, we picked up 34 more, and against the other team we got 39 of those IMPs back! In fact, on the only board we pushed, both tables went +150 in 1NT when they might have stolen a vulnerable 3NT were they in it. If Joel and David had bid it, we would have picked up 49 IMPs and won the set by 4!

Darren and I were swinging a bit in this set, as we knew we were down a ton and needed to create some swings. There is an art to swinging, and it does not involve blatant psyching. Instead, you should look for ways to create different situations at each table. You might open a shaky preempt you know your counterpart won't; you might upgrade a 13 point hand with a good suit to a strong notrump; you might open 1D on KJx instead of 1C on Axxx; you might open a chunky 4 card major in first seat; you might overcall at the 1-level instead of making a weak jump, or make a "weak" jump overcall instead of a simple 1-level overcall to shake things up.

Here was a hand where we swung successfully:

Darren, as North, made a simple raise of diamonds a diamond light, but he felt he had the high card points to compensate. I bid 2S over East's double which was pretty normal (OK, I was a little light HCP-wise, but I had good shape). When Darren doubled 3C for penalties, I decided to take a piece of 3H. Even despite the match score, I really didn't think Darren would be doubling here with "just clubs," as he would hate to push them out of clubs back into a heart contract we could not beat. So I decided we were probably killing this contract, and Darren would almost never lead a diamond -- he would either start with club ruffs, or with a spade. In fact, he led a spade, and declarer lost the first 8 tricks for +800 and 12 IMPs to us.

In the quarterfinals, we played a solid team of locals. The cards were running against us at our table, but the beauty of a team game is that your teammates encounter the same situations as your opponents. Our card didn't look wonderful, but David and Joel had a solid set and we found ourselves +13 at the half. The second half was all us at both tables and we picked up 37 IMPs.

In the semi-finals, we faced the same team we had narrowly lost to in the 2nd 3-way match, as they had inherited the #4 seed. Time for some revenge -- we hoped!

We set the tone on the very first board, where Darren doubled a 4H contract where trumps were breaking 5-0. We beat it two tricks for +500 and a 7 IMP pickup (our teammates were two down undoubled, one level lower, not warned of the bad breaks).

Another big pickup from the first half:

Lacking a good lead, I tried a low diamond from the West hand and it went to the Q, K, and Ace. Declarer next played a low club from dummy. I decided to rise with the cT to lead the d8, which held the trick, as partner played the d7. I was now quite certain that diamonds were 4333 around the table, so I couldn't afford to cash another round now. I was pretty confident that declarer had at least 5 clubs to the AK and usually 6 to go after them in this manner. In the auction, he had denied as many as 3 hearts, so I thought his only possible shapes were 2236, 3136, and 3235, with both spade honours. So, I switched to the hK, intending to give declarer a communications problem. He won the hA, dropping the hJ from hand, and led a spade to the King and my Ace.

I cashed the dJ, severing declarer from dummy, and exited with the cQ. Declarer could cash all his black winners but I had to score the sJ at the end. It wouldn't have helped him to cash the hQ before dislodging the sA because we would then have the setting tricks to cash in the heart suit. At the other table, the defense never led hearts, and David scored 9 tricks via a late heart finesse.

When the smoke cleared, we had won 45 IMPs in each half to win by 90.

In the final, we faced the original #2 seed, John Carruthers - Eric Murray, Nader Hanna - Jim Green, John Gowdy - Vince Oddy.

Darren and I had a good set against Eric Murray and J.C. in the first half, doing nothing wrong. Well, almost nothing. I had to find a lead from this hand:

Clearly, a heart is the only logical choice, but which heart? The heart Ten would be best if dummy hit with Kx, or declarer had KJx (KJxx doesn't help us); a higher heart would be necessary if dummy had a doubleton or singleton jack. I judged the latter to be a more likely scenario, and I decided to try the Ace of hearts, which as you can see was a major disaster. Perhaps I was being too much of a genius. But opening leads are hard. Jim Green did not open my cards, and in the midgame found a low heart switch. -600 was worth 13 IMPs away.

Fortunately, those were the only IMPs we lost in the half, and we found ourselves +13 IMPs overall. Here was a hand that was a swing to us:

J.C. led the h4 and I won the queen in dummy. This contract was a really bad one, but if I could find a lucky club position I still might make it. I led a club to the queen, and J.C. won the king. He switched to a diamond, which Eric Murray won to return a heart. I won the Ace and took stock. It seemed incredibly unlikely that a player as seasoned as John would win the first round of clubs from an original holding of KJx, so when I led a club toward the dummy and he played the c9 I was not tempted to finesse. The fall of the cJ meant +400 and 8 IMPs to us instead of 5 IMPs away. Yes, the defenders should let me win the first round of clubs. But anyone can make a mistake in the heat of the battle, and he was a bit unlucky that I was awake enough to take advantage.

In the second half both tables were very solid. Here was another 3NT I declared (some days, all the good play problems fall to one seat):

Vince led the cT which I covered with dummy's jack as John Gowdy won the queen. He switched to a spade, which I rode to dummy's queen. I played another spade, which he won to clear spades. At this point, I knew that he had 4 spades and at least 5 clubs (probably exactly 5). Vince's diamond discard made it clear to me that he had 5 or 6 diamonds, and thus 3 or 4 hearts. In fact, RHO's most likely distribution was 4=2=2=5, and if so, I was going to make this hand on an endplay.

I cashed the dA and led the hT. If Vince covered, I would have simply taken two deep heart finesses, but when he played low smoothly I rose hA, cashed the dK, and ducked a heart to John's queen. He cashed his spade, but with only clubs left in his hand he had to give me the c9 and cA, and a heart finesse was marked for my ninth trick. This was worth 10 IMPs when the other declarer failed on a diamond lead (on a less informative auction).

When all was said and done we picked up another 16 IMPs in the second half to win the match by 29 IMPs. Our opponents played very well, but on this day our team was firing on all cylinders and it was very hard to beat us.

Playing with David and Joel was a pleasure, as they are both great teammates, great players, and fun guys to hang out with. Partnering Darren was a treat; he is a very supportive partner and really makes you feel confident. Darren and I are playing in the "mini" Cavendish pairs in Las Vegas in May (we'd play in the big one but don't want to pony up the $15K!).

Tomorrow I fly out to Winnipeg to play at the regional with Jonathan. Stay posted for updates.

Toronto Regional (Part 1)

2009-04-20T00:25:00.004-04:00

The Toronto regional was held the week of April 7 - 12. I played from April 7 to April 11. On April 7th I played with Sean Pryke in a 2-session pairs game; we did okay but not enough to get in the overalls. Our opponents played well against us in the afternoon and that in and of itself is often enough to keep you from winning a pairs game. The trick with pairs games is to be sure to take the win when it is dealt to you, but this wasn't our day.

On Wednesday I played a Swiss teams with Andy Stark, John Carruthers, Mike Roche and John Rayner. I played 4 sets with Andy and two with J. C. Last year, in this event with the same team, we were sitting at 119/120 at the half way point, and after 5 matchs were 149/150 -- we had it almost locked up with three matches to go!

This year was a different story, and we didn't even place in the overalls!

Two good auctions J.C. and I had:

In my opinion, John is a really world-class bidder so I was perfectly comfortable trusting all his bidding completely. He responded Drury 2C to my 1S opening bid, and I tested the waters for slam with a 3C bid. John's 4C bid showed club strength as well as club length, so I could immediately picture a possible slam in clubs. When I tried 4H, denying a diamond control, John bid 5D, which was promptly doubled. Missing the sAKQ and the cAQ, I knew it was impossible for John not to have the dA and be willing to bypass the safety of 4S, so I didn't bother to pass 5D around to him and give him options. Instead, I bid 6C, as heart ruffs in my hand could bring us up to 12 tricks even if 6S could not make, and this way the diamond position is protected from the lead.

On the hA lead, all we needed was spades not 4-1 offside, but alas, that was the case, and we lost 12 IMPs to the +620 recorded at the other table. This was our first board of the day and unfortunately set the tone.

A grand slam we backed into:

I chose to respond 1S to 1C, mainly because we hadn't discussed what we were playing over the auction 1C-P-1D-P-1NT (I would usually bid 1D, my best suit, on a strong hand). In any case, this worked out great when my 2D bid got raised to 3D, showing 4=6 in the minors. I bid 4D to set trumps, confident John would trust that this bid was forcing, and he duly cuebid 4H on his singleton. I launched into Keycard Blackwood, and asked for the Queen of trumps over his 1-keycard reply of 5C. John knew that I needed all the keycards for my 5H bid, as it went past our "safety" level of 5D, and thus was a grand slam try, and loved his cards. He tried 7C to emphasize his great clubs in case I wanted to try 7NT, but I settled for 7D. This was a 13 IMP win against 6C at the other table -- they never even mentioned diamonds!

The last round of the Swiss was memorable for this doozy -- a hand straight out of a Victor Mollo book:

Yes, this really happened at both tables. If RHO hadn't bid 4H, you would still have a problem, but it wouldn't be as sticky as the problem you have now. Think about what your options are and what you would do and I will post what I think, and the table results, in a later post.

See Part 2 for a recap of the Sheardown Knockout, the premier event each year at the Toronto Regional.

A Hand from Bridge Base Online

2009-01-27T02:26:00.003-05:00

Tonight David Grainger and I played a set game online against Ira Chorush and Venkatrao Koneru. It was a very well played match all around, I thought, and we only ended up ahead because we had way more than our share of the cards.

Here is a grand slam that ties into the theme of a hand I posted a little while ago, of avoiding a weak 4-4 fit:

Many players nowadays would open the South hand, but it's just not something I'm comfortable with -- although I suspect it would have made the auction trivial. As it was, we didn't really have too much difficulty with the hand once David made the exquisitely Canadian decision to open 1C rather than 2C despite holding 23 high card points. I like this approach to bidding, on the theory that if you get by the first round of the auction, you are usually in good shape to have intelligent communication with your partner. Here, 1C is rarely passed out, sometimes it is right to play in 1C when it is passed out, and this hand is difficult to describe without artificial methods if you start with 2C. (If the auction starts 2C-(3H), I have trouble constructing a sequence in our methods that allow us to get to 7C. In any case, it's much harder).

Over David's 4H cuebid, I knew that he either had a big hand with a spade fit, or a big hand with a club suit, so now the question was what to do. I really wanted to bid 5D, but I was worried that that would be natural (as we hadn't discussed it I wasn't going to risk playing in a 3-2 fit). I decided finally that if David had a singleton heart or the Ace as his 4H bid suggested (meaning tricks 1 and 2 weren't going to go hA, heart ruff), my cards were good enough to take a shot at slam. David decided that if I didn't have the dA I was crazy and found a good raise to 7C.

As you can see, 7NT is the best spot, but 7C is quite a happy contract. The key here was to ignore the spade fit, where you are at the mercy of a 3-2 break. Strangely, Ira's preempt probably made it easier for us to avoid spades, because had he passed or bid 1H, the auction would have gone 1C-(1H)-X or 1C-P-1S, making it much more difficult for me to show both my strength and my club support, two things that helped David to choose clubs at the end.

When should you avoid a 4-4 major suit fit? If it is to play in a slam, whenever you have enough tricks but you have a weak trump fit you can consider a different trump suit or notrumps. If it is a choice between 3NT and 4M, you will usually want to have a little extra in HCP to make up for the fact that you aren't making use of ruffing power. As an example, if I picked up

and heard partner open 1NT, I would just bid 3NT and forget about the major suit fit. My suit is weak, I have extra strength (we are in the 27-29 HCP range), and help in the other suits. Not everyone agrees with me on what hands to avoid the major suit fit on, but one thing Kit Woolsey suggests to look for in his classic book, Matchpoints, is to have secondary honours (Queens and Jacks) in your doubleton.

Read this entry for a spectacular example of 3NT being right.

A Funny Hand

2009-01-26T22:35:00.003-05:00

Here's a funny deal that I was a part of 6 or 7 years ago.

My most regular partner at the time, Matthew Mason, was sitting North, and I was sitting South. We were playing at the Waterloo, Ontario sectional in the Saturday matchpoint game. Things were going fine and we were enjoying ourselves. Then, two little old ladies came to the table, whom I knew by name:

The lady on my right opened 1S, and the lady on my left -- well, as you can see, she responded with 1D. Unfortunately, that is not a legal call in that auction, and Matthew summoned the director, David Burke (who has since passed away). David asked Matthew if he would like to accept the bid. Matthew said no. David explained to LHO: "You can make any call you want, but if it isn't 2D, your partner is barred for the rest of the auction."

So LHO, a very agreeable lady, nods and says okay, and goes into a brown study, staring at her cards. The director repeats, "You can bid 2D with no penalty, but otherwise your partner is barred."

LHO nods again, but still doesn't emerge with any bid. Eventually David takes a look at her hand, looks at the lady, and says, "You can bid 2D with no penalty, and the auction will just continue on as normal."

To this, the little old lady on my left forcefully replies, "No, I don't want to bid 2D."

After another long trance, she finally reached into the bidding box ... and pulled out ... the master bid of ... FIVE SPADES!

Yes, five spades. Matthew and I make eye contact and I realize we are both about to break out in peals of laughter. I quickly stare at a spot on the ground and try to think of Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day.

The director, of course, can't believe what is happening either. He says to LHO, "You realize your partner must pass this bid!"

The LOL on my left is apparently quite happy with her decision because she says, "Yes, I understand."

At this point David says, "OK," and he has to walk away because he too has broken out laughing. Matthew and I have done an admirable job of keeping ourselves to the occasional smile or sharp breath.

As you can see from the diagram, the LOL on my right quickly wraps up all the tricks. Matthew and I book it away from the table because we just couldn't hold it in any longer. As we were leaving the table I could hear my RHO saying, "Why didn't you just bid 2D?"

A funny hand, but I have a few other good ones, including my all-time favourite. I'll post them in February.

Bridge over the New Year

2009-01-15T20:49:00.014-05:00

As has become almost traditional, Susie, Jonathan Steinberg, Martin Hunter, and I hopped on a flight on Christmas Day to the Kansas City Holiday Regional. Although this isn't the largest of regionals, the food and hospitality in Kansas City are great and we are always made to feel welcome.

We had a nice week in Kansas City, with a number of good showings in events. Susie and I won over 50 points, while Jonathan and Martin broke 70 points due to their win in the December 30th Flight A Barometer Pairs (a cool event; the scores are updated almost in real-time).

We followed that up with a win in the New Years Eve swiss teams event, despite losing 30-0 against Dan Morse's team in the first round! After that, we went 6-0 while Morse's team lost their last two matches, allowing us to nip them for the win. Another thing about this event that I will probably never do again: Susie and I went for -2000 (!) on a board in this match, and then won the event! Not only that, but the other table ran out of time, and the board we went -2000 on was thrown out, as if it never happened! We got blitzed anyway. Bridge can be a strange game.

You can check Jonathan's photos if you are interested in seeing more.

The day after we got back from the KC Regional, it was time for the Toronto Sectional!

I played with bridge author and proud new father of a beautiful baby boy, Lennox, Andy Stark Friday afternoon, and we had a whopping 68% game to win easily. I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but we have played together 5 times, and that is the lowest score we have ever had!

On Saturday, Jonathan and I broke average in the pairs game, while Susie played with Danny Miles and did a little better, scoring a 54% average. Here is a hand I like from the event:

Susie's 4C was not a shy bid; I might have settled for 3S myself. In any case, the point of the hand is to play in hearts, not spades, and Danny found a great 6H bid at the end, having difficulty visualizing any hand where 6H would not be nearly cold despite missing a keycard and the sQ. Note that Susie didn't show her club void, having overbid enough already.

The reason I like this hand is that bridge bidding in general is geared into looking for the "magic 4-4" fit, which, although often right, is important to be able to squeak out of when you have abundant values elsewhere and your suit is weak. This can be true at the game level, too; I can't tell you how many times I have played in a makeable (or cold) 3NT with 4H or 4S on a 4-4 fit shaky (or no play).

On the Sunday I played with Robert Lebi, teammates Jim Green and Nader Hanna. We started out 7-0 to lead the event, but an unfortunate final match had us drop all the way to 5th in the event (there were a lot of teams).

There may not be much bridge happening until March, but I have a few funny bridge stories I'd like to share with you, so check back for those in the coming weeks.

A Great Defense

2008-12-03T17:30:00.009-05:00

Well, I didn't get the chance to go to Boston for the Nationals this past two weeks, as we are moving into our new house (yay! check our website if you want photos) and I have been busy with school. The pictures are now mostly after we have moved in and repainted and decorated.

So, I don't have any hands from Boston, but I do have a gem I have been saving for about a month I'd like to share with you. Hopefully you have some sympathy after seeing how the opponents skewered me!

My partner was NABC-champion Tom Carmichael of Atlanta, Georgia, who was in Toronto for business; we decided we'd have a game at Hazel's club.

The auction had a few points of interest: even at matchpoints, Tom decided not to overcall the sterile, minimum North hand vulnerable versus not. I agree with this decision, and it didn't hurt us any when I decided to try 3NT despite my marginal club stopper. I expected a club value with partner given West's failure to rebid clubs and RHO's silence; even if partner had nothing in clubs, it was likely that either West might not lead them (or have difficulty working out I had no stopper), or might have only 4 to cash and I could claim. Again, not a clear bid, but it did have the effect of right-siding 3NT (3NT is unmakeable from the other side on a normal black suit lead).

Our opponents on this hand were Toronto experts Mike Cafferata (West) and Mike Kenny (East).

Mike C. led a quick sA, and Mike K. played the s9. The sA asked for an unblock or count, so Mike C. knew the spade position exactly. After long thought, Mike C. switched to -- the hQ!! I had spent the long tank thinking about what to do on a heart switch, since it seemed likely I would need 3 heart tricks to make the contract. I was at a crossroads. I decided to win the hQ with the hK, draw two round of diamonds (they were 2-2), and lead another heart up. RHO played the hJ (!) without much thought (!!) and I won the hA. Time to take stock.

It looked for all the world that LHO had started with the doubleton hQ and had found a good switch at trick 2, meaning that I should have ducked the heart switch (today, that would NOT have worked, as LHO's low heart continuation would find me finessing the third round into his ten for sure!) ... regardless, what could be done?

Clearly I could not afford to let my RHO in, as he would push a spade through and set me at least one trick. Was there any other hope?

Well, there was one slight hope: that RHO would be unable to win the 3rd round of clubs, and I could perhaps endplay my LHO to give me a spade or a club at the end.
If the hearts were indeed 2=4, this meant that my LHO was specifically 4=2=2=5 (I knew the spade situation at trick 1 as well).

This would, however, require some finesse: I cashed the rest of my diamonds, throwing a heart from my hand, as LHO threw two clubs and a spade. RHO pitched a spade, a low heart, and ... a club!! This might actually work! I thought the position was now:

In reality, I was dead wrong about the heart position, and LHO had the high heart and one less club, while RHO had one less heart and one more club.

I led a club to the queen, LHO winning, and he exited a club. I exited triumphantly with a club ... as RHO produced the jack and LHO claimed!

Oops -- all I had to do was lead a heart earlier and I had it made! Oh well, Mike Cafferata and Mike Kenny deserve a lot of credit for the cooperative and inspired defense. As Bruce Ferguson always says, you just pay off if the opponents are being geniuses.

Just a Lowly Partscore

2008-11-15T17:53:00.009-05:00

A little while ago, Susie and I attended Jonathan Steinberg's retirement party at Hazel's Bridge Club in Toronto. As many of you probably already know, Jonathan is retiring from the board after 15 years of service.

It was a pleasant game (with cake!), and a pretty strong field for a club game. Here is a great hand Susie played that I wanted to share:

Yes, it's just a simple 3C contract, but on hands like these many matchpoints can be won! Susie received the h2 lead to the hA, and a heart was returned. After some thought, before drawing any trumps, Susie decided to work on diamonds, since she was conveniently in the dummy, and drawing trumps could complicate the hand if things didn't go well.

So, Susie led a diamond from dummy and played the .... king! When the dQ fell under it, she drew three rounds of trumps ending in the dummy, and ran the d9. East-West were unable to stop her from scoring +130 and 90% of the matchpoints. +110 would have been only a 40% score.

I asked Susie later why she led to the diamond king. She said: "I was sure East had the Ace for his 2H overcall, and when he didn't hop up with it I thought there was a good chance that if I played the jack, West would win and somebody would eventually get a diamond ruff. I was happy to lead a diamond to the king and exit a diamond, planning to make my contract exactly. The queen falling was an unexpected bonus!"

Poker in Aruba ??

2008-09-14T12:54:00.004-04:00

(This post has nothing to do with bridge, but rather is about poker, so if that isn't your thing you won't want to continue reading).

Susie and I have a friend, Sean, who "grinds" Pot Limit Omaha 8-or-better on Ultimate Bet (in English, that means he plays a lot of a form of poker known as "PL08" to increase his livelihood). Because he plays so much on UB, they often reward him with frequent player specials. Lately, this has been a free entry into a $109 satellite tournament, where if you finish in the top 160 players, you get an entry into a $530 tournament. If you make the top 50 in this tournament, you get $3000 cash and a seat to the $5500 Aruba Classic main event, which has a first prize of $1 million!

Well, our friend Sean doesn't like long no limit hold em tournaments, and he was out of town besides on the scheduled day, and he likes the way Susie and I play, so he offered us the freeroll for a 50-50 split on any winnings. Well, that seemed like a no-brainer.

I played in the 11:15am $109 feeder. The funny thing about this tournament, is that fewer than half the people registered even bother to show up! One guy who did show up was clearly not taking it seriously, and at one point asked, "What does this get you anyway?"

In short, making it to the final 160 out of maybe 300 people who actually show up is a breeze. So the stage was set for the real tournament, the $530 Aruba 50 Seat Giveaway, at 5:30pm.

Well, I wasn't home that Saturday night, so Susie would have to go it alone. The field started with 766 players, with the top 50 all winning the same first prize.

Despite never playing a tournament with anywhere near this high an entry fee before, Susie proved that she could more than hold her own. She qualified easily, and when the 51st person was eliminated (boy, is that a bad beat or what!), she had coasted her way comfortably into 13th place. Congratulations Susie!

Susie played really excellent poker this whole tournament, never making a costly mistake and using her position intelligently. The bigger buy in tournaments on UB give a deeper starting stack of 3000, and blind levels last 20 minutes instead of the normal 10 minutes, which gives a lot of "play" to a tournament. This is right up Susie's alley, as her biggest forte in these tournaments is her incredible patience. In a fast-paced tournament, this often means she ends up clinging on at some point if she goes card dead, but in a slower structure she was never in any real danger. Every time she was all-in, she was at least an 80% favourite to win the pot -- now that's a figure we would all be thrilled with.

I will give you a few of the key hands she played. I've never formatted poker hands so I hope this works out.

(20/40 Blinds)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Chips: 2430 Villain: 3300

Susie raises to 100, Villain calls.

FLOP:

Susie bets 150, Villain calls.

TURN:

Susie bets 300, Villain raises to 800, Susie reraises all-in, Villain calls.

RIVER:

Susie wins 4920 chips.

(Note Villain's error in not protecting his hand. Had he raised substantially on the flop, Susie would certainly have folded her nice straight draw and he would have gained some chips instead of being crippled).
-------
HAND #2

(Blinds 150/300, 50 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain: ??
Susie's Stack: ~9000 Villain: ~5500

Villain raises to 1000. Susie, on the button, folds 99.

Result: Stack stays at ~9000.

(Note Susie's tight but excellent fold here. Calling off 1000 chips at this point to try to flop a set (12%) against Villain's 4500 remaining chips was out of the question, so by calling 1000 she was essentially committing herself to getting all in on the flop if only one overcard comes to her 99. This is an extremely wild play with her playable 9000 chip stack size, as going down to 3500 would severely cripple her. Note that if the Villain had her out-chipped or was very short, she would have called, as the math would have been far better for calling. Great fold, in my opinion.)

-------
HAND #3

(Blinds 200/400, 25 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Stack: ~8000 Villain: ~19000
Villain limps from mid position. Susie raises to 1200 from the button, Villain calls.

FLOP:

Villain moves all in. Susie calls.

TURN:

RIVER:

Susie wins ~17000 chips.

(She was sure in the right place at the right time for this silly hand! If plays like this guy made are a part of your game, you've got a major leak to fill, and that leak is called patience).
------

HAND #4 (the very next hand against the very same player).

(Blinds 200/400, 25 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Stack: ~19000 Villain: ~11000

Villain min-raises to 800 from mid-position. Susie calls. Big blind calls.

FLOP:

BB checks. Villain bets 2600. Susie raises to 6000. BB Folds. Villain moves all-in. Susie calls.

TURN:

RIVER:

Susie wins ~23500 chips, putting her up to ~31000 chips, eliminating Villain.

(This hand was a cold deck for the villain. But he put himself into this position by stacking off 8000 chips to Susie the hand before -- or he would still have been in fighting shape, instead of eliminated. Also note that Susie didn't reraise him before the flop even with a hand as strong as JJ, as he had never before raised a pot preflop, and now was min-raising. This smelled funny and sure enough, he did indeed have AA).
--------

HAND #5

(Blinds 500/1000, 100 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain: ??
Susie's Stack: ~69000 Villain: ~34000

Villain raises to 2500 from mid position. Susie calls in the Big Blind.

FLOP:

Susie bets 3000. Villain calls.

TURN:

Susie bets 7500. Villain folds.

Susie wins 12500 chips, stacking up to ~74500.

(This is my favourite hand of the whole tournament. The blinds were going up and everyone was feeling the pressure. Susie had stayed in a fairly aggressive mode after winning those two big pots (Hands 3 and 4), and had chipped up to about 70000 in chips. With the blinds increasing and the magic 50th place payout getting ever closer, nobody wanted to step out of line and "donk" their way out of the tournament.

Since Susie had plenty of chips to play with, she decided to use this to her advantage -- after all, she could make a small error and survive, where other people couldn't afford to be wrong! Ordinarily, she would not usually defend her blind with a hand as dangerous as A7, but in this case she decided to call and take a flop. When the flop came JJ5, it was extremely unlikely that her opponent had caught a piece of that. So Susie bet out 3000, expecting to take the pot down right then and there.

Well, her opponent was suspicious too (after all, if Susie had a jack, why wouldn't she check and go for the check raise?), and decided to call. If the blinds were lower and the stacks were deeper, he might have raised here to test her, but he couldn't afford to be wrong so he compromised with a call. Susie was aware that her opponent might be "floating" her here with a hand like AK or 99, waiting to see what she did on the turn, and maybe intending to take the pot from her there. This is why I love her 7500 bet on the turn, basically asking her opponent, "Do you want to dance?" His quick fold said that no, he didn't. What a great hand.)

In any case, the timing for Aruba will not work for us, so we will likely sell our seat on the open market, which is too bad, but that's life I guess.

Atlanta Regional, 2008

2008-09-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

On August 25th, Jonathan and I headed off to the Atlanta regional. We had heard it is a nice tourney with great hospitality and a strong field, so we decided to attend this year. We were not disappointed; the tournament had 3 (!) separate hotel suites dedicated to hospitality, with all the food and alcohol you could want. And probably at least 20 world champion bridge players were in attendance at the tournament.

The tournament is an easy 40 minute MARTA train ride (just $2.00) from the airport. Across the street from the Crowne Plaza hotel is a humongous shopping mall, Perimeter Plaza, with an abundance of restaurants to choose from. The tournament gets about 3500 tables each year, making it one of the largest regionals around.

We ended up playing in team games all week, except for the first day where we placed in two one-session pairs games.

On Wednesday we played with Jerry Helms and Penelope Smith, a wonderful lady who helps produce his materials for teaching bridge. We lost a close match in the afternoon compact KO, but saved a little face by winning the large 1-session swiss in the evening.

We played with Jerry Helms and Bob Bitterman in the Thursday - Friday KO, with somewhat better results. We breezed through the first three matches (winning them by an average of about 45 IMPs!) until we stumbled against the tough Feagin team in the final. Incidentally, this team won two bracket 1 KOs and the final day Swiss (!), quite impressive in a field like this.

Here are a couple of hands:

This hand occurred in the semi-final. I raised Jonathan's vulnerable 3S opening to 4S, and the defense started with sK, sA, heart switch. (Yes, a club switch at any time would have been better). Jonathan made the standard expert play of ducking this trick, winning the next heart, to "tighten the position" if a squeeze existed. He proceeded to run some trumps; watch what happens to East! He must keep a high heart and 4 diamonds, so he can't keep the cK guarded. A triple squeeze! A strong East would stiff the cK early, hoping that declarer would take the finesse, but Jonathan was not tested as this East discarded his diamond stopper and Jonathan was able to set up a long diamond trick for +620 and 12 IMPs. (On the actual deal, Jonathan would have had a strong clue to drop the cK anyway, as East had thought for quite some time over 4S, essentially marking him with the cK given that the rest of the hand counted out, the way the play went).

This hand occurred during the second half of our extremely close match against the Feagin team in the final. We had done well to arrive in this good slam (it's about 50% on a heart lead, and nearly cold on any other lead). My pass of 5D doubled asked Jonathan to clarify his control, and his redouble promised the ace. This was enough to get me to bid the slam.

Sure enough, I got a diamond lead, but ironically it is a diamond lead that requires the most care! On a heart lead, which was found by our teammates, declarer was basically forced to take the spade finesse, using the cA as a reentry to finesse spades again, and eventually ruffing a club once all the trumps are gone with the dA as an entry back to the long club.

On a diamond lead, that late entry is gone, and it's easy to slip just a bit and go down, with the foul breaks. However, I crossed to the cA to finesse the spade, and then ruffed dummy's low club high in my hand after taking another spade finesse -- +1430. Just another push.

Anyway, we came second in this knockout, and the following day (this time playing with Jim Murphy, Warren Roberts, and Bob and Jane Teal), we drew the Feagin team in the first round 3-way match. Well, we beat them by 19, but it didn't matter, because the other team lost both matches.

Once again, we coasted through our 2nd and 3rd round matches, winning them both very comfortably, to face the Feagin team in the final! This match was also desperately close. Jonathan and I could have done very little better at our table, except this board:

We got to 4NT, with 6C playable and, in fact, makeable. (Notice how carefully you need to play the hand on a neutral red suit lead -- trying a spade toward the sJ after drawing one round of trumps and before trying to ruff a heart. Another hand where if you get careless you will cost yourself a bundle of IMPs). As it turns out we did the right thing because had 6C gone down, we would have won the match, whereas had we bid and made the slam we would have lost by 2!

In retrospect, we decided that Jonathan might have bid the slam based on the fourth club and the working doubleton, and I might have accepted based on the good trumps. But it's no crime to stay out of this slam, and if the club finesse is offside it will almost never make.

All in all, a successful tournament. Jonathan and I won 86 masterpoints, a respectable total given that we did not play morning events.

I won't be playing much bridge until mid 2009, as I am going back to school to finish my degree, so the blog won't be updated very often.

Las Vegas NABC 2008, Recap

2008-08-01T17:20:00.003-04:00

The Las Vegas Nationals ended just a few days ago. I played throughout the week with Les Amoils, a South African turned Torontonian:

We had high hopes for the first event, the 3-day Life Masters pairs, but unfortunately we failed to make the cut on even the first day. Our opponents played well against us, and when that happens in bridge in general, the pressure is on. If your opponents play poorly and hand you a "baseline score" (the score you'd get by playing sort of average) of 60% or more, almost anyone in the field could qualify. But when they play well and hand you a "baseline" score of 50% or less, well, the ball is in your court now, and it's easy to have a bad session and not qualify.

But, we hooked up with two good friends of ours for a 2-day KO event, Jordan Cohen and Doug Baxter. This is the first time I have played on a team with Jordan Cohen, but Doug and I have been many-time teammates and occasional partners.

Because a lot of the Spingold teams with gazillions of masterpoints choose to sharpen up in these early KOs rather than enter the LM Pairs, the masterpoint requirements for bracket 1 are higher than any other time of the year. In fact, it took over 10000 masterpoints average per player to qualify for bracket 1! We got stuck in bracket 4 with an average masterpoint total of approximately 3800.

Well, we smoked each of the first three matches, winning by margins of 30 IMPs or higher.

In the final match, our opponents played solidly and we were up by 2 at the half, when they informed us they were withdrawing! I thought it was a joke until they said congratulations, one of our team members is ill, pleasant match! I must confess I've never gotten the WD being up by two IMPs before, but all four of us would rather have played the second half and won or lost legitimately. But hey, a win is a win.

The next day was the Spingold, where we teamed up with Greg Hinze - Nagy Kamel, Dan Morse - Ken Schultze. On the first day we ended up with the #38 seed in a 4-way. Should be easy, right? Well, our team wasn't very good in the first half of the first match and we found ourselves stuck 45 IMPs to a team we figured to beat. In the second half, things went better and we put on a clinic to regain 28 IMPs, but it wasn't enough.

In actual fact, Les and I had a splendid auction to get to a very hard to bid slam that required little more than the Gambling 3NT opener not to have a Qx on the side. He did, however, and we lost 9 IMPs instead of winning 16 -- we would actually have pulled the match out!

On to the evening. We sat out the first half and came in with a +4 IMP lead. You'd think in the 2nd half of a 4-way we'd get an easy draw, right? Not! We had to play a tough team including Ed Davis - John Swanson. Les and I played almost perfectly and we picked up 6 more IMPs in the second half to squeak into the round of 64.

This time we were up against Bruce Ferguson - Bob Hollman, Jerry Clerkin - Dennis Clerkin, and Krzysztof Buras - Grzegorz Narkiewicz from Poland. We came in to the second quarter to find out we were up by 1 IMP, 57-56! Not exactly a low scoring match.

Les and I had basically a spectacular set in the 2nd quarter -- even our one bidding misunderstanding led to +13 IMPs!

Here are three hands where we did great:

This was the first board of the set. Les listened to the auction and found a double dummy lead of a low heart (!), upon which Bruce naturally misguessed and we cashed four tricks. Win 10. (Incidentally, at the other table, one of the players joked about finding a low heart lead at trick one and the other players laughed! Little did they know ...)

I judged with my flat hand and poor suit simply to transfer to hearts and bid 3NT, which worked out well here with hearts this foul. 4H had to fail at the other table for 11 more IMPs.

The following hand may be the best defense I have ever perpetrated, and it came against a lowly 2H contract for a mere 4 IMPs! Les led the dK, and Bruce won in order to lead a heart to the king and another heart. I overtook Les' hT with the hA in order to fire a club through. Bruce misguessed clubs (who wouldn't?), putting up the king. Les won the ace and fired a club back. I switched to a spade, and Les cashed the sA and dK before leading another club for me to ruff with the h9 for a trump promotion, getting back the trump trick we had lost earlier.

In any case, we picked up 34 IMPs this set to lead by 35 IMPs at the half.

Unfortunately the third quarter was a disaster at our table and wasn't much better at the other table. Our team coughed up 47 IMPs to have a twelve IMP deficit going into the fourth quarter. How quickly the tide turns!

Les and I sat out the fourth quarter, but we were rooting for our teammates. The set wasn't any help as we lost another 24 IMPs to get unceremoniously booted from the Spingold. Ah well, on to the Fast Pairs!

We qualified handily for the second day of the Fast Pairs, qualifying in the top 25% of the field. Our final two sessions went very well, and we ended up 5th overall. Although 2nd overall was only half a board away (very achievable, of course), 1st was something like 3 boards ahead and basically uncatchable. Still, a top 5 finish in this event is something that Les and I were both happy with.

Here is a hand from the final day of the Fast pairs:

I guessed to lead a heart rather than a spade, which was already guaranteeing us an above average score. However, Les found a way to garner almost all the matchpoints: when declarer led the c9 from dummy, he covered with the cK! Declarer now crossed back twice to dummy to finesse twice into my cJ and cT, eventually going one down. A farsighted play by Les for a great board. (Les was fairly confident that his play would not crash a doubleton AQ or singleton club honour because I had led a heart from what was obviously a weak four card suit, marking declarer with 4 or 5 spades; thus, having 5 or 6 clubs was practically an impossibility.)

All in all, a successful Nationals. I adore Las Vegas (Susie and I even got married there -- no not in a drive thru chapel and our minister wasn't Elvis!) and had a great time outside of bridge too.

Las Vegas Nationals

2008-07-17T00:21:00.002-04:00

Dan has left for Las Vegas! Wish him luck!

I am not sure if he has internet access while he is there but we'll be posting hands and results from the events as soon as we are able.

Pentiction 2008 Recap

2008-06-22T22:00:00.005-04:00

Jonathan Steinberg and I spent the week of June 9-15 in sunny Penticton, B.C. As luck would have it, we ran into friends and Winnipeg Regional teammates Bob Todd and Mike Yuen at the Safeway before the first session, and we found out they were staying in the same hotel as us -- in the room next door! So we had plenty of company for the week.

The bridge went very well all week. Both Jonathan and I set a new personal regional best with over 111 masterpoints for the week; congratulations go out to our teammates, Gerry Marshall and Bernie Lambert as well (Bernie won the tournament with 117 points as he played on a different morning KO team that outperformed us).

L TO R: Bernie Lambert, Gerry Marshall, Daniel Korbel, Jonathan Steinberg.

There weren't that many hands throughout the week that I found to be spectacular, but here are a couple of slams where Jon and I did well on. Both were large swings in our favour.

I found the South hand awkward to bid and am not really sure what the best course of action is. I really don't like opening these hands 1D and rebidding 2C, so I decided to open 1C, planning to raise 1S to 2S if partner were to bid it, and just bid 1NT over 1H. Jonathan's 3H jump rebid was forcing and slammish, so I upgraded my hand and my hQ and drove to the five level. Jonathan knew that his hand was gold (nice cQ!) and bid the slam. 6H and 6C are both excellent contracts, much better than 6NT, but with both key suits splitting 3-3 any grand slam makes! The other table played 3NT, making only 6, so we won 13 IMPs.

This is another awkward hand, but there was nothing wrong with the final contract. Jonathan received a low spade lead, which he decided to duck around to his ten. Judging the lead to be from length, Jonathan made the great decision not to make the normal club play of leading a low club toward the Jack, as he was afraid of a spade ruff. Instead, he cashed the cA, dropping the cQ, and from there was able to claim his slam in top tricks. +920 was worth 14 IMPs as declarer misguessed 6NT at the other table.

No more bridge until Vegas -- hope to see everyone there! Vegas, baby!

Canadian Bridge Week Wrap Up

2008-06-07T20:29:00.003-04:00

Congrats to these winners of Bridge Week events:

Canadian National Teams Championship

1. Nicolas L'Ecuyer, Marc-André Fourcaudot, Dan Jacob, Kamel Fergani, Robert Lebi,
Vincent Demuy

Canadian Womens' Teams Championship

1. Pamela Nisbet, Karen Cumpstone, Martine Lacroix, Pascale Gaudreault, Kismet Fung, Susan Culham

Canadian Seniors Teams Championship

1. Stephen Brown - Edward Zaluski - Bill Bowman - John Bowman, Ottawa ON; Jurek Czyzowicz, Gatineau QC; Doug Fraser, Victoria BC

Canadian Open Pairs Championship

1. Cameron Doner, Richmond BC; Bradley Bart, Burnaby BC

Full results can be found here.

Jonathan Steinberg and Bert Eccles placed 4th in the COPC event this year. Although they were leading after Day 1, they were unable to resist a strong surge by the eventual winners, Cam Doner and Brad Bart. Here is a hand that Jonathan played on day one:

Jonathan arrived in 3NT (Bert's double of 1S showed 4 hearts) and was greeted by a low club lead from West. He won the cK in the dummy, crossed to hand with a diamond, and led another club up. When West rose with the cA and continued clubs, Jonathan was pretty sure that West was 5=5 in the black suits. It seems that he is simply a trick short, but do you see how he made his contract?

Jonathan won the cQ, and exited a club, allowing West to cash the rest of his club suit. East, feeling the pressure of having to protect both red suits, discarded a spade on the run of the clubs. When West played a spade next, Jonathan ducked! Now he had lost 4 tricks, which rectified the count for a squeeze against East. East played a heart now, but nothing mattered and East had to surrender in one red suit or the other when Jonathan cashed the sA. Well played, and this board was worth 18 / 24 matchpoints en route to a solid 67% game.

It's off to Penticton shortly for the regional there, where "squeeze expert" Jonathan Steinberg and I will be playing all week with Bernie Lambert and Gerry Marshall. Wish us luck!

Montreal CNTC, Semi-Final Results

2008-05-29T23:39:00.003-04:00

Today was the semi-finals of the CNTC-A, as well as the finals of both the CNTC-B and CNTC-Womens'.

In the CNTC A, L'ECUYER defeated KORBEL by 37 IMPs after winning the first set 55-0! In the other match, FRASER came from behind to defeat SINNO by 3 IMPs in a thrilling finale.

So tomorrow and Saturday will be L'ECUYER vs FRASER for the CNTC and the right to represent Canada in the Olympiad later this year in Beijing.

In the women's event, NISBET defeated CIMON to take the title. Congratulations!

Montreal CNTC, Quarterfinal

2008-05-28T22:04:00.003-04:00

We were tied at the half against the ZALUSKI team, 62-62.

The third set went poorly for us; we bid a lot of reasonable but thin games, and they all went down. Then, we bid a 53% slam that also went down. Darren and Jurek had a normalish set, but we ended up losing 18 IMPs on the set.

We sat down for the fourth quarter, and this was the first board:

Our opponents propelled themselves into 3NT, which has far less than a 1% chance of making (it needs hearts blocked, the dA onside, and the sQJ to drop), but as you can see it was all there, and we knew we were in a 28 IMP hole with 15 boards to play.

Fortunately, it went much better from that point on, and we ended up winning the rest of the set 79-27!

Here are a couple slams where David and I did very well on:

I decided to splinter the East cards once partner responded in diamonds, since my trump support was so wonderful. Also, this way he would be able to choose the right strain. David's 4H cuebid did not excite me, but my failure to cuebid 5C led David to believe that I had very good diamond support. He bid 6D, which made with the clubs coming home, and that was +1370, 12 IMPs for us.

David opened the West cards 1D (a little light, don't you think!!) and my 2D was game forcing. David showed his hearts, and I bid a forcing 2NT. His 3D rebid let me know that he had extra distribution. At this point, I was thinking that we could easily have a grand slam. I cuebid 3H, and he bid 3S which was ambiguous as to whether he was just trying for 3NT or if he was actually cuebidding spades. When I cuebid 4C, David redoubled to show a void. At this point I knew my cAQ were wasted, but we could still have a grand slam if he had a similar hand with the Ace of diamonds. When David wouldn't cooperate with my grand slam try of 5H, I gave up. +920 was worth 10 IMPs as the other table played in 4H, making 5.

Here is a board where we manufactured IMPs out of nowhere:

I doubled 3NT for a spade lead, on a wing and a prayer. David led a spade, and I switched to the h5. David won the hJ and played another spade to my sQ. I played another heart, and declarer guessed to win the hA and try cashing clubs from the top, pitching two diamonds from dummy. When the cJ didn't fall that was +800 for us and 12 IMPs, as our teammates went two down in 4NT.

When all was said and done, Darren and Jurek had a very solid set and we won comfortably. Tomorrow we face the tough L'Ecuyer team; may the best team win!

Montreal CNTC, Quarterfinal Results

2008-05-28T21:58:00.003-04:00

The results are in. We survived a 3rd quarter scare to come on strong in the 4th set to make it to the semi-finals.

SINNO...................214
BALLANTYNE......87

KORBEL..................153
ZALUSKI.........129

L'ECUYER........128
WILLIS.............109

FRASER..............102
GARTAGANIS.......96

Tomorrow's matchups:

SINNO
FRASER

KORBEL
L'ECUYER

Stay tuned for hands from our match. It was a wild fourth set!

2008 CNTC Quarterfinal

2008-05-28T14:57:00.002-04:00

The final event standings looked like this:

1. Sinno
2. Korbel
3. L'Ecuyer
4. Fraser
5. Gartaganis
6. Zaluski
7. Willis
8. Ballantyne

Sinno chose to play against Ballantyne, and we chose to play against Zaluski. This left L'Ecuyer to choose Willis, and Fraser got Gartaganis.

At the half, the scores look like this:

SINNO...............51....43......94
BALLANTYNE....2.....18......20

KORBEL.......31.....31.....62
ZALUSKI......25.....37.....62

L'ECUYER.....37.....29.....66
WILLIS.........15.....12.....27

FRASER...........14.....44.....58
GARTAGANIS...38......6......44

As you can see, our match is extremely close. I'll show you a couple interesting hands:

David responded to my 1D opening bid with a game-forcing 2C bid. I was forced systemically to rebid 2D, which promised at least 5 diamonds and said nothing else about my hand. David raised to 3D, and I chose to bid 3S. David tried 4C, and when he cuebid 4H over my 4D bid I knew he had a good hand (he didn't try 3NT even though he had a heart stopper). I bid blackwood, heard about his three aces, and asked for the Queen of diamonds. When he showed it plus the cK, I decided that 7D would probably be laydown or very close to it. The actual layout made it very simple to take all 13 tricks by ruffing two spades high in the dummy. We won 10 IMPs when the other table stopped in 6NT, which could be beaten, but was made on a double squeeze.

I realize I haven't had much opportunity to post hands from the event so far, but rest assured if you want to see them and can wait, you will see plenty here. Here's a hand from the round robin where we won 10 IMPs:

I opened a strong notrump (ok, ok, a little light!) and my left hand opponent doubled, which artificially announced a 1-suited hand. The rest of the auction was standard and we got to 4S. My LHO led the dA and another diamond, and I stopped to think about the hand. The opponents were playing standard carding, and East had played the d9 then d7, so based on the auction, lead, and defense, it looked for all the world that diamonds were 7=2 and West was hoping to give East a diamond ruff.

Well, if West had seven diamonds, and led from a dry ace (an ace with no other help in the suit), he probably didn't have a singleton to lead. Or, at least, he would have thought a lot longer about leading, say, a singleton heart or club. Accordingly, I decided that he was likely to have a singleton spade! The only way he would have more than 1 spade, if my inferences were correct, would be if he was specifically 2=2=7=2.

In any case, I led a spade to the Ace and a spade back down, putting in the s9! This won and with clubs breaking (as expected), I had 10 tricks.

I'll post results as soon as we get them tonight.

2008 CNTC Days 1, 2, and 3

2008-05-27T12:03:00.003-04:00

This week we are in Dorval (the airport suburb of Montreal) for the Canadian Bridge Team Championship event. Our team consists of myself, David Grainger, Arno Hobart, George Mittelman, Darren Wolpert, and Jurek Czyzowicz.

Sorry the blog hasn't been updated, I've had difficulty finding an opportunity to update. The updates will be more frequent from this point on for sure.

The first match of the event we played against a pre-tournament favourite, Nic L'Ecuyer's team, and lost a close match to them. It got better from there, though, as we ended the first day comfortably in the top 8, and by the end of day two we were a comfortable 2nd place.

After 5 of the 6 matches on Day 3, we had snuck into first place, but unfortunately this wouldn't last as we lost in the 6th match to the 2nd place team, who then overtook us for the lead. After 3 of 4 days in the round robin, the top 10 look like this:

1. Sinno............295
2. Korbel...........286
3. L'Ecuyer.........284
4. Fraser...........269
5. Gartaganis.......260
6. Zaluski..........258
7. Willis...........251
8/9. Rayner.........244
8/9. Brough.........244
10/12. Chan.........232
10/12. Ballantyne...232
10/12. Anderson.....232

Full rosters of the event can be found here.

Only 8 teams qualify; it is a dogfight.

Here is a cute hand from the match against Bryan Maksymetz's team:

The auction may look like an error, but it wasn't. Bryan's 1H bid actually showed spades, and Ziggy's 1S bid showed hearts! 3S was invitational, and Ziggy accepted the game try. This left me on lead, and I tried a low club. Declarer won with the cQ and led the dJ, to the 8, 4, and ... Ace! I decided that since the diamond position was basically known (David's 8 showed an odd number), declarer would probably be able to ruff out my diamond ace and throw his heart losers away. I also knew that spades weren't breaking for declarer, so I could hope for partner to have 2 spade tricks in his hand. If declarer thought that David held the dQ, I hoped that he would just go after trumps and go down. This is in fact what happened, and we won 11 IMPs on the hand as we were +50 and our teammates were +420.

I don't have time right now for any more hands but there will be more hands and score updates in a little while. Time for match 18!

Canadian National Team Championships

2008-05-24T13:53:00.002-04:00

Dan is off to Montreal to play in the CNTC starting today. His team is himself, David Grainger, Arno Hobart, George Mittelman, Darren Wolpert, and Jurek Czyzowicz. Wish them luck!

Dan will update as frequently as he can with hands and standings from the matches, so check back often!

Winnipeg Regional 2008 Recap

2008-05-12T21:30:00.003-04:00

Last week Jonathan Steinberg and I traveled to Winnipeg to participate in their regional. Although the tournament was small (especially coming on the heels of Gatlinburg, which gets more tables in one day than Winnipeg does all week!), I found it to be enjoyable and the people were extremely hospitable. I made many new friends this week and am looking forward to heading back to Winnipeg sometime soon for another tournament.

As many of you know, Jonathan keeps a large album of photographs of bridge players and the Winnipeg tournament was no exception. Heck, most tournament players have probably been photographed by him at least once!

The bridge went very well in Winnipeg for us. We ended up playing with a variety of players, coming 1st in all three KO events we entered, and 2nd and 3rd in the two swiss events we entered. This added up to something like 92 points, a spectacular result for such a small regional.

Here is a nice slam that helped us to victory in the first knockout:

Jonathan, as North, made the key decision to bid 4C, bypassing 3NT, and now getting to 6D was easy. The player on my left found the best lead of a club, but it didn't matter with hearts 3-3. This slam was missed at the other table, and we won 10 IMPs.

Here is an interesting situation that our teammates encountered while we were sitting out (on a 6-person squad):

At one table, with North / South vulnerable, the bidding went:

And our teammates went -300, an excellent result with the opponents cold for 5C and with 6C makeable.

At the other table, the bidding was more ambitious:

North's double of 5D should not be played as penalty in my opinion, but rather as responsive, showing some working values. Some people might describe this double as scraping the bottom of the barrel, but on this deal it worked beautifully when South correctly took a shot at 6C.

On the opening lead of a diamond, East put in the queen as South, Ken Sired, ruffed. After messing around a bit, Ken discovered that East's distribution was 1=4=6=2, and that West therefore had a doubleton heart. Because of East's dQ at trick 1, Ken decided that East had all of the top diamond honours and dropped the hK offside instead of taking the finesse. Well played, but as I'm sure all of you agree with, East should have just played the dA at trick 1 to conceal his strength in that suit.

I find this hand interesting, because against a top-class defender who plays the dQ, you have a very interesting situation as declarer. A great defender in the East seat would virtually never reveal the dAKQ at trick 1 unless he had a reason to; it follows that if a very strong East plays the dQ, he may actually hold:

However, if East knows that you know that he is a super defender, he may put in the dQ after all from the layout that really existed, playing for a grosvenor gambit! A classic case of the "spy vs. spy" tactics that can exist at the higher levels of bridge.

Here's a declarer play problem to test your mettle. I will only show the North South hands so you can try your hand at it.

You have reached an aggressive 6H contract through optimistic bidding. The opening lead is a small diamond; how do you play? (Answer at the bottom of the post.)

Here's another nice slam we reached, even though this one was a push board.

I opened 1H, and Jonathan bid 2S, which in our system is the same as most people's Jacoby 2NT (a game-forcing heart raise). My RHO bid 3D, and I bid 3S, which conventionally showed at most 1 spade. Jonathan cuebid 4C, and I passed 4D around to Jonathan to see what he would do. When he signed off in 4H, I felt I was still worth more so I tried again with 4S. Jonathan showed he had clubs well under control, and that was enough to get me to bid the slam.

It looks like you have a heart loser and a diamond loser when trumps unluckily break 3-0, but with the cQ falling there is a parking place for dummy's diamond and 6H cruises home. (For any declarer play mavens out there, you could actually make 6H even if the cJ were a small club by forcing West to ruff East's winning diamond at trick 13, which is pretty cool in and of itself).

This is a bit of a sidenote, but I wanted to write about it anyway. Gim Ong was telling me about a mentoring program that is run in the Winnipeg area. I thought it was really worthwhile so I wanted to share it here. The way it works is that any level of player short of newcomer can sign up to be a mentor for a 6-game block at the local club. These 6 games are free for the mentor, with the club paying half and the unit subsidizing the other half of the entry fee.

The mentor gets matched up with a player of lower ability (an A player would be matched with a B player, and a C player would be matched up with a newcomer) and is expected to spend 15-20 minutes before and after the session discussing whatever he feels is an area he can help the "mentee" with, or answering questions the newer player has. Alternatively, some partnerships receive coaching from a more experienced player rather than individual attention.

Gim says that this has helped the players in the area tremendously; in fact, in the IMP Pairs, he played against a pair that he coaches, and they bid accurately to two superb slams against him! There are over 85 matchups made in Winnipeg with another 20+ players waiting to be paired up with a mentor. This program sounds like a smashing success in Winnipeg and can only improve the caliber and enthusiasm of players. Needless to say, this idea might not be as workable in a larger metropolis, at least where expert players are concerned, but certainly the lure of free sessions would be enough to attract some mentors.

Anyway, another successful regional tournament gone by; next stop, the Canadian National Team Championships (May 24-31), where David and I, along with Darren Wolpert, Jurek Czycowicz, George Mittelman, and Arno Hobart, hope to earn the right to represent Canada in Beijing in the fall!

ANSWER TO PLAY PROBLEM: I hope you discarded at trick 1. No line will work unless you can pick up hearts 3-2 onside. If you ruffed trick 1, intending to lead a spade to the queen, you will realize after some more thought that this line is essentially the same as discarding at trick 1 and setting up the dK for a trick, except that you also need the sK onside, which it wasn't.

On the actual hand, both declarers went down by ruffing the diamond at trick 1 instead of discarding, which would have worked (clubs broke and Qxx of hearts was in the slot).

Some hands from tonight

2008-05-04T23:59:00.002-04:00

Tonight, David Grainger and I played a pleasant match against Jason Chiu and Harmon Edgar.

The match went well, with both sides playing very well. We ended up getting slightly the better of it, largely on the back of these three slam deals:

I was kind of stuck for a bid over 3H, so I decided to compromise with a 3S bid, which at least gave David space to describe what his hand was all about. Thinking we probably had no heart stopper, David told me about the club fit with his 4C bid. 4D was a cuebid, and 4S was passable, but also sort of a cuebid, since he had to have good spades. My 4NT bid was a bit of an oddity: in our system, when the auction gets very crowded, 4NT is not blackwood. It was intended merely as forward-going with clubs, promising a heart control and David took it as such. He bid 5H on the way to 6C just in case we had a grand slam (he knew that I couldn't misconstrue his 5H bid).

With everything breaking, there was nothing to the play and we chalked up +920 for +10.7 IMPs.

Then:

My double of 1H showed 4 or 5 spades in our system, and Jason's leap to 4H really put the wood to David. He thought for a while and eventually decided to take a shot at 6C. He knew that I would know he couldn't have a heart loser, and this sort of sequence (opening at the 1 level, then blasting to the moon opposite a simple 1-level response) usually shows a good fit for partner's suit. Therefore, had I held the sAQ and the cA I would have been able to find the good raise to 7C based on this logic. In any case, he bought very well from me and we played in 6C making, for +8.5 IMPs. Note that the 4-4 spade fit goes down if the defense finds its club ruff, which it should probably find because declarer can't just pull trump and knock out the cA on the bad spade break.

I saved the best for last. This is the kind of result you dream about having when an important match is on the line; too bad it came up in an online fun match.

We play a 4C response to any preempt as a keycard asking bid. I decided to trot it out on the theory that a 2NT inquiry didn't rate to help me much, and if we had enough trump solidity we might be cold for 6S even if there was work to do elsewhere. David's unusual 4D response promised 1 keycard but also a diamond void. I asked for the sQ with 5H, and he denied it with his 5S bid.

At this point it would be easy to give up, figuring on a trump loser (or two!) and maybe even another loser in the wash, but I tried to picture his hand. He was vulnerable, so he wouldn't have garbage, and he should probably not have a 4-card heart suit on the side. Therefore, he was very likely to be 6=3=0=4 (6=2=0=5 is possible also, but I would not complain if he had that either!!), and we probably had a 4-4 club fit that may play a lot better than spades.

So I bid 6C, which David worked out was an offer to play (based on the fact that we both knew we were off the sQ, I was not trying for a grand slam).

I got the s4 lead to the s2, s5, and sK. Based on the lead, it seemed very likely that spades were 5-1 one way or the other. I thought for a long time and eventually decided I was probably just dead in the water if Jason was leading a singleton spade. I played the hand on a crossruff, eventually coming to 12 tricks easily when the cK was onside. True, a trump lead might set 6C based on the vicious spade split, but Jason understandably thought his partner was probably ruffing the first spade (a trump lead doesn't look very dynamic in any case). Well, this was +1370 and +14.7 IMPs, as nobody else who attempted a slam made it (nobody was in clubs, as a matter of fact).

In my opinion, slams are the hardest part of bridge and it's always nice to get some of the harder ones right and know what you are doing.

Gatlinburg 2008 Recap

2008-05-01T22:30:00.005-04:00

This year, in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I played on a team with David Grainger, Mike and Jon Rice, and Joyce Hampton and Lucas Lebioda. As it turned out, our masterpoints averaged out to about 3200 per person, so we ended up in bracket 4 every event. Gatlinburg is really a huge tournament; every knockout had about 30 (!) brackets (that means that close to 480 teams were entering each knockout every day!). Bracket 1 is filled with household name players and is very tough, and even down in bracket 4 where we were, your average opponent is comfortably a Gold Life Master.

Here is a picture of our team:

STANDING: David Grainger, Mike Rice, Daniel Korbel, Jon Rice.
SEATED: Lucas Lebioda, Joyce Hampton.

The Rice brothers are twins, but they are not identical twins, believe it or not. (If you have trouble telling them apart, Jon always wears a hat).
We started out with a bang, winning the first match on Monday evening handily, then cruising to victory to win the first event. Here is a slam from the final where we won a swing:

I had a problem how to treat my hand, since it didn't fall neatly into any particular category. Probably the right sequence is 2C then 3C, but because my hand was so great for either major I decided to treat it as a game-forcing balanced hand (2H forced 2S, then 2NT showed that hand type). In any case, David knew his hand was enough to drive to slam, and he was probably disappointed that we were off a keycard. The hK was onside, though, and we were a little worried about losing 11 IMPs, since this occurred in the second half and we were substantially ahead in the first half, so our opponents might be swinging. However, they failed to reach even the small slam at the other table and we chalked up 11 IMPs instead.

Unfortunately, the next morning was a bit of a hiccup as we lost in the morning KO to some members of the same team that we had dismantled the night before in the final.

In the second primetime KO, we won our first match handily, then came back from a 16 IMP deficit to win by 7 against a strong team of both local and South American players. Here was a board where everyone did well:

David Grainger, as West, did very well not to bid 4H, a contract that many pairs might get to. The defense against 3S doubled was tricky, however; David found the best lead of his doubleton diamond, and I won trick 1 to try to cash the hA at trick 2. When this got ruffed, we both knew declarer was 7=0=2=4 and that beating this contract would be difficult. Declarer led a spade toward dummy's jack, and David found his first excellent play of rising with the sA. He then returned his other diamond to me, and I played a third diamond, which declarer ruffed. David continued his excellent defense by overruffing, and exiting in trumps, leaving declarer to open up the club suit. We collected a nervous +100 for down 1.

At the other table, Joyce Hampton played 3S nicely, and when the defense didn't find one of the necessary sequences of plays to set the contract, she took full advantage. +530 and +100 added up to 12 IMPs for the good guys.

Our team was in good form in the 3rd match of this KO. Here is a hand from that match where David and I did remarkably well:

This slam is neither easy to get to nor laydown, and as it turns out a lot of IMPs were riding on whether I could guess the queen of trumps after a heart lead to RHO's hA. It is at times like these that I am grateful for my hours at the poker table, as I just got the vibe that my LHO had the sQ. Accordingly, I ran the s8 on the first round, and when the rest of the hand was friendly, quickly claimed +1430 for a 13 IMP gain.

In the final match of this KO, we played against a tough team that did almost everything right against us in the first half of the match. David and I had one soft board and we found ourselves stuck 31 IMPs at the half. The second set of boards were pretty flat, although we had nothing bad and a few good boards, but we were still all surprised to pick up 33 IMPs and win the match by 2! Needless to say, our opponents were not exactly happy after this match.

I will show you the fateful final board on which we won 15 IMPs:

At our table, I led a club from the West hand based on the opponents' informative auction. Declarer ducked the first round, won the second in dummy with the Ace, and unblocked the hQ. He then crossed to hand with a third round of clubs, tried to drop the hJ, then finessed the sQ. When that lost, we had the rest of the tricks for +400.

Did you spot the 100% line? Our teammate Jon Rice did, after a few moments' thought: winning the first (or second) club in dummy, unblocking the hQ, and leading a low spade toward the sT. This preserves all the needed communication (if the sT holds, you can power out the hJ for a ninth trick).

We were all thrilled to have won this match after being down 31, but the rest of the tournament wasn't as sweet.

We lost in the 1st round the next day after being up 25 at the half! (Ouch.) That was not one of our better sets. In the evening, we played in the huge 1-session swiss and ended up winning X. Actually, nobody on the team made a mistake in the entire event, but we were cursed with flat boards in our final two matches (we won them both by ONE imp against strong expert teams) so we never had a shot at winning the event. Here is a hilarious story from the Swiss:

The auction at our table ended with us defending 3Dx. We took six tricks for a 2-trick set, +300. This was a strong result but it didn't seem all that remarkable at the time -- until we got back to compare with Joyce and Lucas. "Plus 300," read Joyce. Plus 300? We took a peek at her scorecard: 3D -3. We asked, "You mean minus 300?" "No," she repeated, "Plus 300." So we scored it up as win 12 IMPs.

I have a hard and fast rule during comparisons never to discuss a board until all the boards have been compared and the result of the match is known, but this time I could barely restrain myself. Finally the comparison was done, and David and I simultaneously asked, "What happened on this hand??" Well, the opponents had a major mixup, ending up in their 4-0 fit, and Joyce was right on the money not doubling, knowing that she had them right where she wanted them!

It's not very often at all that both tables play the same contract in each direction for the same result!

Joyce and the Rices left the tournament a day early so that was that, but winning 2 Regional events can never be considered bad! I really had a great time (Tennessee is a beautiful place full of friendly people) and look forward to more tournaments with this bunch.

My next tournament is the Winnipeg regional, starting on May 6, where I will be playing with Jonathan Steinberg. I'll post an update most likely after the tournament (not owning a laptop makes it very difficult to do on the spot updates, unfortunately).

GNT Qualifier

2008-03-29T15:10:00.005-04:00

Last night myself, Robert Lebi, Darren Wolpert, and Nader Hanna arrived at Hazel's bridge club at 7:00pm sharp in order to qualify for the Grand National Teams event (held in Las Vegas at the start of the Nationals in the summer). To be honest, we weren't even sure any other team was going to show up -- up to the night before, we were the only registered team in the Championship Flight!

It turns out that there was another team, consisting of Paul Janicki - Ian Findlay, Barry Senesky - Richard Chan, so we ended up playing against them for 28 boards to determine the District 2 representative.

Our team played extremely well and we won the match 86-12.

Here is a hand that is a good defensive problem:

Firstly, Robert Lebi (as West) had a difficult lead problem and it took him quite some time to settle on the d8. This card told me that declarer had the whole diamond suit between him and dummy (we lead 2nd-highest from bad holdings).

What is the best line of play? The three contenders are, a) go after hearts, b) go after spades, c) go after clubs. Going after clubs will usually need a 3-3 break there, and going after hearts will usually need the hT to fall in three rounds if the defenders aren't asleep. Running the sT at trick 2 seems like as good a shot as any, making the contract whenever 2 honours are on your left, or one honour is tripleton or shorter on your left.

In any case, the declarer at the table won the diamond in hand to lead the hQ at trick 2. I stared at this (as East) a long time before winning the hK. Declarer was marked with the hAQJ, dAJ for the play up until now (there was no way he's going after hearts without the hA when I was looking at the hT). Therefore, I thought it reasonable to place partner with the sK and cQ to give us a chance of setting this contract.

I switched to the cK (in case declarer had a singleton Q), and when that held the trick, shifted to the sQ. Declarer could have gotten home by ducking that trick, but he did not, so we were able to untangle our black suit tricks for one down. As it turns out, to beat the contract legitimately at that point I have to switch to the sQ immediately, and if that is ducked, switch to a low club (to put partner in for another spade play, after which I have to switch back to clubs!). Not an easy hand. If you spotted the optimal sequence of plays, well done. In practice, the cK was good enough for 12 IMPs.

Toronto Regional Recap

2008-03-25T16:54:00.004-04:00

After Detroit, it was one day's rest and then back to the bridge scene. This week was the Toronto Regional, where I had games lined up with four different players.

On Wednesday I played half of the Swiss, as a replacement player (Andy Stark needed some time off to do work). I played two matches with Andy, and then two matches with John Carruthers. Mike Roche and John Rayner were at the other table.

After four matches, we had the incredible score of 119/120 VPs! Everything was going our way, and in fact we won the fourth match 28-1 (if we had scored one more IMP we would have been at a perfect 120).

On a high note, we had dinner and then I went home. I found out the next day that the team had won easily with a score of 195 (things didn't go as well in the evening, but it didn't matter to our chances of winning!).

Thursday through Saturday was the Regional's premier event, the Sheardown Knockouts. Unlike most KOs, this event is seeded by masterpoints and is a 3-day event. We drew the #2 seed. I played with David Grainger, and our teammates were Boris Baran - Robert Lebi, George Mittelman - Arno Hobart. We managed to make it through the 3-way in the first match and then decimated our 3-way in the second match.

Our quarterfinal match was against a local Toronto team. David and I sat out the first half and found our team tied at 23. In the second half, both we and Robert/Boris had killer sets and we won the second half 89-2!

The semi-final match was against Joan Eaton - Barb Clinton, Don Kersey - Mickie Chambers. This was one of the all-around most solid matches I have played in quite a while. Nobody was giving anything away and it turned out to be a very low-scoring affair. We won both halves by a few IMPs, which meant we would play in the final against Joey Silver - John Carruthers, John Gowdy - Eric Murray, Larry Mori - Jim Green.

You may recall that Joey and JC were members of the Seniors team I captained in Shanghai. So it was fun to play against them in the final.

On another note, win or lose this match, Eric Murray went over 10000 masterpoints by coming in at least 2nd in this event, making him a grand life master. He is without any doubt one of the very best Canadian players ever to play the game and a legend. He truly deserved this honour and it's high time he got it. I think it's disgraceful for the ACBL to have such rigid masterpoint requirements to bestow its highest rank; surely if someone has won, say 3 National Championships or, say, 1 or 2 World Championships they deserve the Grand LM title. And they'll deserve it a lot more than some longtime bridge enthusiast with 13000 masterpoints who won a random Mixed title at some point and never again.

Anyway, the final match was painfully close. Eric Murray played great (to play as well and be as hilariously sharp as he is for someone his age is remarkable) and left his team up 18 at the half. We clawed back 9 IMPs in the second half but it wasn't enough. Anyway, congrats to the winners, they played 9 IMPs better than us and deserved the win.

Here's a hand from the first round robin that I thought was super:

Despite playing a 15-17 notrump, I decided to open 1C since my hand was so good for either major (I was afraid of playing in 1NT when 4M was a good contract).

This time, it allowed West to bid 2H, which actually simplified our auction and gave me clues in the play.

West led the hK which I ducked, but I won the second round in order to avoid making more than one discard from dummy. What do you discard from dummy?

The answer is: a spade! Don't throw a diamond, the natural play. I'll show you why:

You lead cK and another club, ducking to East's cJ when your LHO shows out, throwing a discouraging diamond. When East returns a low spade and your sQ holds, you know a lot about the hand: East has the dK for sure, and West is probably either 3=6=3=1 or 2=6=4=1. Either way, you now have a 100% solution to this hand:

Just run dummy's clubs, throwing two hearts from your hand. On the final club, East, Andy Altay (an expert) throws the sK on this layout, trying to create an entry to his partner's sJ. But you have a counter, because you saved dummy's fourth diamond.

Cash the sA, and play dA, and another diamond, ducking to East. He will be forced to let dummy score a diamond trick at the end.

Observe there is nothing the defense can do on this layout to set you. If East doesn't discard the sK, you simply lead toward the sA, ducking if the sK appears and winning otherwise. This ensures that only East can ever win a spade trick, and lets you make the contract regardless of the breaks assuming East has the dK. Try it for yourself!

I really like that hand.

The final day I played with Darren Wolpert on a team with David Grainger - Arno Hobart. We were steaming along until we played against Joe Grue's team (Melanie Tucker, John Hurt - Vince Demuy). Joe Grue "got" us on one board (opening 2NT with 15 points and seven diamonds), and our teammates got too high on one board and we got blitzed in match 4.

We could never really recover and finished 4th overall. All in all, a good week, but congratulations to Joe Grue's team who won the tournament, also winning a couple other events throughout the week!

Detroit NABC, Days Ten and Eleven

2008-03-16T23:09:00.002-04:00

Saturday March 15th marked the qualifying day of the 2-day swiss teams event. There were 114 teams entered into the event, with 58 qualifying through to the next day (50% + 1 to even out the field and avoid 3-way matches).

Jonathan and I played with Doug Baxter and respected bridge author Andy Stark. Doug was one of our teammates in San Francisco when we finished 9th in the 3-day North American Swiss event.

We started out well, garnering 69 VPs in our first 6 matches. It looked like 81 VPs would be a shoo-in to qualify with 80 very likely, so all we needed was 11 or 12 more VPs in our final two matches to get in. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

We lost a low-scoring match 11-7 in the 7th match to get 8 VPs and sit at 77. All we needed was to avoid getting crushed in the last match to guarantee we'd be playing the next day.

Well, we got crushed. We lost 22-0 against a strong team (Grant Baze - Gary Cohler were at our table). This left us despondent at 79 VPs, unlikely to qualify. We made a date with Doug and Andy to play in the Regional Swiss event the next day.

But wait! Jonathan returned to the playing site an hour later and found we had actually won a tiebreaker and were the 58th team still in the event! There were 3 teams tied at 79 VPS, and 2 of them got in. We would start against the other team the next day with 0.00 carryover IMPs.

(Coincidentally, our teammates for the Vanderbilt, John Stiefel - Rich DeMartino, Betty Bloom - Steve Bloom, were leading the event after day 1. They would have 30 VPs carryover on us, making it almost impossible for us to catch them).

Well, on Sunday we started against the other 58th place team, which included the IMP Pairs winners Doug Doub and Adam Wildavsky. We played against Steve Beatty and Bill Pollack at our table.

This match was a great success for our team, and after the match the other team was still sitting at 0.00 VPs. Here are two hands from the match (back to back, in fact) where Jonathan made better decisions than his counterpart.

Jonathan started the North hand with a Michaels cuebid, and followed it up with another cuebid and then a 5-level bid. Knowing my sKx and dJx were golden, I had no difficulty bidding a slam. As it turns out, 6S, 6D, and even 7D (with spades 3-3) are laydown on this deal. At the other table, the auction went:

+190 was not a spectacular result and we gained a bushel of IMPs.

The hand immediately after, Jonathan used a Michaels cuebid again, but then wisely kept silent at adverse vulnerability when I couldn't make a noise. The opponents bid up to the 5-level on power and quickly went two down. At the other table, the North player, perhaps suffering the after effects of writing down +190 on the previous deal, not only used Michaels but then bid again at the 5-level! This was a quick +500 for our teammates and 12 more IMPs.

In the second match we played Ron Smith - Billy Cohen at our table, and Gavin Wolpert - Warren Spector at the other table.

We beat them 18-0 to take another 17 VPs -- suddenly we were sitting at 37 VPs, among the top 15 teams!

The third match didn't go so well, but in the fourth match we played against David Grainger's team (at our table we had a rematch against Bryan Maksymetz and Ziggy Marcinski from our Vanderbilt encounter). We managed to beat them 23-2 to take another 18 VPs.

Here was a big swing deal:

The 1D opening could be short, and 2H showed spades. Ziggy had a short mental lapse and splintered into 4C, "setting" spades as trumps, instead of flexing with 3D to allow for a high diamond contract. The damage was done and it was too difficult now to back into 7D.

At the other table, our teammates' auction was simpler:

That was 12 IMPs to us.

We were top 15 at the dinner break and felt good about our chances for a strong finish. Unfortunately, the evening session was not one of the team's stronger ones and we eventually dropped off the board. In any case, it was a successful and fun NABC, and thanks to Jonathan Steinberg as well as all our excellent and very pleasant teammates for making that experience so enjoyable.

Now it's off to Toronto where I get one day's rest, then another tournament!

Detroit NABC, Days Eight and Nine

2008-03-14T12:20:00.001-04:00

The second last event on the schedule was the National IMP Pairs. I'm usually a bit ambivalent about playing in an IMP pairs, and here's why: more than any other event, luck plays a large factor in IMP pairs. Here's an example:

Let's say you are sitting North South, and there are 6 medium-difficulty slams dealt E/W. Let's further say the other 20 boards are fairly flat. It doesn't take a genius to work out that your score is going to be based in large part on how the East-West pairs do against you on their 6 slam hands, with the other 20 boards taking a back seat. Now, out of all the N/S pairs in the room, there are going to be some that get very lucky in that their particular E/W pairs on those slam deals miss all (or all but one) of the slams. So, their score is going to far higher than a N/S pair whose E/W pairs bid 4, or even 5 or all 6 of those slams. Unlike matchpoints, where if the opponents do well against you you can get it back on other boards, even partscores, or a team game, where presumably if your opponents are playing that well against you they deserve to win unless your teammates are playing just as well and also bid the slams, in IMP Pairs there is an enormous luck factor.

Well, we couldn't complain about the luck factor on the first day. Jonathan and I played very well in the afternoon session, although we did lose 12 IMPs on a board where we bid a difficult board to a slam that was exactly 50%. Had it made, we would have won 12 IMPs (presumably almost nobody was in it).

Other than that, our card was excellent. Our biggest swing, at +13 IMPs, was this board:

Both sides were vulnerable, and Jonathan got to open the East hand 1C (could be a doubleton) in fourth seat. After South's 1H overcall, I put in a 3D fit-showing jump (invitational values with diamonds and clubs). I did this mainly to preempt the auction and to show three of the key features of my hand (invitational hand, diamonds , clubs). The North hand, under pressure, cannot really be faulted for his 3H bid. Jonathan passed this around to me, and when I doubled again, showing some defense, he made the excellent decision to leave in the double. (He said later that at Matchpoints he would have doubled himself in a heartbeat, but at IMPs he didn't want me to leave in his double if I had a heart void -- which I might have done on another deal). I think Jonathan handled this situation just right.

Tipped off by the auction, I led my trump. Declarer won in dummy, and instead of ensuring a diamond ruff, next led a spade. Jonathan was able to win this and play another trump, and when the smoke cleared, declarer was 4 down for +1100 and 13 IMPs for us. Note that even had declarer ruffed a diamond it would have been +800 which would still have been worth a lot of IMPs to us, as the majority of the field was not bidding and making a game.

We finished +40.31 IMPs on the session, 6th in our direction.

In the evening we were +16.51 to finish at +56.59 IMPs for the day, which was good for 21st overall and a nice carryover (carryover can be very important in these events).

The second day of the IMP pairs we had a mediocre afternoon session where we basically wiped out our carryover. The evening, however, was another story. In the evening we had a very good session, finishing at +37 IMPs for a final tally of +34.25
and 36th overall.

Remember what I said earlier about IMP pairs not always being pretty? I'm going to show you our biggest two boards of the evening now, and I guarantee your reaction will be, "those lucky $@#%#$%!" This just goes to show you the random nature of IMP pairs. Also, I guarantee you that every pair finishing in the plus column had a few results like these on their scorecard.

Our second biggest score:

A top pair had this abortion of an auction against us. Actually, North thought 3S was Stayman with no spade stopper, whereas South thought 3S was simply a spade stop ask with a decent hand. Thus, South took North's 4H bid to show extra length there and passed. So, N/S played in 4H, down 2 for -200, cold for 3NT or 6C. (In truth, 4H can be made double dummy -- do you see how?) True to form, the strong North player declared his silly contract well and gave himself an excellent chance to make 4H -- but the cards lay foul for his line of play. This board was worth 12 IMPs to us.

Our biggest score:

I have no idea what possessed North to lead a low heart from that hand. In any case, when he did, I could afford to cash the sK to safety-play the trumps, and was rewarded on the actual layout. I led a spade toward the East hand, intending to insert the s8, but North split with the s9. At this board I ruffed a club with the sJ in my hand as North discarded a diamond, and led a trump toward the dummy. North rose with the sQ and played the hK to my ace, but I was able to cross to dummy with a diamond and claim.

A low heart (or a ridiculous trump) is the only lead to allow this slam to make. We won 14 IMPs for this result as the most common score around the room was -100, with some -200s and a very rare +650. The slam is not particularly hard to bid with East opening the bidding, but only ONE other pair was +1430.

You can see why IMP Pairs is not my favourite event.

In any case, we played okay and finished in the overalls. Tomorrow is the 2-day North American Swiss Teams which is always a fun event.

Detroit NABC, Day Seven

2008-03-13T12:44:00.002-04:00

Today we played in a compact (1-day) KO with Jeff Smith and David Sabourin. We breezed through the first 12 board match, then played a reasonably tough team in the second round matchup. Our opponents bid two slams against us so we were a little nervous, but Jeff and Scooter came through in a big way. They duplicated one slam, and we actually WON 13 IMPs on the other slam! Here is the deal:

Their system worked wonders here as they were able to bounce into 7S without breathing hard. At our table, we got in the auction all the way up to 5H and all the opponents could do was bid the small slam. Let me explain their auction for you.

The 2S opening bid in their style showed at least 6 spades and 10-14 HCP. 2NT was asking, and the 4D response showed a singleton diamond, a minimum hand, and a seventh spade. 5H asked for keycards outside of hearts, and North showed 2 without the sQ. South then made a general 7-try with his 6D bid which North happily accepted, knowing the cQJ were fantastic cards.

Scary, isn't it?

Unfortunately, we lost a squeaker to the Bulgarians (a.k.a. team Maidman), but demolished our final match to finish 3rd in the compact. A fun day all in all.

Detroit NABC, Day Six

2008-03-11T23:52:00.002-04:00

Today we came up against the mighty Meltzer squad in the Vanderbilt. Needless to say, we were not exactly the favourites to win this match!

Jonathan and I were slated to play 3 out of 4 sets today, including the whole afternoon. We would end up playing the first 32 boards against Kyle Larsen and Rose Meltzer. Rose Meltzer may in fact be the nicest person in the bridge world, and it was a pleasure to play against the two of them.

We were very solid in the first 16 boards and found ourselves up by 6 IMPs , 33 - 27. The second set went well for us and we thought we might actually have increased our lead, but our opponents played well also and we lost the set by 12 to fall behind 53 - 47 at the half.

Here is a board where Jonathan really shone:

I had the first decision to make, and true to my habits rejected using Stayman with secondary honours everywhere and a terrible heart suit. As you can see, 4H has no play and went down two at the other table.

On to 3NT. On a spade lead, Jonathan won the sQ in dummy to lead a heart to the 7, J, and Q. He won the spade continuation with the sA in hand and led the hK to the ace as West discarded a diamond. Well, that was good news and bad news: the good news was that 4H would go down at least two tricks, possibly doubled; the bad news was that 3NT was going to have difficulty making now!

In any case, Kyle Larsen cleared spades as Jonathan won in hand. Jonathan was up to 8 tricks now and had some hope for a ninth. Jonathan cashed four rounds of diamonds. Actually, it took him a while to cash them because he was thinking about the end position, and everyone could tell that Kyle Larsen was getting a bit impatient and wanted to claim one down, -100 (at this point Jonathan has only 8 tricks and if he leads a club up the defense can cash 3 more winners).

However, look what happened as Jonathan was about to lead the final diamond:

What can East discard? a heart gives up the heart suit, and a low club allows Jonathan to exit in clubs and await the 9th trick in the heart suit on the inevitable endplay. A high club discard allows Jonathan to establish his 9th trick in the club suit.

So Larsen discarded a spade, and now Jonathan led a club toward dummy. It didn't matter what the defense did at this point -- either Jonathan was going to score a club trick and a heart trick, or two heart tricks, depending on who won the second round of clubs.

Well-judged and well-played for a 13 IMP pickup. Don Kersey, noted squeeze expert, called this a "three-loser winkle squeeze."

The 3rd set was not pretty. We came back from dinner and were greeted thusly by our teammates: "We lost, do you want to concede?" I don't know any details but our team lost the third set by 60, 72-12, and we could no longer realistically win the match. We decided to continue on the theory that it's not every day you get to play against a team of this calibre (I was in the middle of "Unnecessary Roughness" on TV and would have been happy conceding though!)

Happily we were decent in the final set (no one, us included, was trying all that hard) and lost it 37-34. In the three sets Jonathan and I were in, we stayed within 9 IMPs of our world-class opponents, and had a decent card every time. In the end that counts for not much but it's something to feel good about.

Here's a board we picked up 10 IMPs on in the final segment:

Because in our style we respond 2NT with 12-15 balanced (yes, even in response to 1H or 1S), Jonathan's 2C response to my 1S opening guaranteed either a real suit or extra values. Therefore, I knew we were immediately in the slam zone. I bid 3C along the way to Blackwood just to let Jonathan know about the cQ later in the auction. After he showed 1 keycard, then the sQ and cK, I made a general grand slam try with the 6D bid. Because of the earlier 3C bid, Jonathan decided I simply had to have the cQ, and he could count 13 tricks. He chose to play in clubs in case spades didn't break and there was some other play for a 13th trick (perhaps a diamond finesse or simply ruffing out spades if I had a side king). On this deal, 7NT is best since there are no extra chances, but we were not really in a position to work that out.

In actuality, spades split 3-2 so 7C was cold and won 10 IMPs against 6S+1 at the other table.

Tomorrow we are playing in a compact KO with Jeff Smith and David "Scooter" Sabourin both from the Ottawa area. They may be Canada's hottest new partnership and are both great guys.

Detroit NABC, Days Four and Five

2008-03-10T23:48:00.004-04:00

Today was the start of the Vanderbilt. Jonathan and I were on a team with Rich Demartino - John Stiefel, and Steve and Betty Bloom. DeMartino and Stiefel have won numerous NABC+ events in the past few years. As the 39 seed, we were situated in a 4-way beginning with us playing against the 68 seed.

Things did not go wonderfully in the first set and we found ourselves down by 5 IMPs with 16 boards to play, largely on the back of a slam that the pair at our table just blasted whereas our teammates stopped short (a reasonable decision to be sure). Happily, in the second set we demolished the other team by a score of 64-14 and had the evening off.

We worked out that our draw for the round of 64 was the #26 seed, a team captained by John Fout (Jeff Roman, Bryan Maksymetz - Ziggy Marcinski, Jacob Morgan - Michael Polowan). Although this team has 6 solid experts on it, nobody on our side was unhappy with our draw. There are many brutal draws in the Vanderbilt (for example, check out teams #22 and #32 for draws I would never want in an early round regardless of my team's strength), and although we were playing a strong team, we had a team we felt could win the match on any given day.

-----

Today in the round of 64 Jonathan and I were given the first sitout. When we showed up at the playing site, we found that our teammates won the first set 25-11 to give us a 14 IMP lead. It's always nice to come in with a lead.

Unfortunately, this set didn't go as well as we had hoped. We only gained on two hands: one 10 IMP gain when we missed an impossible slam to score +680 -- but our counterparts had a major accident to end in a partscore!

The other hand we gained 12 IMPs on was when I got a friendly defense against a 4H contract and went +620 (3H went down at the other table). Polowan and Morgan pointed out to me later that I had misplayed the hand, and they were right, so these 12 IMPs were very fortunate.

However, in the minus column we had 56 IMPs scored against us, including a number of boards that were lost at the other table (we went +130 but our teammates were -800, for example), so we ended up losing this set by 34 IMPs to fall behind in the match by 20 IMPs.

We sat out the third set as the Blooms did not want to play the final set for worry of playing poorly due to tiredness. Our team was solid, especially Demartino - Stiefel, and we won the set 43-28. We were now down by only 5 IMPs with 16 boards to go, and we were in.

I'm happy to report that Jonathan and I had a rockcrusher set. We set a game on good defense that could have made, we bid a remarkably thin NV game (on 20 HCP) that made, we bid a thin Vul game that was *just* friendly enough and made, we bid two slams that both made (one of them on the lead), we set a 3NT two tricks on a good defense, and did nothing significantly wrong the entire set. Our teammates were worried about the match as there were a few soft spots on their card but we had it all covered with our card to win the set 62-33 and a win by 24. I'll show you some of the hands that we did so well on:

My 3H was a fit-showing jump (ok, ok, it's a little light!) which propelled us to game. I found the cQ while reversing the dummy and we scored up +420 for 6 IMPs.

Although it looks like the defense has 4 tricks, they can't quite take them (if they get a diamond trick their heart trick disappears and vice versa). Bryan and Ziggy stayed out of this game so we won 10 IMPs for +620.

This slam was just laydown. Jonathan's system over 2C openings worked great here as my 2H response showed specifically one ace and no kings. We won 11 IMPs when they missed it at the other table.

Here is another great slam we bid with what I think was a good auction. The biggest question mark in the auction is what to rebid with my cards. I think the vote would be split pretty fairly between 2D, and 3D. I chose 3D as my hand was pretty good and the honor cards all meshed well, but the suit quality was a concern. On this hand, it led Jonathan to evaluate his hand as a slam-force, a good decision by him. He started a cuebidding sequence just to make sure I had spades controlled (picture Qxx K AKJTxx Kxx or so) and leapt to 6D.

There's more to this hand. As you can see, all three finesses fail and 6D is slated to go down! But look at the hand from poor Jacob Morgan's point of view. He doesn't know that the hand is so unfriendly, and in fact our sequence makes it very likely that Jonathan has no spade card (else, why did he choose this sequence). He very reasonably led a spade based on the auction (I would have led a spade as well) and got burned by the actual layout. Had he led anything else, we would have gone down in the good slam and lost 13 IMPs instead of winning 12, and lost the match by 1!! There's a lot of skill in bridge, but there is certainly plenty of luck too. Actually, it keeps the game interesting.

Anyway, Jonathan and I played as well as we know how this set and were happy. Tomorrow we draw Rose Meltzer (Kyle Larsen, Geir Helgemo, Tor Helness, Alan Sontag, Roger Bates), all world champions. It doesn't get easier in this event!

Detroit NABC, Days Two and Three

2008-03-09T12:32:00.002-04:00

On Friday and Saturday we played in a National Open Pairs. We had a dismal first session (44%!) but righted the ship in the evening with a 59% game (actually it was over 63% with two rounds to go but I guess we didn't do well on the last four boards). Oh well, at least we qualified comfortably for the second day. Jonathan and I have qualified for the final day of every event we have entered since 2001, where we lost in the first day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs in Las Vegas.

Anyway, in the evening we just played a nice steady game, so there aren't really too many spectacular hands from that session. However, here is one:

6C by North is actually a makeable contract because the fall of the hT9 doubleton lets West take a ruffing finesse against the hQ to get rid of five (!) low diamonds. In practice, West missed this line (he should have made it, in my opinion) and simply took a diamond finesse. +200 was worth 67% of the matchpoints.

The next day was the final session of the Open Pairs. Unfortunately we finished out of the overalls on the strength of another poor afternoon session. On Sunday is the start of the Vanderbilt. 75 teams registered, which means the first day the 44 lowest seeds (32-75) play 4-ways with 3 survivors to trim the field down to a nice, round, 64.

Detroit NABC, Day One

2008-03-06T23:40:00.003-05:00

I took the bus into Detroit on Wednesday night, arriving at midnight. (Note to self: never do that again -- the Detroit bus station is a spooky place at midnight). On Thursday Jonathan still had some board meetings in the afternoon but we agreed to play in the 1-session Educational Foundation pairs game in the evening. Well, everything went our way and we posted a 67.67% game to win by almost a full board! Here are two of our better boards:

How did Jonathan know to bid 6NT at the end? He drew the inference that I couldn't have a solid heart suit based on my bidding 3C earlier in the auction (I could have stuck to hearts or even jump rebid them if they were solid), so a grand slam was very unlikely. I was extremely unlikely to have the dK as I didn't cuebid 4D over 4C. So my hand was quite likely to be something like it was (perhaps with a sixth heart, but Jonathan could see that in 6NT only 5 hearts were needed to come to 12 tricks as long as I had the sK). Bidding and making 6NT was worth 11 out of 12 matchpoints.

I upgraded the 14 HCP South hand (based on the decent shape, the aces and kings, and the good intermediate spot cards), and opened 1NT, 15-17. Jonathan transferred to diamonds and showed a spade singleton, as I denied a great fit for diamonds with my 3C bid. In light of the auction, my hand was looking pretty good, so I decided to pass 3NT and bid 4D. Jonathan cuebid 5C, so now I knew he had no heart control and no spade void, but clearly good clubs and diamonds.

I jumped to 6D and was pleased with the dummy. I eventually guessed the cQ for +1370 and 11 out of 12 matchpoints. If you're going to win a large single-session pairs game, you need results like these on your card in one form or another.

CNTC Zonal Qualifier

2008-03-02T21:11:00.002-05:00

This weekend our CNTC team had to try to qualify, in Toronto, for the Montreal CNTC final event. This is not always an easy task (last year, 17 teams showed up, of whom 5 qualified, and we finished 5th by a nose!), but this year, only 9 teams were present so more than half the field would qualify.

The event, as the CNTC, was scored by using the WBF 25 point VP scale. The effect of this scale is to "flatten" all the scores, since nobody can pull away from the field very easily when 25 VP are the maximum scorable (and to do that, you have to win by over 45 IMPs). In fact, a very solid win-by-20 in a short 11 board match (which we did in match 1) only gets you a 20-10 VP win. If some other team wins by 2, they score 16 VP and are basically right behind you. (Compare this to the 30 point VP scale used in sectionals and regionals, where a win by 20 translates to a 27-3 VP win, and a loss by 2 nets you only 11 VPs.

In any case, the event went very well. David and I were solid both days, and Darren Wolpert and Arno Hobart (first time playing together I believe) were very solid as well. We ended up going 7-1 with our only loss being a narrow 16-14 VP affair to win the qualifier comfortably. This means that in May we will be heading to Montreal to compete in the CNTC national final, and that means there will be plenty of blog posts!

Here's a hand where David Grainger shone:

David led the top diamonds, and we cashed three clubs, I gave him a diamond ruff, and we still had a heart to come for three down, +500.

I asked David later how he could stand doubling a partscore with just JTx in trumps, and he pointed out that whenever I had any ace we were almost certainly beating this contract, and I had to have more than that on the auction. Also, he was tired of this particular pair making horrible bids and getting away with it, another incentive to punish them. Well, he was right! We won 12 IMPs on the hand when our teammates somehow stole +110 in 2S.

Here was a tricky deal we managed to get right:

Is the East hand an opening bid? I judged no, because 2 of my honours were in short suits, but I know many people who would consider it automatic. This gave us a chance on this lie of the cards, and our short "farmer's" auction sealed +450 and win 11 IMPs when the pair at the other table tried for, and got to, slam. Slam has play today but you'd rather not be there, and it went down.

On a side note, I think that it's important to play 2NT forcing after Drury bids (e.g. P-1H-2C*-2NT*). If you happen to have 14-15 HCP and want to invite 3NT naturally, it doesn't hurt you to start with a waiting 2D bid. However, when you pick up a hand like this one (or even a stronger hand), making a clearly slam-going move and setting up a game force can be invaluable.

All in all, a successful weekend. Now it's off to Detroit for the NABC!

Oshawa Sectional Recap

2008-02-17T22:02:00.003-05:00

This weekend Susie and I played in the Oshawa sectional (Oshawa is about 20 minutes east of Toronto). We don't go to a lot of sectionals, but we like the Oshawa tournament because it is well run. They have two swiss teams instead of a pairs game, and free Timbits and coffee (as well as free pizza on the Sunday). Plus, Susie and I met at this very tournament, on February 17th, seven years ago! So this tournament has some sentimental value for us.

On Saturday Susie and I played with Jonathan Steinberg and Bill Koski. We came in 4th overall. It wasn't our day as the matches we lost were both on 50% slams that made and were not bid by our teammates. Here is one of them:

The auction at our table went:

Our opponents ended up +1370 when the cQ was easy to find, and this board probably cost us a good chance at first overall, as we were the 1st and 2nd place teams at the half when this board occurred.

Oh well. Both pairs played pretty well and everyone had fun, which I suppose is the main thing if you're not going to win, right?

The second day, I played with Jonathan and Susie played with David Silver, a well-known bridge author. You've probably read some of his books, and if you haven't and enjoy a funny read, we recommend you pick one up.

Well, unfortunately today was not our day either. Again, we all had fun, which is the main thing, especially since this was the 7-year anniversary of the day Susie and I met. Time flies, doesn't it?

Here's a nice defense by Susie:

Susie led three rounds of spades, David overruffing dummy on the third round with the ten of diamonds. David returned a club. Declarer won in hand, and led a diamond toward the king. Susie won her singleton dA and made a nice play by giving declarer a ruff-and-sluff! Susie could see that declarer was very unlikely to have any losers outside of the trump suit. David's singleton dQ had to score now for a pretty +50.

Here's a hand where I could have done better (much better!):

After Jonathan opened the North hand 1H, I was never stopping short of slam. I thought for a while over 1H of how best to handle this moose. I decided not to show my diamond suit in the auction because there was no way I was ever playing the hand in diamonds, so what was the point? In our system, 2S artificially showed a game forcing heart raise. Jonathan's 4H rebid showed the worst-possible hand (actually, he had a pretty good "worst-possible hand").

I continued with the seemingly obvious 4NT and got a 2 keycard response. Suddenly, I realized I had a problem! I didn't know whether to play in 6H or 6NT. If Jonathan's hearts were headed by the Ten or lower, a 4-1 or 5-0 heart break would doom 6H for sure but 6NT could easily still straggle home.

I eventually convinced myself to bid 6NT on the theory that it was probably cold, and if not, they would surely have to lead a club to set it. Also, if Jonathan's clubs were something like Qx or Qxx, the opponents would very likely lead a club against 6H (either from the A or the K, and East might even find the lead if the cAK were in the West hand), but against 6NT they would have much more difficulty leading from the A or K). My mind made up, I bid 6NT.

West, Pamela Nisbet, tranced for quite some time and finally led a club. I played low from dummy hopefully, but Herve Chatagnier claimed his cAQ for down 1. 6H, 6D, and 6NT are all cold -- but from the North hand!

Remember what I said earlier about a 2D bid being "pointless"? Well, that would be true as far as playing in diamonds goes, but it would have served a very good purpose here -- Jonathan would have bid 2NT over 2D, and the NT would have been right-sided! Needless to say this was a 14-IMP loss as our counterparts played 6H from the correct side. Note that you do want to get to notrumps on this type of hand if possible, because on a bad day 6H could go down (say, if clubs are 6-1 and they get a ruff) but 6NT is against the wall from the correct side.

Having said all that, it was unlucky for 6NT to go down: both clubs had to be offside AND they had to lead them. But I think I got what I deserved in the end for managing to get to 6NT from the wrong side.

All in all, a fun weekend. I will be posting from Detroit next month if I have internet access. If not, I'll post a recap when I get home (and maybe I can persuade Susie to post some entries on my behalf).

See you in Detroit!

Online Poker

2008-01-20T19:14:00.000-05:00

I know this is a bridge blog, but hopefully our readers won't mind the occasional poker entry!

I've been having some success lately in Ultimate Bet's $1500 Guarantee tournaments. The entry fee only costs $5, and the site is guaranteeing that the prize pool will be at least $1500- if 300 people don't register to play, the site will contribute the rest of the prize pool. So far that hasn't been a problem as guarantee tournaments seem to be wildly popular- both of the tournaments I've played this week have had over 400 people enter them.

I've been on a hot streak this week and managed to reach the final table of the 8:30pm tournament both times I played, with a fifth place finish on Thursday and a tenth place finish yesterday.

I've really enjoyed playing in these tournaments- they're a lot of fun for very little expense, and you can still win a reasonable amount of money if you do well. Another interesting twist that Ultimate Bet offers for low level large tournaments is bounty tournaments. Every player pays an extra dollar to play and if you knock out another player, in addition to winning all of his chips, you win his dollar bounty! It's a lot of fun and these tournaments are quite popular as well.

In fact, my final table finish yesterday won me a free entry into the $200,000 guarantee tournament this afternoon- first prize was over $50,000 and it only cost me $5 to get there!

So far, 2008 is looking good for online poker! If you're interested in playing on Ultimate Bet and don't have an account yet, sign up through this link and use referral code 2665 to receive a 30% "refund" on the rake charged by the site for your lifetime, plus a 110% deposit bonus up to $1100.

Good luck to you!

Kansas City Regional, Recap

2008-01-01T12:01:00.000-05:00

Every year for the past three years, Jonathan Steinberg, Martin Hunter, Susie and I have gone to a tournament the week of December 26 - Jan 1. Last year was Charleston (a beautiful tournament), and this year was Kansas City, Missouri.

I don't think Kansas City is known for anything in particular, but the locals are friendly, the playing site is great, and the restaurants in the area are excellent, a recipe that adds up to a good bridge tournament.

The first day, weather conditions around the country were not great, and Martin got "fogged in" in Detroit. Susie took the day off and I played pairs with Jonathan. Here is a great hand from the evening session:

It's never easy to bid 21 HCP games at matchpoints, where if you are wrong, you are getting a very poor score, but both Jonathan and I evaluated our hands accurately and we arrived at a contract needing nothing more than hearts not 3-0 offside. We had a great game in the afternoon and a good game in evening to win the event by a couple boards. A good start to the tournament!

The second day, Martin arrived and we played in a 1-day compact knockout. Things went our way and we won this event too.

The next day we played a swiss, and although we were leading the event at the half, a mediocre evening session led to us finishing 5th overall.

On Saturday we played another 1-day KO (the "prime time" 4-session KOs started at 9am, a fate none of us really wanted to subject ourselves to on vacation!) but this time unfortunately lost an early match. Marty and I took the evening off and watched the Patriots go 16-0 in an exciting game against the New York Giants.

Susie and Jonathan played in the 1-session evening swiss with Tiger Li Li Williams and Tammy Pepper, both wonderfully nice people. Happily, they won the event! Incidentally, this gave Jonathan bragging rights for this tournament, as he would finish with more points than anyone else on the team (revenge for Nashville where I ended up with 15 or so points more than him by playing a morning KO without him!)

On Sunday we played yet another 1-day KO and this time won both afternoon matches handily. In the evening, we lost the first match but won the final match to finish a respectable 3rd.

On Monday, we did very well in the final day swiss teams event, going a strong 6-2 to finish 2nd in the event. Here is a hand where Susie did well:

The auction will need some explanation. Susie and I play a system over 2NT openings where we only accept transfers if we fit partner's suit. This explains my 3NT rebid, and Susie correctly upgraded the value of her hand once I did not fit spades (the aces, singleton, and good club spots all argue for a slam try). I cuebid 4H agreeing clubs, and she bid 4S (which for us is clearly a club cuebid). I bid 4NT, RKC in case she had only 1 keycard, and we landed in the good slam. On a diamond lead, there was nothing to the play and Susie recorded +1390.

Note how easy our auction was. I have given the North hand to several excellent players and nobody had any idea what bids meant after 2NT-3H-3S-4C-?. One in fact bid 3NT rather than 4C and played there! (Had I shown a spade fit by accepting the transfer, Susie would have been able to show either her heart shortness or her diamond ace in making a slam try in our system.)

Anyway, coming in 2nd on the final day meant that all of us (except Martin, who missed two events) won over 50 points at this regional (Jonathan won nearly 60) which is an excellent showing given that a) we didn't play in the highest-paying events, and b) this was a smaller regional where points are harder to come by.

All in all, a fun trip and a successful tournament! Be sure to visit our travel blog to see photos and hear Susie's description of the trip.

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-19T18:57:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Korbel family!

We're leaving in a few days for the Kansas City regional, so we'll try to post while we're there.

All the best in the New Year!

San Francisco NABC

2007-12-06T21:35:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post to let you know that the Korbel Travel Adventures blog has been updated with our San Francisco sightseeing photos and stories!

We've also finished uploading all our pictures to the photo album. (edited: yes, the link works now)

It was a great trip, but it's always nice to go home!

San Francisco NABC, Recap

2007-12-04T00:52:00.000-05:00

Well, we entered the final day of the 3-day National Swiss Teams event sitting in the dead middle of the pack, 20th place. Unfortunately, our carryover was 8.9 VPs, while the leaders received more than 37 VPs! So we really would have had to have a good day to win this one. The day started out well, with us going 3-1 in the first session to creep up into striking distance, 10 behind the leaders. After lunch, we played a 4-handed Austrian team with a sponsor that we played every day of the event. I'm glad to say we finally got our revenge on them, winning 12-0 to move up to 4th place in the event. Then, we got to play the leaders, Ken Cohen's team, in match #6.

I wish I could say we won this match, but in actuality, we got crushed. We certainly got unlucky in this match; our counterparts opened a 2-5-4-2 defensive 9-count with 2H for some reason on Board 11, and his partner was able to bid a non-forcing 2S with the North cards. Our teammate, John Rayner, reasonably elected to pass the East cards in a dangerous position, but this time they ended up +50 into their game.

Another board that could easily have swung the other way:

Both West players opened 4H. At the other table, the North player overcalled 4S (!) which seems like a very poor action to me. 4S might go down when partner was passing 4Hx or bidding 5 or 6 of a minor to make, or perhaps you might miss a slam if partner holds something as simple as Qxxx xxx Kxx xxx, or even Txxxxx xxx xx xx!

You can guess, therefore, that I sympathize with Jonathan's decision to double, then try for slam with 5H over my 4S bid. On this layout, 5S goes 1 down and we lost 10 IMPs.

Anyway, we got 3 VPs this match to basically drop out of contention for winning the event.

The next match we played against Tony Kasday's team, which was Garey Hayden plus 3 Icelandic internationals. Jonathan and I had a decent set, including a +800 when an opponent chose to come into a dangerous auction (at the other table, Doug Baxter wisely passed and we won 8 IMPs), but our teammates had one bad board and we bid a 40% vulnerable game that was not bid at the other table and we lost a close match.

At this point we needed a nice win in our final match. We drew Brenda Keller-Bruce Ferguson and Jerry and Dennis Clerkin.

Happily, this match went all our way. There were two large swing boards in this match and I will show you both:

At both tables, the bidding went the same way:

Perhaps 3NT is a bit piggish, but the lack of a high heart honour, the allure of the d9 and sK were too much for me to risk a delicate 3D, so I just shot it out. At the other table, Doug Baxter found a fantastic lead of the dT, which really put the wood to declarer. Brenda tried running 3 spades, then taking a club finesse -- but the roof fell in and she took only 4 tricks for -500. I have some sympathy for the spade lead I received, as holding both kings behind me, as well as my likely spade shortness, are both arguments in favour of not blowing up the diamond suit (If I had, say, AQ instead of A9). In any case, I was quickly +630 for a 15 IMP gain. I really don't think there's that much to choose between a diamond and a spade (unless your opponents play Flannery, in which case lead a diamond). Bridge can be fickle.

Note Doug's excellent choice of diamond to lead: the dT instead of his small diamond. Why would he do that? Well, take a look at the actual diamond suit that existed. Had partner not had a quick entry in the hA, it would have been essential to unblock the suit by starting with the dT or the dK, or else Doug would have found himself winning the 3rd round of diamonds in his hand as his partner stared helplessly at the setting tricks!

On our other big gain, Jonathan and I had a system win to get to the right contract with some confidence:

Our auction will need some explaining. I would not have opened 2C with Jonathan's hand: such a weak main suit and playability in 3 strains means a complex hand and a desire to start the auction low. In any case, it worked out well when I was able to respond with the very rare 2NT in our system, showing a 6-card suit headed by the AKQ or better. Jonathan's 3H was natural, and my 4D bid confirmed an excellent diamond suit (we hadn't discussed if it had to be AKQJxx or if AKQT9x was acceptable). In any case, Jonathan's jump to 6D logically showed all the other controls (if he was missing an important card, he can't be 100% sure that we don't have a trump loser, so he would not be able to jump to slam). In addition, I felt that if he could count 13 tricks opposite AKQJxx of diamonds, he would have tried a different bid, perhaps 5NT. I passed his 6D bid, and it turns out that 6D is the correct contract (although 7D makes because both hearts and diamonds behave well for declarer).

In one match that I know of, the board was pushed in 6D. In another match, the Bulgarians (the Maidman team which finished 4th) would have won the event had they been able to play in diamonds, but they ended in the wrong slam). I believe Fred Gitelman and Brad Moss bid the cards all the way to 7D and made it.

6D was enough in our match, as our counterparts ended in 4H. We finished the day with a big win to edge into 9th (just barely behind 7th place) and another good showing in a national event. This is our fourth high placing in a national event this year and 3rd top ten finish, putting us at 129 points for the tournament, 109 of them in NABC+ events. For John Rayner, this is his second top-ten finish in a row (he was 4th in the Blue Ribbon Pairs with Mike Roche). Thanks to Doug Baxter and John Rayner for playing extremely well and being great teammates and fun people to hang out with.

San Francisco NABC, Days Eight / Nine

2007-12-01T21:29:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we played in the first day of the 3-day North American Swiss. After losing a close first match, we won the next 6 matches in a row, all but one by scores of 18-2 or better, to sit atop the leaderboard with one round to go!

Here is a hand from our match against the Granovetters that swung us a nice win (aside from this board, we won 1-0):

The auction starts with East, everybody vulnerable:

Your partner opens a gambling 3NT, showing a solid 7- or 8- card minor and no ace or king on the side. What do you bid with the West cards?

After much thought, Pamela Granovetter bid 4S, and quickly wrapped up +710 as the sQ fell doubleton.

Our teammates had this auction:

John Rayner decided that even 4S or 5C were unlikely to be good contracts if partner had clubs, so he was willing to back his judgment and bid a non-forcing 4C with the West cards. When his partner showed he actually held a diamond suit, Rayner had struck gold! +2140 was worth 16 fat IMPs to our team.

Unfortunately, we lost the final match of the evening but still finished the day 3rd/4th overall with a good score of 114 VPs. This translated to an effective carryover of 24.5 VPs which will (hopefully) let us qualify easily for tomorrow. We went 1-3 this afternoon, but it was a "good" 1-3, and we scored 34 VP out of 40. What this means is that we've nullified a lot of the advantage of our carryover, but we are still in solid shape because our carryover was so good. As long as we have a decent evening session we should be into tomorrow in fine shape.

San Francisco NABC, Day Seven

2007-11-30T15:21:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was the final day of the Blue Ribbons. Jonathan and I had two above-average games, and although we didn't play that great, we were still okay, and coupled with our 2-board carryover this was good enough for a 16th place finish in one of the tougher events on the schedule. I'll input some hands later as it's almost game time now, for the NA Swiss. Our teammates today are Doug Baxter and John Rayner.

San Francisco NABC, Day Six (Evening)

2007-11-29T02:08:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, we had a 62.14% game and a section top. Could we do it again?

Well, sort of. Although, we did have a higher score tonight (62.62%), there was one bigger game and we came 2nd in our section. Still, it was a great showing and we are sitting 3rd in the event.

I'll put in a few hands from both the afternoon and evening sessions.

In the afternoon, I sat South and Jonathan sat North. Here is the first board out of the box:

The bidding went:

My first double as South was for takeout. At Jonathan's second turn, he had a close decision (in my view) between doubling for penalties and trying for a club slam (clearly, his hand is golden, and I will usually have 4 clubs for my double). He chose to double for penalties, and we collected +1100 for 96.5 of 103 matchpoints.

We went for the throat here:

With only the opponents vulnerable, Jonathan after some thought decided to take his chances defending 3Sx. As you can see, best defense holds declarer to 6 tricks for +800, but I switched to a heart at trick two after cashing the sA to try to ensure +500, which was clearly be a great score (in fact, 98 matchpoints).

I love when people redouble. When you have the right hand for it, you can really push them around. Here's a case in point:

The opponents failed to find their spade fit and even allowed me an overtrick in 3D for 86 out of 103 matchpoints. A strong argument for just bidding 1S with the East cards.

Two hands from tonight where Jonathan did well (we were East-West):

It looks pretty normal to bid at Jonathan's first turn, but he applied an excellent rule (especially when the opponents are vulnerable), that I'll share with you: when you have length in the opponent's suit, it is relatively safe to pass. The reason is that if partner is short in their suit, he tends to reopen, and then on this hand, you can happily jump to 3D to show your values. If partner is not short in clubs, the opponents do not have a fit, and defending is not so bad. So it proved here, as we collected +200 without breathing hard for 93 matchpoints.

Again, it looks pretty normal at red/white vulnerability to convert my double to 3NT, but after some thought Jonathan decided to pass! This was a big position at these colours, and I would not do it, but Jonathan had the vig that +300 or +500 would be good enough if 3NT did not make. (Certainly at IMPs, passing seems good as +500 vs +600 is no big deal). In any case, I didn't find the best lead of a trump (+1100), but on a heart lead, we took enough tricks anyway for +800 and 98.5 matchpoints.

OK, the answers to yesterday's lead problems:

The answer to the first problem, where you hold

KQJTx
KQJTxx
xx
--

is to lead a heart. If the opening lead is going to matter at all, LHO will have running or near-running diamonds (if partner has diamonds nutted this contract won't make). Partner is definitely not doubling on the sA (he probably has a whack of them to bid 5S and doesn't expect necessarily even 1 spade to cash). Therefore, if the lead matters at all, a heart must be the right lead (unless partner is ruffing diamonds and has a side ace -- but in that case you should bid 6M to make!!). And so it proves: a heart is +100 and a win in the match, while anything else is -1090 and lose.

The answer to the second problem, where you hold

KT
xxx
Kxxxx
T9x

against 6S, is a little more complex. The opponents have not used Blackwood, so there is no reason to think they aren't off an ace here. If so, your goal is to cash partner's ace before it goes away. Alternatively, it may be necessary to lead a club to set up a club trick before your sK is dislodged. I think a diamond lead is clearly percentage, as RHO must have a club control to bid this way, and he's more likely to have upgraded a hand with little or no diamond wastage if the slam bid is pushy. In addition, if you guess the wrong minor, you are far more likely to survive a diamond lead than a club lead. If you catch declarer with AKJ of clubs, he is very likely to be able to discard dummy's diamond, whereas if you catch him with AQ or even AQJ of diamonds, as long as partner has the dT you may get in with your sK in time to switch to clubs. This board would have put us comfortably in the overalls in the Open Pairs. Oh well.

San Francisco NABC, Day Six (Afternoon)

2007-11-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

This afternoon Jonathan and I played in the second day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs. We were one of the bottom qualifiers, sitting 200th out of 208 pairs going into today. Thus, our carryover was quite minimal.

Happily, though, almost everything went our way today. We played well, and our opponents did not. We scored over 62% this afternoon, which was best N/S out of the four sections that our game was scored in. In fact, we moved all the way up to 11th overall, which is pretty amazing giving our minimal carryover.

Anyway, in a field like this, if your opponents play well or you play poorly, it's quite easy to have a 40-45% game, so sitting 11th right now is nice, but nothing to jump for joy about. Hopefully tonight we'll have another decent game and keep a good position going into the final day.

San Francisco NABC, Day Five

2007-11-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

A quick recap of my tournament so far: I played in the Life Master Women's Pairs with Janet Dunbar, and we finished 45th overall. Not bad for a first time partnership, and I won my first platinum points.

I took Sunday off from bridge to enjoy my 25th birthday and spent the day at the spa. It was nice and relaxing, and I was ready to hit the tables again on Monday when I played compact KOs with Tim Crank and two San Francisco locals, Harlan Hullinger and Barbara Berwick. Unfortunately we were shuffled down in the 8th bracket and the matches were really no contest; we won the event easily.

Today Tim and I played in the Daylight Open Pairs at 10am and 3pm. The schedule worked out nicely as I was able to kibitz the Blue Ribbons after my event was over.

Here was an interesting hand from the morning session:

This was our first hand of the day, so you can imagine the fireworks!

I chose pass instead of a regressive 5S because I liked my hand in context; Tim was interested in slam without the SKQ so he must have had a pretty good hand. North did not find a Lightner double to ask for a diamond lead, so South of course led the HA and Tim wrapped up 12 tricks for a 6 1/2 on an 8 top (one pair tied us, one pair made it even after the double!).

We were third overall after the first session with a 62%. Unfortunately we had some bad luck in the evening session and finished only a little above average to wind up 8th overall.

Here are two hands from the afternoon session:

After a transfer auction, we reached the inferior 3NT. The opening lead was of course a heart. I ducked the first round, hoping for a defensive error, but they continued hearts at trick two. I won the ace and cashed three rounds of diamonds, seeing that LHO had four. Hearts looked to be 5-5 on the carding, so now the only issue is to tackle the club suit. I cashed the CK and played the CT. RHO played low and I decided to run it since he had more unknown cards. Fortunately it held and I eventually came to eleven tricks when the defense lost interest on the run of the clubs and gave me a spade trick as well.

Here's the second hand:

I chose to overbid slightly with 2H rather than deal with trying to show my fifth heart and maximum values in context after a negative double, but I couldn't stretch far enough to accept Tim's invitation at matchpoints. East looked pained as she passed 3H but chose not to make another call.

The opening lead was the S6, won by the SA, and East returned a low heart which ran to the ten. I played the H9 and East pitched an encouraging club. West won the HK and switched to a small diamond.

This sent up a red flag for me. With plenty of other attractive options (another spade, clearing trumps, trusting partner and playing a club), why on earth would West ever switch to a diamond here? It made no sense, but it made even less sense away from the dK.

Probably the most likely situation is West holding a singleton spade and a small doubleton diamond, and is hoping to get partner in quickly to deliver the spade ruff. To try to counter this, I played the dA, hoping that on winning with the other high heart West would err and try to cross to partner in clubs.

Well, the dK fell from East, who was 5=1=1=6, and I made +170 for a complete top.

Tomorrow I think I'm taking the day off from bridge to do some sightseeing. I won't be updating the travel blog until we get home as I unfortunately forgot to bring the USB cables to upload pictures. We've got some great shots to share.

San Francisco NABC, Days One to Five

2007-11-27T23:30:00.000-05:00

Well, the San Francisco NABC is almost half over and I have yet to write a blog. For that I apologize.

The first day Jonathan and I were asked to play in a charity KO that started Thursday evening and continued the next three mornings, and we agreed to play. We easily survived the three-way in the evening and got up early the next morning.

We received a very favourable draw, and although both pairs were a little soft we won quite easily, as the other team played very poorly. By my count, the pair at our table dropped somewhere in the vicinity of 80 IMPs, and we won by around 30.

The next morning we drew Joe Grue - Jeff Meckstroth, Brad Moss - Shane Blanchard - Bob Blanchard, not exactly an easy draw! Well, come game time only 3 members of their team had arrived -- Joe Grue was not in his room and was nowhere to be seen.

What happened next was a little bizarre -- Meckstroth asked a kibitzer to fill in, with our consent, and we agreed. A director came by and Meckstroth cleared it with him.

Well, we were up 4 IMPs at the half and Joe Grue was finally found (he had been in Curtis Cheek's room). As we were shuffling for the second half, Chris Patrias (another director) came by and informed Grue and Meckstroth that the normal rules called for a forfeit of their team, as a substitute is not allowed, but in this case they would allow them to play on with a 15 IMP penalty! All this after another director had agreed that a kibitzer could fill in. I suppose the directors made this ruling because the kibitzer had played 12 boards rather than filling in for a board or two, but it still seemed strange to me.

In any case, nothing went right for Grue and Meckstroth at our table. By about the tenth board Meckstroth knew they were down a lot of IMPs and started swinging. His two swinging actions did not work and we ended up winning by about 30 without the carryover.

In the final, we drew David Grainger - Ari Greenberg, Jon Rice - Mike Rice, Tom Carmichael - Joyce Hampton. Another tough draw. We were down 1 IMP at the half, and unfortunately ended up losing by 8. Here is a hand that could have swung us the match:

KQJTx
KQJTxx
xx
---

No one vulnerable, the auction proceeds, starting on your right,

Do you agree with all your actions? The 4C bid seems clear, but there is a case to be made for bidding 6 of a major despite your partner's double of 6C, as cheap insurance. In any case, you passed, and now you have to lead.

This is a good problem, so I'll let you stew over it for a day or two and post the winning, and I believe, demonstrably correct, lead in a few days.

We played in the 2-day National Open Pairs as well. This was the first national event of the tournament. Although we had some good sessions including some excellent results, we just couldn't get enough going on the final day and finished 51st overall by 1/12 of a board (the event paid to FIFTY places! Not lucky).

Here is a hand that would have swung us about 15 placed higher:

KT
xxx
Kxxxx
T9x

Your RHO is Kit Woolsey and your LHO is Fred Stewart. Their auction, our side silent:

3S was a shapely spade raise that was ambiguous about high card values. 3NT asked distribution and 4H guaranteed exactly a singleton diamond. 5S was invitational and 6S accepted.

It's your lead?

Again, I'll post the answer to this one in the next entry.

The next event was the 2-day Open Board-A-Match. BAM is one of my favourite forms of bridge, as the win/loss aspect of the game can make for some very exciting scenarios. Unlike matchpoints, there is no field to worry about, simply one other table, so you can take a position sometimes to try and win a board. This includes underleading aces against slams, making frightening lead-directing bids, or even the occasional psyche! BAM is often very much about the opening lead that wins or loses the board, and since there isn't a field that is mostly making the same bad lead as you, it's more important than any other form of scoring to help your partner out with the lead.

In any case, we qualified comfortably with a 29 on the first day. (These events are all humongous, by the way. The open pairs had about 350 pairs entering just as an example. Even having two solid 55% games leaves you waaay down in the pack). On the second day, the afternoon session turned out horribly, and our team had 9.5, but the evening session was much better and we scored 14. Unfortunately, this was not quite enough to make the overalls, and we just missed out for the second event in a row.

Today we qualified for the second day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs. We had a solid 57% game this afternoon, but came dangerously close to not qualifying with a horrendous game this evening. Nothing went our way and I think both Jonathan and I are coming down with something, which makes maintaining concentration sometimes difficult.

Check back tomorrow as I'll be sure to include a number of hands from the 2nd day of the Blue Ribbons.

Lancaster Regional Recap

2007-11-07T00:28:00.000-05:00

I just returned from the Lancaster Regional where I played all week with District 2's leading masterpoint holder and District Director, Jonathan Steinberg. From Monday through Thursday, we played with two other district directors, Rich DeMartino and Craig Robinson. We placed 3/4 in two KO events, won a morning compact KO, and won a single-session evening BAM event.

On Friday and Saturday, we played with Mike Kenny and his wife Julie in the morning compact KO. We won the first two matches on Friday, but unfortunately on Saturday our opponents played well and in luck and we finished 4th in that KO. In the prime time KO, we played with Mike Lucy and Travis Crump (both can be found on BBO, user names malucy and pretzels). I've known Mike online for 5 years or so and it was great to finally meet him. These two play a mean game of bridge as well, as we had a fairly easy ride to the final against the strong Harris team (Marty Harris, Jacob Morgan, Steve Landen, Pratap Rajadhaksha). Landen and Pratap played virtually perfectly against us and we had no chance to win the match, although it was very close at the half.

On the final day, we grafted on to Mike's team in the Swiss and played 4 of 7 matches. We played very well (in fact the whole team played well) and finished with a score of 108 on the 20 pt VP scale in 7 matches. Those experienced with the 20 point scale will know that this is a huge score, easily good enough for first place, right? Wrong! Another team had an even better day and finished with 110 VPs to put us in second. (To put this in perspective, 3rd place was a full match behind us at 90 VPs).

Oh well. Second in the Swiss teams capped a great week for us as Jon and I tied for first on the masterpoint list. This makes 3 regionals in a row that Jonathan has won, an impressive stat.

In a couple of weeks we will be in San Francisco, hope to see you there!

Lancaster Regional, Day Two

2007-10-31T00:18:00.000-04:00

Dan left yesterday for the Lancaster regional with Jonathan Steinberg. So far, things are going well for them. They started in the knockouts yesterday evening, and won that match and their morning match. Unfortunately they were eliminated in the afternoon match and wound up in the Board A Match in the evening. They won the event with 17 out of 24, a respectable score.

Here are a couple of interesting slam hands from today:

Their auction went:

This hand illustrates how listening to the auction can help you visualize the hand around the table. East-West's strong preemption told Dan that his partner had a heart void and helped him picture that slam might be laydown. As the cards lie, it's as good as a diamond guess.

At the other table, their teammates were permitted to play in 4H (!) for a big pickup.

The second board is equally interesting.

The auction went:

Dan, sitting South, passed 6C since he realized that 6N usually wouldn't be able to make if 6C didn't. The upside to playing 6C was that since South is declarer the diamond tenace is protected from the opening lead, not to mention that in some scenarios playing in a trump suit allows declarer more flexibility in the play (e.g. ruffing things in dummy). On this lie of the cards, clubs were 5-1 but both diamonds and spades were favourable so the slam came home -- to lose 2 IMPs against 6NT at the other table, of course!

The most interesting feature of this deal: what is the correct line of play if trumps break? You win the trump opening lead and draw three more rounds. How do you play?

Although in isolation this doesn't seem like the right play, cashing 2 rounds of hearts in dummy, and playing the ace of spades and nine of spades toward the queen is clearly the best line. (Rich DeMartino, when Dan gave him this problem, worked it out in 30 seconds flat and called it a "textbook hand"). You are able to find out the spade position before East can get in to push diamonds through the AQ. If East rises king on the 9, you can fly ace of diamonds, unblock the SJ, play a heart to the ace and pitch dummy's remaining diamond on the SQ. If West wins the SQ with the king, you have time to test for 3-3 spades before falling back on the diamond finesse. And if the ST or SK falls, it's again easy.

Hopefully the tournament will continue to go well!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl

2007-10-16T19:18:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post to let you know that the Korbel Travel Adventures blog has been updated with our Shanghai sightseeing photos and stories!

We've also finished uploading all our pictures to the photo album.

It was a great trip, but it's always nice to go home!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Fourteen

2007-10-11T23:11:00.000-04:00

We've spent the last day or so doing some sightseeing around Shanghai, and plan to spend our last two days before the closing ceremony continuing to see the sights. If you're interested, we've been uploading our photos to our photo album, and we'll update with more as soon as our camera battery recharges!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Twelve

2007-10-09T00:24:00.000-04:00

Last night I got a call after midnight from Boris: "Did you know we have a team?" Apparently, I was on a team for the Transnational Teams. I tried to beg off but they couldn't get anyone else so I said I'd play -- but just for one day. Our shopping plans were postponed.

I played the first two matches with Waldemar and we had two solid sets. There are about 150 teams in this event and 8 qualify when the swiss is over. So you have to do remarkably well to have a chance, and we were somewhere in the middle of the pack. Susie and I played the last three matches. Our team was still stuck somewhere in the pack so we decided to withdraw from the event. Our hearts weren't in it, anyway. Oh well, this way we can get some sightseeing done.

Here's a reasonably interesting hand from today:

xx
xxx
AKQ
AT8xx

KJ
Axxx
JT9xx
xx

S W N E
P 1S P P
2D 2S 3D P
P P

Susie because declarer in 3D, and her LHO led the hQ, overtaken by RHO's hK. This was enough information for her to deduce that RHO had KJT98 of hearts (singleton hQ) and little else. Susie led a club toward the ATxxx, intending to duck if LHO played the Q or K. When LHO played low, she went up cA and returned a low club. Eventually she ruffed the clubs out 3-3 (LHO had KQx and could never get RHO in to cash his hearts and lead a spade through) and claimed +110. Nicely played.

Since we probably won't be playing any more bridge for a while there won't be as many posts. Thanks for reading and remember to get your championship score updates from www.swangames.com .

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Eleven

2007-10-08T21:26:00.000-04:00

Today was a miserable day. We are getting part of a typhoon passing through the area, and the winds and rain make the city quite miserable (and getting a taxi quite difficult).

This will be a short entry because we lost a nailbiter today and it's taken away all my energy and I just want to collapse into bed. Brazil just played better than us today and they won fair and square. My hat's off to them. They are all very genial people too, so I'll be rooting for them against Indonesia tomorrow.

The upset of the tournament happened, but it wasn't in our event: South Africa defeated the mighty Italian juggernaut in the Bermuda Bowl!! To show you how close the match ended up being, Italy was trailing South Africa by 0.7 IMP going into the final two boards of the match! On the final two board, South Africa went +120 in 1NT and +980 in a 50%-ish slam. Unfortunately for Italy, they went minus on the 95th board and that sealed the deal (they missed the slam as well but it didn't matter). Wow!

Unfortunately the women lost as well in a close match so it was a bad day for Canada. But the bridge will be good (I assure you) so tune in to the BBO broadcasts!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Ten

2007-10-07T23:06:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of the KO phase of the championship events here in Shanghai. There were a few surprising results in the matches, none more so than the Italy-South Africa score in the Bermuda Bowl:

ITALY
7 29 32......................68

SOUTH AFRICA
43 47 27 5.7 (Carry over) 122.7

South Africa is ahead by 54.7 imps against the mighty Italian juggernaut! Of course, this match is far from over. One of the players on USA 1 (who are crushing Australia) told me he would still lay 3 to 2 on Italy at this point. My money's on South Africa, however, so I am going to try to track him down tomorrow and take that bet. One thing's for sure: if South Africa can pull this off, they will be the darling of the tournament (well, for non-Italians).

The women held their ground against Germany today. Although they are down -28 that is respectable (a lot of the matches are already blowouts) and not insurmountable. Wish them good fortune.

In our match, Joey and John Carruthers had a killer set against Branco-Amaril in the first quarter, giving away only a partscore swing, and we took the set 34-8 for a 23 IMP lead after carryover. (On the Swangames site they are currently crediting Fred and Don with Joey and J.C.'s butler in error, due to a seating misunderstanding at the start of the match. They had Joey and J.C. E/W rather than N/S in the computer).

The second set was the swingiest by far of the three sets. In fact, in every match of every event, more IMPs were scored in this set than any other set.

Here was a huge swing board in our match:

AKQxxx
Ax
--
AJxxx

9x
Qx
Qxxxx
QT9xx

In our room, Joey and J.C. had this sensible auction:

1S 1NT
3C 4C
5NT 6C
P

5NT was the GSF, and when South denied the cKQ, North knew to stay out of 7C. Modern scientists would bid 5D over 4C, Exclusion RKCB, and get to the grand slam when South has cKxxxx (you could argue he should bid it over 5NT anyway for a push board).

The Brazil N/S pair bid to 7C, and because there is no entry to dummy, North was forced to play cA hoping for a singleton cK. Well, today was their lucky day and we lost 13 IMPs instead of winning 16. Bridge can be a sick game sometimes, no?

There was another hand this set where the Brazilians bashed into a game off four top tricks (1S-3S-4S) and Joey had to lead from:

xxx
Qxxx
QTx
AQx

What would you lead? I would lead a heart or a trump, and since partners tend to go apoplectic when a trump lead lets declarer make a contract, a heart seems normal. Well, Joey led a heart and was soon -620 when a diamond or cA lead would set the contract (partner had dAK and all three were cashing). Our teammates stayed out of this one so we lost 10 IMPs instead of winning 7.

If these two boards had gone in our favour we'd be up 51 IMPs instead of 5 IMPs. Don't anyone ever say that there isn't a lot of luck even in a 96 board match.

In the third set, there were not really any interesting boards or interesting swings, and we lost a tight set 23-20. We lead Brazil 73-68, with 48 boards left to play. Brazil is a tough team and they play very well, so although our team is definitely better on paper and in practice than Brazil, our boys will need to play well to win this match. Thanks to all the Canadians out there who have wished me good luck and shown their support for the team. Go Canada!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Nine

2007-10-06T21:37:00.000-04:00

So ... the gruelling round robin is finally over. I'm happy to report that both the Canadian Seniors' and the Women's teams qualified for the KO phase.

The way it works this year is that there are 2 brackets of 4 teams each in each event. Because we finished first we were entitled to choose our quarter-final opponent from the bottom 4 qualifiers, and we were also entitled to shape the two brackets whichever way we desired.

The final standings in our event ended up as such:

1. Canada
2. USA 2
3. Poland
4. France
5. Italy
6. USA 1
7. Indonesia
8. Brazil

Now, someone commented on the previous blog entry wondering why we chose to play Brazil rather than Indonesia or Italy, given that against Brazil we would have a negative carryover and our match against Indonesia ended in a tie (and we beat Italy). Obviously we would never pick USA.

Well, the team decided that Brazil was a nice team to play against, and although there are some excellent players on it, it was agreed that Brazil is the weakest team in theory between Brazil, Italy, and Indonesia. In fact, J.C. (who knows all the players the best) thought the Indonesian team, full of their ex-open team players, was just as strong if not stronger than Italy! Thus, despite our -3.3 IMP carryover against Brazil tomorrow, it was decided that Brazil was a wiser choice. USA 2 apparently felt similarly about Indonesia, because they chose Italy despite being -1.7 IMPs against them.

We structured our event to like this (including bracketing -- our strategy was essentially to avoid playing USA until the finals):

CANADA vs BRAZIL (Brazil +3.3)
POLAND vs INDONESIA (Poland +16)

USA 2 vs ITALY (Italy +1.7)
USA 1 vs FRANCE (USA + 16)

In the Women's event, it looks like this:

USA 1 vs EGYPT
ENGLAND vs CHINA

GERMANY vs CANADA
USA 2 vs FRANCE

The women have their work cut out for them, but I am sure they are confident that this is a winnable match -- after all, they beat Germany in the RR despite not using their strongest line up! I hope for a successful day for Canada tomorrow. Actually, the quarterfinals are a 96 board affair so I hope for a successful two days for Canada!

No hands to report today. I'm tired and want to be fresh for the stress of the KO phase. As you probably all already know we lost 3 close matches that we could have won, but it was alright. We were so far ahead of 2nd that we still blew the field away. The only match that was a little disappointing was against Brazil since we knew we'd probably be playing against them in the RR, but hey, if you had told us we'd be in the position we are in now a week ago, we would have taken it!

Sportsmanlike Dumping

2007-10-06T11:33:00.001-04:00

This post has no bridge content so feel free to skip it, but I thought I'd write a bit about a concept that is intriguing to me and, regrettably, unavoidable in many sporting situations.

"Sportsmanlike dumping" refers to a situation where it is in your best interest not to do as well as possible in a given situation. Let me give you an example from hockey. In the NHL, the #1 seed plays the #8 in the first round of the playoffs. Now, let's say the #1 seed is playing on the final day of the season against a team that is jockeying for the #8 seed. Let's suppose further that the #1 seed really wants to play against this particular team jockeying for the #8 seed. It's now in the best interests of the #1 seed to lose the final game against the weaker team, to allow them to enter the playoffs and then beat up on them in the quarterfinals.

In bridge, these situations do occur, although fortunately they are rarer and much tougher to orchestrate. For example: going into the last round against France, we were 99.9% certain to qualify 1st overall no matter what we did this match. And places 2 through 8 were very bunched, so the order of the teams was quite unpredictable. We would, however, have had the maximum carryover against Poland should they finish in the bottom 4 (they were exactly 4th heading into the final round), so if Poland were to struggle in the final round, one could argue that it would be in our best interests to lose to France to make sure that they passed Poland!

Here's another scenario. It would be horrible for the USA to have one of their teams finish 4th and the other in the bottom 4. You can see what would happen for sure: they would be forced to play each other in the quarterfinals. It's not hard to see that this particular scenario is terrible for USA. So, the USA team in danger of qualifying 4th would want to do its best in the final match to avoid specifically the 4th place spot. You guessed it -- if partway through the match it looked too close to call, it would be safest for the USA team to tank it!

Now, before I get blacklisted by anybody, let me stress that these are hypothetical scenarios. I really believe that an actual case of sportsmanlike dumping has NEVER occurred in bridge. The players simply have too much pride to win in that fashion -- they just want to beat everybody fair and square. In fact, there are countless cases of players to whom winning a match was irrelevant or against their theoretical best interest going on to beat the tar out of their opponents.

I just find the whole concept fascinating, that a sporting event can be structured so that losing can be in one's best interests.

(You may be interested to note that in cricket cases where these scenarios occur, teams invariably lose when it's in their best interest to. And really, can you blame them? What is the correct thing to do? Some people argue that's it's unethical ever to lose intentionally and against the spirit of the game, while other people argue just as passionately that it's ridiculous to do anything against the best interest of your team, even if that means losing. Both sides have a valid point, and it's really just an unpleasant situation with no clear answer. Let me clarify that: there are two clear answers, and people are likely to be fervently on one side or the other).

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Eight

2007-10-05T21:06:00.000-04:00

Susie pointed out to me that some of you may not be familiar with the concept of a "butler score." Without getting technical, I'll try to give a fast explanation. Basically, a butler score is the average IMP result across the entire field. So if your butler score is +1.00, you are averaging +1 IMP per board against the field norm for however many boards the butler runs. (A butler of +1.00 is excellent, by the way).

What's amazing is that not only are Fred and Don still leading the butlers, averaging +1.03 IMPs per board, but now all three of our pairs are in the top ten! To put this in perspective, only three other teams in all three events combined have even TWO pairs in the top ten! (This probably has something to do with why we are doing so well, n'est-ce pas?).

OK, on to the bridge. I'm very happy to report that the women had another very successful day today, losing to the tough Chinese team 20-10, but bouncing back with great matches against Japan (23-7) and India (24-6). They are in 5th place now, 12 ahead of 8th and 14 ahead of 9th, and could still conceivably come in 4th (they are 16 behind France at the moment). I'm really rooting for a huge day tomorrow to allow them a 4th place finish, because that would mean that USA1 would not be allowed to choose them as quarter-final opponents (USA 1 beat them 25-0 in the Round Robin and would get the full 16 IMP carryover).

Our first match this morning was against USA 1 and was broadcast on Bridge Base. Those of you who watched it saw a reasonably well-played and entertaining match. Unfortunately, Ron Smith and Gaylor Kasle had a superb set against Don and Fred, who had a few rocky boards. Boris and Arno had the better of Dan Gerstman and John Sutherlin, stealing two games in the first four boards for 20 IMPs, but we ended up losing 16-14, only our second loss of the tournament.

Fred and Don sat out the second match against Argentina. Again, Boris and Arno had a good set, and I thought Joey and J.C. played solidly as well. We ended up winning 39-22 for a 19-11 VP win. (A caveat about butler scores: if you've ever suffered the indignity of an IMP pairs event, you know how random the results can sometimes be. A butler score is very similar to an IMP pairs score, so even if you play very well you can sometimes have a poor butler score, if your opponents are getting their decisions right).

The final match, Boris and Arno went to the gym to work out. This match was against India, and Joey and J.C. had a very nice card, with basically one -200 in a silly slam that drifted two off, and an otherwise excellent card. Fred and Don bounced back from their match against USA 1 and had another super card, doing everything right. We won 56-14 (other than the slam swing the boys gave up only 1 IMP) which was just enough for the full 25-5 VP win.

A hand where Joey and J.C. stayed out of trouble:

......98
......---
......KQT76
......AKQ974

AQ6..............J743
AT87432..........K
A95..............J32
---..............JT863

......KT52
......QJ965
......84
......52

As you can see, the cards are not exactly friendly for N/S. Despite Joey's promising hand as North, it took a turn for the worse when his partner opened 2D, showing 3-9 HCP and at least 5-4 in the majors.

N E S W
2D* P
3C* P P P

Joey bid 3C, which I believe showed some higher interest but was not forcing. (I must admit, I would have come in with 2H on the West hand and been proud of it. 2H is an easy make despite the horrid trump break, and 3H can be made). In any case, Joey couldn't make 3C and went down 2, but that was good enough for 9 fat IMPs when our teammates doubled 5C and set it 3 tricks for +500. It's a good system that lets you stop in 3C on these cards. Now, we need to find a system that lets you stop in 1C!

Here's an interesting defensive hand by Joey and John:

......J9875
......T3
......K72
......AJ2

4................AKQ32
QJ94.............K5
AT654............QJ8
Q74..............K53

......T6
......A8762
......93
......T986

The auction by E/W, with N/S silent:

W E
P 1C*
2D*2S
3H 3N
P

1C was 17+ HCP, and 2D was a natural game forcing positive response.

J.C. led the cT, and when declarer called small from dummy, Joey found the good play of the cJ. After winning the dK, Joey returned a heart to John's Ace, who lost no time putting the c9 on the table. Declarer guessed wrong, playing the cQ, and thanks to Joey's earlier cJ play the defense was able to run the clubs for one down and 11 IMPs.

Did you notice something about the hand? Put yourself in the defenders' shoes. If you were sitting there with, say, J9xxx Tx Kxx xxx, would you really return the hT when in with the dK? Surely you would just return a club to establish partner's suit and hope he held a spade entry. And if you didn't want to return a club, setting up the cQ, surely you would return a spade, not a pointless heart. So the cA is surely offside at least 95% of the time, and declarer's correct play was to duck the club, blocking the suit.

This is where the hand gets fascinating. Instead of returning the hT to put J.C. in immediately, North can work out that South is very unlikely to have 9 running tricks on a spade return (South would have to play the sT from a holding such as AKQTx, which is very bad play and thus very unlikely). So on a very high level North should return a spade to avoid giving away the club position.

A slam missed by the Indian pair that was bid by Don and Fred:

AKT42
KJ
7
AT763

Q
3
AK9432
KJ954

The Indian auction:

S N
1D 1S
2C 2H*
3D 4C
5C P

This auction lost its way when South rebid 3D, and North surely should have bid 6C over 5C at the end, but I still give most of the blame to South, for perpetrating an auction where he implied a 1=2=6=4 roach with two little hearts, thus giving North a problem.

So after today we managed to increase our lead on Italy, and in fact Indonesia slipped ahead of them into 2nd place, 36 VPs behind us. It would take a miracle (not the good kind) at this point for us not to finish first.

Finishing first in the RR is a large advantage, but not as much as it was in previous years. In 2005, if you finished first you could not only choose your quarterfinal opponent, but your semi-final opponent as well. This year, you merely choose which other match you want your semi-final opponent to come out of, and you have to do it in advance. This is significantly less of an edge, but it's still far, far, better than being in any place other than first.

Let me clarify this. Let's say (this is all hypothetical at this point) the matchups are:

Canada-China
Indonesia-Poland
Italy-USA1
France-USA2

We would get to select from which other match the winner of our match would play in the semifinal. So, for example, in this scenario we could pre-select Indonesia-Poland to ensure avoiding any USA team until the final.

Tomorrow we have USA2 in the morning, followed by Brazil and France. A tough day, with all 3 teams in the top 8, and Brazil fighting for the 8th spot. Actually, Brazil and China play each other in the final RR match, which could make for superb drama because right now they are neck and neck for the last spot!

The standings:

1. Canada.....353
2. Indonesia..317
3. Italy......314
4. France.....313
5. USA 2......310
6. USA 1......300
7. Poland.....298
8. Brazil.....294
-----------------
9. China......291
10.Australia..286

Eleventh place is too far out to matter.

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Seven

2007-10-04T23:29:00.000-04:00

Today was the fifth day of RR play out of seven days. Susie wasn't feeling great so she stayed in bed while I trekked over to the convention center courtesy of the free shuttle (the ceiling on the van/bus is so low you practically have to crawl in the aisle!).

First of all, I'm VERY happy to report on the Canadian women's team. Although they looked like a write-off after the first few days of their event, in reality they were just giving the other teams a head start to even the playing field. They have been on fire the past few days, and have showed real character by playing themselves back into contention. In fact, they are tied 6/8 with USA2 and England, 10 VP ahead of ninth! I, and all the other Canadians here, couldn't be more pleased and are immensely rooting for the women.

On to the seniors.

There was a scoring error in Italy's last match yesterday, apparently, and they won the twelfth match 18-12 rather than 16-14, so it turned out we were in a dead heat with them going into our match this morning.

Don and Fred got their first ever taste of the hot Vugraph lighting as they lined up to play against the Italians in the Vugraph open room. I kibitzed Joey and J.C. in the closed room and they played very well. However, the Italians played quite well also which usually makes for a close match. I thought Joey and John had the better of it (they made fewer mistakes) but it ended up pretty even. Fred and Don had another decent set and we won by 12 IMPs, which translated to 18-12 in VPs.

A great hand: actually, it's a complex play problem so I won't try to put it in the blog, but John Carruthers found a very sweet defense on the final board of the match to set 1NT for +100 and +3 IMPs rather than -3 IMPs vs the passout at the other table. The defense involved squeezing declarer at trick 8 and then working it out and endplaying him to allow Joey to score the setting trick. It was fun to watch. This 6 IMP swing was pivotal, as it occurred against Italy and would have turned our 18-12 win into a narrow 16-14 win.

Don and Fred wanted to go out with Fred's wife, Sheila, for lunch (where's Boris?), but Arno wanted them to wait until Boris arrived because he couldn't get in touch with him in the morning (where's Boris?). Eventually I went over to the host hotel to try to call Boris at the Sofitel (where the heck is Boris??), but no answer. Eventually he showed up, red and perspiring, having just worked out at the hotel across the street. You don't get muscles like his from drinking beer and watching TV, you know.

The second match of the day was against South Africa. Joey and John seemed to have found their rhythm so it seemed like a good idea to put them in for this match. South Africa is the weakest team in the event and Joey and J.C. could smell blood after they saw how their opponent declared the first board. It's important to beat the weaker teams as badly as you can, because those extra Victory Points really help cushion a bad or unlucky set later (as well as helping keep pace when the other contending teams run up a big score against the weak teams). Boris and Arno had sort of a flattish set against their pair, but that was at least partly because most of the major decisions were in the N/S direction and the South Africans got a few of their huge-IMP (read: slam) decisions right.

I could tell when I was watching them that Joey and J.C. were working very hard in this match; they both wanted the full 25 and did not want to leave a single IMP on the table.

Well, they didn't. Despite Boris and Arno's flattish card we still won by 50 IMPs! Joey and J.C. did everything right, and were given some juicy gifts along the way by their inexperienced opponents. Here in particular is by far the best bid hand of the tournament so far (in my opinion anyway):

Q
QJ8
JT8xx
Jxxx

A9xx
AKT97
AQx
A

Does this look like an easy slam to get to? I think not. It seems darn near impossible to get to intelligently, but our boys managed it such:

Joey J.C.
1H 2H
2S 3H
4D 5H(!)
6H P

Brilliantly done and +1430 when the hand was not unfriendly. The only other team to bid it was China in their match against Italy (well, Thailand N/S bid it, but their auction was 1H-2H-6H).

Speaking of China and Italy, China managed to blitz Italy 25-3! All of a sudden, we had gone from being tied with Italy to being more than a full match ahead of 2nd place!

Joey and J.C. were drained after the South Africa match, having poured so much effort into it, so they took the evening off while "Barno" and "Hofsky" (doesn't have the same ring as "Meckwell" does it?) duked it out with the Danes.

I'm happy to report that things went well, Fred and Don having their usual +1.18 butler card, and we won 21-9 in VPs. The Italians also won 21-9, and both USA teams won slightly bigger than that, so we didn't gain any more ground -- but we didn't lose any either.

Our fate is in our hands now. The players have done remarkably well to have put themselves in this position, and now we just have 6 more matches to survive. Unfortunately there are no more easy teams (we play USA1, Argentina, India tomorrow, and USA2, Brazil, France the final day) so we can't coast. If we need it, we do have the 28 VP cushion over second that will hopefully let us retain the #1 seed for the KO phase.

Having the #1 seed is a real bonus in this type of event: In the quarter-finals, you can choose from any of the 5th-8th seeds, and assuming that you win that match, you choose from any of the remaining 3 teams to play against in the semi-finals (ok, if both USA teams survive they must play each other as stipulated by the rules). I think our team is starting to wake up and get that calm, confident (but never cocky) realization that the team to beat in this event isn't Italy, or USA, or Poland -- it's us.

We're on Vugraph the first match again tomorrow (today for our North American readers) at 11pm EST. You'll see Boris and Arno as well as the redoubtable Fred and Don so make sure to tune in for that.

Standings:

1. Canada......295
2. Italy.......267
3. France......265
4. Poland......264
5. USA 1.......259
6. Indonesia...258
7. USA 2.......253
8. Australia...245
9. China.......240
10.Brazil......236

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Six

2007-10-03T21:29:00.000-04:00

Today was the fourth day of Round Robin play in all three World Championship events. On a high note, the Canadian Seniors team was now the only remaining undefeated team in any event! As a bonus, today we had one of our least gruelling schedules -- at least in theory.

I decided that Don and Fred, having played so well (and 5 matches straight) deserved a break, so I gave them the first two matches off today.

In the first match, against New Zealand, Joey and J.C. had quite a solid card (it butlered nicely too -- make sure you check out all the butler scores at www.swangames.com, if you have a mind for statistics you'll love it), and although Boris and Arno weren't quite as good we still managed to win by 12 IMPs which translated to a nice 18-12 VP victory. In fact, Italy lost 20-10 to Poland, so we were actually in the lead for the first time! It feels good to see your team atop the leaderboard, believe me.

Here's a hand where Joey and J.C. did very well:

......92
......AJ2
......Q84
......KQT95

AKQ873.........6
T6..................875
A....................KJT65
6432..............AJ87

......JT54
......KQ943
......9732
......---

With everyone vulnerable, the auction went:

N E S W
-- -- -- 1S
X 1N 4H 4S
P P X AP

J.C.'s "who knows who can make what" 4H bid stampeded West into a discretion, and killer defense made the New Zealand pair pay the full price. Joey started cK, and J.C. ruffed out dummy's cA. A low heart over to the hJ was followed by the cQ and cT ruffing out the cJ. Another heart to the Ace followed by the c9 meant +800 for the defense which translated to 12 IMPs against Boris and Arno's -100.

We were atop the leaderboard and about to play Guadeloupe (various team members mispronounced this as "guacamole" and "cantaloupe"); life was rosy, right? Then disaster struck. Well, "disaster." If you call finally losing a match narrowly a disaster.

Guadeloupe played reasonably well and in luck which is key in these short matches. You can see from our track record over 12 matches that success comes in fits and starts; sometimes your opponents play well and keep a match close, sometimes the luck is against you and keeps the match close, and sometimes things are going your way and you win 25-1 or 23-7 against a tough team. Over the course of a 336 board Round Robin, however, these things tend to even out in favour of the better teams. You can see the teams near the top have plenty of 16, 17, 25, 15, 15, 23 etc .. while the teams further down may have 16, 13, 25, 5, 12, 9 etc.

In any case, we lost this match by 11 for a 13-17 VP loss. With Italy winning fairly big over Germany and both USA teams winning we were in danger of slipping down the standings if things started to go awry.

Not to worry. We brought in our ringers (Fred and Don are comfortably leading the overall butlers, by the way, out of 65+ pairs) and they had a dazzling set (it was an absolute tour de force and a treat to kibitz) with 15 plus scores and 1 minus score (in a game where trumps broke badly).

A nice slam they bid to pick up 13 IMPs:

x
AKQJx
98x
xxxx

Kxx
---
AKQJxxx
AJx

At both tables, the auction started

N E S W
-- -- 1D 2S
3H ?

At our table, the Chinese player bid 3S, and eventually Fred blasted out 6D which was laydown. Boris found a 4C bid here on KQTx and the Chinese pair both took conservative views after that to stop in 5D. Boris' nuisance 4C bid threw a monkey wrench into the Chinese bidding for a well-earned 13 IMP team effort.

We won 66-9 which translated to a 25-3 VP thrashing. Italy had a close 16-14 VP win over New Zealand so we reclaimed the top spot for now, and much more importantly, ended the day on a high note to completely erase the memory of the Guadaloupe match. In long events, it is inevitable that there will be bumps in the road, and it's very important to keep an even keel and not self-destruct. The best players are very good at this, and in fact, I think this is why you often see the Nickell team charge out of nowhere (this event being a case in point; they have played themselves back into KO contention).

In any case, tomorrow we have a big match against Italy and they are putting it on the vugraph theatre. I think that's BBO so try to stay up and watch it, it starts at 11pm eastern time folks!

1. Canada.....231
2. Italy......229
3. USA 1......213
4. USA 2......210
5. Indonesia..207
6. Poland.....203
7. France.....199
8. Australia..197
9. Egypt......192
10.Brazil.....188

Susie has also uploaded some new photos from her day sightseeing, so visit the photo album if you are interested!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Five

2007-10-02T20:22:00.000-04:00

Today was the third day of Round Robin play in the World Championships. Our open and women's teams continued to struggle and have played themselves into a corner: it would take a miracle at this point for either team to qualify for the Knockout phase. Our team, however, is a different story.

With Don Piafsky and Fred Hoffer playing so well over the past two days, I decided to play them all three matches today and ride their streak. Of course, this meant that somebody had to play only one match today, and Joey and J.C. took the news with their customary grace (besides, how can anybody be unhappy when their teammates are playing so well?).

In the first match, Joey and J.C. squared off against a tough Australia squad. At their table were Ron Klinger (of bridge flipper fame) and Zoltan Nagy. Joey and J.C. played a tough, solid game, but the Australians weren't giving much away either. Here was the pivotal deal that allowed us to pull out a win in the match:

......Jx
......AQ9xxxx
......x
......Jxx

QTxxx............A9xx
---..............Kx
AQx..............KT8xx
KTxxx............Ax

......Kx
......JTxx
......J9xx
......Qxx

With all vulnerable, Joey chose to open the North hand with 3H. The auction proceeded:

N E S W
3H X 4H 5H
P 6D P P
P

On the hJ lead this contract quickly went two down. Our teammates of course played in spades, and although they stopped in 4S for +680 this was good enough for a 13 IMP pickup and a 5 IMP win in the match, 16-14 in VPs.

Here was an absolutely wild board that was a push in our match, but was a major swing board in many other matches:

......Jx
......QJTxxx
......Axx
......Ax

Axxx............QT9xx
---..............K
JTxx............KQ9xxx
JT9xx.........K

......Kx
......A9xxxx
......---
......Qxxxx

In our match, both E/W pairs took insurance by sacrificing in 6S. Neither North player found a diamond lead so that was +300 for a push. And right E/W was! Because of the singleton cK (I overheard Alan Sontag raving about a "2.5% slam") 6H was frigid!

After this round we were back in 4th place, although it was a real dogfight from 2nd down to about 6th.

In the 2nd round of the day, round 8 total, we played against a tough Poland squad. We subbed Boris and Arno in for Joey and J.C. and they had a nice set. Fred and Don continued their impressive play with a huge round where they did nothing wrong (okay, about 3 IMPs in overtricks but EVERYTHING else right) to finish with a +1.77 Butler for the round. A huge Butler score is particularly impressive against a tough team because they generally don't give away the ridiculous swings that very weak teams do, which is the usual result of a huge butler score.

In any case, we killed Poland 54-22 for a 23-7 VP win. Don't look now but we were in 2nd place, a hair ahead of third.

The fourth match was against Germany. They had won both their previous matches today by the full 25 so I was a little worried that we were catching a team in full heat. When I found out that they had been playing against New Zealand and Guadaloupe, I relaxed a bit. It turns out I needn't have worried. Both tables put on a clinic and Germany was lucky to escape with a single VP! Fred and Don were extremely solid with 3 enormous boards, and Boris and Arno had a huge rockcrusher. We ended up winning 75-6 for a 25-1 VP win.

Here are two great slams, one from each Canadian pair in this match. Very few pairs out of the entire three events were able to bid these, so our boys really did quite well.

First, Don and Fred in action to get to 6S:

ATxx
Ax
QT9xxx
A

KQJxxxx
xx
x
KTx

1D-1S
3S-4C
4H-4NT
5D-6S
P

The magic fit meant +1430 and 13 IMPs.

Now, Boris and Arno:

1D-2C
3C-3S
4H-4NT
5C-5D
6C

x
ATx
ATxxxx
Axx

AQ9x
xx
KJ
KJT9x

5C showed 3 keycards, 5D asked for the cQ, and Arno gave up on a grand slam when Boris denied the cQ. The friendly trump lead and dQ falling meant +940 and 11 IMPs versus the +400 recorded at the other table in 3NT, just making.

The happy news is that we are now comfortably ensconced in 2nd place. We have yet to play USA1, USA2, or Italy, but we came through one of our toughest days today in sparkling form, scoring 16, 23, and 25 VPs for a total of 64/75 VPs. And better yet, we have yet to lose a match!! Halfway through the RR we are a spectacular 7-0-2.

The leaderboard halfway through:

1. Italy... .181
2. Canada... 175
3. USA 1... 164
4. Indonesia 159
5. Egypt ....157
6. Australia 154
7. USA 2 ....153
8. Poland ...150
9. Brazil... 147
10.France... 143
11.China ....134

Wish us luck tomorrow as we try to cement our position!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Four

2007-10-01T23:03:00.000-04:00

Today was our second day of Round Robin play in the 2007 Bridge World Championships. Yesterday we went 1-0-2 with two ties and a win, to end the day sitting with 50 VPs.

Today was even better. We started out in the morning against China Hong Kong, a last-minute replacement for Pakistan. I kibitzed Joey Silver and John Carruthers, who played well -- but the Hong Kong pair played quite well also. At the other table, Boris and Arno had a great set against a very weak pair and we won 52-23 for a 22-8 VP win. This vaulted us up to 5th place overall (8 qualify for the KO round).

In the second match, Fred Hoffer and Don Piafsky and Joey and J.C. squared off against a hardened Swedish team. Both pairs had some good results and a couple bad ones, and we ended up winning 34-29 for a 16-14 edge in VPs. Somehow this pushed us up to 4th place overall.

In the final match of the day, Joey and J.C. took a snooze in the vugraph room (actually, J.C. snoozed and Joey schmoozed, doing vugraph). We played against a very weak Thailand team. What could have been a 25-0 rout ended up being a comfortable 23-7 VP victory for Canada when Boris and Arno had a few rocky boards.

Here's a difficult grand slam:

QJ873
A
A2
A6542

AT
KQJ764
95
KQT

Can you produce a realistic auction to the grand slam (around 70%)? It's even somewhat tricky to get to a small slam. Our boys bid:

1S 2H
3C 3H
4H 4S
5D 5H
P

I think both North and South should have taken the push at the end, but 7 was never in the picture. Surely nobody did anything ridiculous and I have a lot of sympathy for their result. Well, the Thai pair bid and made 7H on this hand so we lost 14 IMPs.

Another wild hand:

Don Piafsky picked up

AQ2
---
Q7432
AKQJ4

and heard this auction (believe it or not):

2H P 6H ?

!!

He chose to double, and the full auction:

2H P 6H X
P P XX P
P P

Declarer could have made the hand but it would have required mirrors. The full deal:

......AQ2
......---
......Q7432
......AKQJ4

KJ8754.......6
A652.............KJT873
A98...............K65
---...............752

......T93
......Q94
......JT
......T9863

How on earth West divined that his partner had the spade singleton, dK, and a strong enough heart suit is beyond me, but he really did redouble 6H. Fred led the cT, ruffed, and declarer called the s4 from dummy. Don Piafsky must have nerves of steel, because after only a second of thought, he played the s2 on it! (Not that it mattered much, as North can always continue clubs if he pops sQ, requiring declarer to run the hJ through South on the first round of trumps). Eventually declarer went down one for an unusual +200 and 13 IMPs to the good guys.

Actually, did you notice something funny about this hand? Despite doubling the contract, Don didn't take a single trick!! Fred was kind enough to score both tricks against the redoubled slam. What a partner!

Remarkably, despite winning 23-7, we actually slipped two positions in the standings. The current standings in the Senior division:

1. USA 1 124
2. Italy 116
3. Egypt 113
4. USA 2 112
5. Australia 112
6. Canada 111
7. Poland 107
8. Indonesia 104
9. France 94
10. Brazil 92
11. India 87

We are 17 VPs ahead of the last qualifying spot, which is not a bad place to be. We have yet to play South Africa, Guadaloupe, or any number of other struggling teams, although we also have yet to play 5 of the 7 teams sharing the KO places with us currently. Unfortunately the Canadian Women and Open teams are struggling so it looks like it may be up to us to keep Canada's medalling hopes alive. Wish us luck!

We will be uploading our photos from the trip so far to our Shanghai photo album later tonight and will continue updating to that album as the trip goes on.

Team Canada:

L to R (Boris Baran, Arno Hobart, Joey Silver, Don Piafsky, Fred Hoffer, John Carruthers. Kneeling: NPC Daniel Korbel.)

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Three

2007-09-30T21:31:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to access the internet effectively here in China. Blogspot.com is semi-blocked; it comes up, slowly, but without any words. All captions and links are simply question marks: ??????. Susie has a livejournal account which she normally writes in daily as well, but that site is completely banned from China. I guess they really don’t like blogs over here.

In any case, because of our difficulties we cannot see or edit our entries, or add the pretty BBO-style hand records to the entries. If anything is amiss we apologize, but we won’t be able to fix and edit until our return.

Today was our first day of Round Robin play.

In the first match, at 11:00am we played against the Japanese. Our team was a little soft on a few hands and we ended up winning by 1, which equates to a 15-15 VP tie on the WBF scale.

The second match started at 2:20pm. In this match we played against the Indonesian team, whose members are the very same that used to compete strongly for the Bermuda Bowl since the 1970s (Sarwul, Manoppo, Lasut, etc.) In any case, both tables had one terrible board but were otherwise good, and we ended up tying them as well! So now we sit at 30 VP out of a possible 50 VP, with 30 being average.

Actually, this match presents a great opening lead problem which Arno solved, sitting West:

S T
H Q98532
D A6
C KJ98

The auction:

W N E S
-- -- -- 1C*
1H 2D P 2S
P 3S P 4NT
P 5C P 6NT
P P P

What would you lead on this auction? (1C was strong and artificial, 16+ HCP).

In perfect tempo, Arno had the c8 on the table, and this was the full deal:

J943
A
QT9752
Q2

T…………..….65
Q98532…..T7
A6…………..843
KJ98……….T76543

AKQ872
KJ64
KJ
A

Arno’s Indonesian screenmate, upon inspecting dummy, and then reinspecting Arno’s lead, and then reinspecting dummy, made a big charade of clapping his forehead and looking like a doomed man (all for entertainment’s sake). He quickly went five down for -500 (he could have held it to -300). Great lead by Arno! He knew it was the “right” lead and found the courage to lead from KJxx against 6NT. He told me later that “I was leading a club against 6S so I have to lead one against 6NT on this auction.”

In the final match against Egypt, both Piafsky-Hoffer and Hobart-Baran were solid and we won by 21 for a 20-10 VP victory.

This leaves us with 50 VP out of a possible 75 VP, which is not a bad start to the event (although it could have been more). The top 8 teams out of 22 qualify for the KO phase, so we will really have to beat up on the weaker teams in the event. Tomorrow we play against Pakistan, Sweden, and Thailand, and hopefully we can get close to the full 25 VP against Thailand and hold our own against Sweden.

If you'd like to follow the scores and Butlers in the individual matches, visit this website.

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl, Day Two

2007-09-29T21:27:00.000-04:00

We've arrived here in Shanghai! Yesterday was pretty much a nonentity because of jet lag- I didn't even manage to stay awake long enough to attend the team dinner.

Today was the opening ceremonies of the event. Unfortunately we have no photographs to share. After the ceremonies, there was a lovely buffet dinner served at the Convention Centre.

Tomorrow, the bridge starts, and we'll be updating more frequently!

Two good slams from BBO

2007-09-21T15:10:00.000-04:00

A couple nights ago David Grainger and I played for a few hours on BBO. There were two good slam hands dealt to us that I'd like to share with you. (Sorry we haven't been posting much -- all's quiet on the bridge front at least til next week! Make sure to check back for our hopefully daily Shanghai updates).

The first slam was a nice system win for us :

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the modern strong 2/1 style is the inability to bid 2C on hands like the North hand here. This is why David and I play that jump shifts into a minor are invitational with a good suit. As it turns out, on this deal that is music to South's ears. My 4C bid was forcing, and David's 4S bid was also forcing (we give up backing into a 4S contract on this auction as it seems far less important than being able to cuebid opener's suit when opener wants to play in clubs. Perhaps the strongest treatment would be 4-of-opener's-major regressive, 4NT a cuebid).

In any case, when I invited a grand slam, David had no trouble realizing the enormous value of his sK and solid clubs and jumped to 7C. You can see that 7NT is the best contract but 7C is pretty darn good and duly made. I was worried about David having AQJxxx or AQT9xxx of clubs with a singleton sK, where 7NT will be significantly worse than 7C on a spade lead. Note that despite having a longer spade fit, 7S fails on a club lead because the communication is disrupted.

The second hand is interesting both from a bidding as well as a play point of view.

Could you bid these cards to the best contract of 6H? I think at some point that North should realize his two aces and heart honour are golden cards if South shows slam interest opposite a limited response. But, obviously South can't drive past 4H without help from his partner.

In any case, the lead is the dJ. What is the right line of play?

I'll give you a few days to mull this over and then post my results (yes I spent an hour or two calculating the different lines in the wee hours of the night!)

North Bay Recap

2007-08-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

Jonathan and I had a very good tournament in North Bay, winning two KO events and also winning the tournament masterpoint race with 64.97 points each.

The two final matches in the Fri/Sat KO were especially satisfying. In the semi-finals we played against the always-tough John Rayner team (Martin Hunter, Eric Shepherd, John Duquette), and through solid play at both tables beat them by 40. Dave Colbert and Mike Cafferatta, our teammates, played exceptionally well in that match.

In the final match we played against Bob Hollow - Malcolm Ewashchiw / David Sabourin - Paul Hardy. It was not their best-played match and we ended up winning by 65.

Jonathan made a couple of sweet opening leads this week, whether by luck or by design. Two in particular won game swings:

After overcalling a light 2D white/red, Jonathan found himself defending 4Sx. A heart lead looks normal, but Jonathan led the dK after a little thought -- right he was! Only a non heart lead defeats the contract, as declarer can't both lead toward the hK (for his ninth trick) and ruff a heart (for ten).

The full deal:

The second deal was against John Rayner and Martin Hunter. Here is Jonathan's hand and the auction:

What would you lead? I must confess, I would probably lead a club. A club was in fact led at the other table and our teammate had no difficulty going +420. Jonathan, however, found the devastating lead of the sJ and declarer could not make his contract, as he couldn't manage a ruff in either hand in time for a tenth trick.

The full deal:

There was one match where my RHO had two eight-card heart suits in a row, and we had two 6-6 fits in the same set of 13 boards! As you might expect, a lot of IMPs were scored in that match.

Here is a hand where we successfully played in notrumps despite holding a 12 card fit:

As you can see, 4S is cold despite East-West's meager total of 14 HCP. I, as South, had a suspicion that either 4S or 4NT would be easy to make, so I pulled Jonathan's double to 4NT. This is in fact down one for -100 against good defense, but the defenders lost their way: Jonathan was able to deduce from their discards that the hA was offside, and in the endgame cashed dA and exited with a diamond to East, who was caught napping with his dK and was forced to let Jonathan score the hK for a sweet +630.

More hands to come as I remember them, I'm exhausted right now so it's time to stop for the night.

Signatures

2007-08-20T13:34:00.000-04:00

We've had a few questions in the past about who writes which entries in the blog. Until now, you've had to read the entry carefully; whomever was referred to in the third person wasn't writing the entry!

To make it a little easier for our readers, we've set up a second Blogger account for Dan. Now, the signature at the bottom of the entry will show who has written it.

This won't work for any previous entries because now they'll all look like I wrote them, and you'll still have to read the entry to see who actually did write it. But all future entries will be correctly labelled.

Hope that helps!

North Bay Regional, Day One

2007-08-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

Dan and Jonathan Steinberg are currently attending the North Bay regional, and played today in the Open Pairs. Unfortunately as we all know, matchpoints is a game of errors, and if your opponents aren't making any you are unlikely to win. Their opponents today were quite good with the exception of this one hand, where good defense made a bad bid pay.

The auction went:

How many of you agree with Dan's 1S opening bid? I like it because despite the 22 HCP, there are a lot of holes. Partner needs to have some cards or a good fit with you to make game, so I think opening at the one level is a better choice than a forcing 2C opening bid, especially since your hand is not that easy to describe afterwards.

Matchpoints can be a sick game. Vulnerable versus not, West chose to overcall 2H as a passed hand, and ran into Dan's takeout double, which Jonathan was happy to convert for penalties. He chose to lead the sJ, which was covered by dummy's king and Dan's ace. Dan cashed the sQ, and led the suit preference s9 for Jonathan to ruff. Jonathan dutifully returned the dQ, which Dan overtook to cash the hA, removing dummy's trump, and played another spade. Declarer sluffed a club loser, and Jonathan pitched his last diamond. Dan played his fifth spade and declarer and Jonathan both discarded clubs. Dan continued with the dJ, which was ruffed and overruffed, and Jonathan led the cK which Dan overtook again to play the dA, giving Jonathan a trump promotion for down five, +1400.

Even at this vulnerability, 1400 wasn't a top! On the lucky lie of the cards with both black suits breaking 3-3, a grand slam is possible, even though single dummy it's a terrible contract.

Here's a play problem that we're interested in hearing responses to.

All vulnerable, the bidding goes:

And this is what you see:

The opening lead is the dQ which holds the trick, and West continues a low diamond to East's king, which you ruff. Plan the play.

Late-Night BBO Bridge Match

2007-08-11T01:04:00.001-04:00

Tonight Susie and I decided to play bridge, and we ended up playing for about 2 hours. We were really on tonight and could hardly do anything wrong. Well -- with one exception, which I'll show you in a moment.

First, a pretty defense:

We were playing in a team game against Justin Lall and Arend Bayer, with Barry Goren and Ron Smith as teammates in the other room.

Because of my heart length, I decided I could safely infer that Justin was putting down a very strong hand in dummy, and not a weakish hand based on a heart fit. As such, a club lead seemed dangerous to me and I decided to stay more passive with a diamond lead.

When I saw dummy, I was wishing I had led a club -- that is, until Susie played the dT under the dA, strongly implying the sK and not the cK (standard suit preference). Anyway, Arend guessed to run the hQ (which I of course allowed to hold) and returned to hand with the cK. After leading hA, hJ, I won the hK and still had my little 7 of hearts. the cQ now stuck him on the board, and Arend did the best he could by cashing exactly one diamond, throwing his club loser, and ruffing a club back to hand and drawing the last trump. This was the position at trick 9, East to lead:

When Arend led a low spade from hand, watch what happened as I rose sA and played my good club: he couldn't discard anything from dummy! A spade lets Susie claim with the sKT, and a diamond lets her claim with the sK and d9. Squeezing the dummy is not a very common occurrence and it was especially fun to execute one after I (luckily?) avoided a club lead. (In fact, squeezingthedummy.blogspot.com is the name of Justin's blog site).

Another cute hand from that match:

Justin was a little drunk (okay, more than a little) and decided to try his hand with a blatant psyche. Actually, observe how brilliantly it would have worked had our diamonds been 5-3 instead of 6-2! We could easily have been defending 2D, cold for 11 tricks in the suit!

Here was an interesting deal. I am not sure if we were lucky or inspired. You can be the judge.

In our style, we tend to skip a 4-card diamond suit much of the time, so I felt comfortable raising 1D to 2D rather than rebidding 1NT on Qx and xxx in the majors. We bid the same way if the response is one-of-a-major, so what's the difference? I'm sure 97% of modern players would not raise to 2D, and that's fine -- it's just our style to bid that way.

I think Susie bid her hand very well. The last guess was mine and I guessed to bid 3NT. Having not bid 2NT over 2S, I knew that Susie was unlikely to play me for a lot in hearts, so if she had a small singleton or perhaps even a small doubleton she would know to play in a minor suit. Luck was with us when hearts broke 4-3 (a 62% chance) and we won a game swing when Josh and Joon played 5D, off the first three heart tricks.

And finally, something painful:

Arend decided to create some action by opening the East cards with 4C. Would anybody not overcall 4S? Then, to add insult to injury, Justin found an excellent double. The defense didn't slip a trick and when the smoke cleared it was -800. Hey, that's bridge, right? If there weren't IMPs and matchpoints to be had everywhere, it would be a dull game. Like euchre!

Shanghai Bermuda Bowl

2007-07-31T22:00:00.000-04:00

Dan will be the NPC of the 2007 Canadian Seniors team going to the Bermuda Bowl in Shanghai! The team includes John Carruthers, Joey Silver, Don Piafsky, Boris Baran, Arno Hobart, and Fred Hoffer. The Bermuda Bowl takes place from September 29th to October 13th.

We're looking forward to some excellent bridge and the great sights in Shanghai! We'll be bringing along our laptop, and we will do a Bermuda Bowl bridge blog, Canadian perspective. Don't forget to check our travel blog as well for stories and photos from sightseeing!

Nashville NABC, Recap

2007-07-31T14:54:00.000-04:00

Well, the tournament is over and it went better than Jonathan or I could have expected. We both had our most successful tournament ever, making the final day of the 3-day LM pairs, coming 2nd in the Wernher Open Pairs, coming 7th in the NABC Fast pairs, and coming 8th in the regional swiss at the end (woohoo!). I also came 2nd in a morning KO which is why I finished with a few more masterpoints than Jonathan (161.18 to 148.58). We were #1 and #2 in our district.

Actually, the final two days we decided to play in a KO with Chuck Said and John Russell, but we were awful in the 2nd match against Jay and Kathy Baum and Joan Eaton + partner (I threw 22 IMPs away myself) and we lost by 9. Yuck.

We played better in the regional swiss on the Sunday, with Lars Ericcson and Marjorie Michelin, having only one poorish round (Jonathan and I each missed a vulnerable game) and we came in 8th. Here is a nice hand from the final match (against Bruce Reeve and Sharon Fairchild, fellow board members of Jonathan):

There was nothing to the play and I was soon claimed 12 tricks. The other table stopped in 3NT and we won 13 IMPs.

The auction is the interesting part of this hand; Jonathan, having learned bridge in Montreal, generally always rebids the 4 card suit when he is 6-4 (for example, Kx QJT9xx x AJ9x he would choose a 2C rebid after 1H-1S or 1H-1N), and sometimes you don't need 4! Actually, this is a good weapon to have in your arsenal, if you pick up a hand like AJ8xxx AK5 x AJx, the correct bid after 1S-1N is surely 2C -- if you want partner to respect you in the morning you will avoid jump-rebidding a suit that looks like that!

In any case, a rebid of 3D at his second turn would certainly have been the mainstream action (a few perverts might rebid 2NT) but I personally have no problem with the 2C rebid. You can see how easy the auction was as a result.

Nashville NABC, Day Eight

2007-07-28T00:11:00.000-04:00

Success! Dan and Jonathan Steinberg did have two back to back top ten finishes in National Events!

Today they finished seventh in the Fast Pairs. Congratulations!

Here is a great hand declared by Jonathan (North) during the afternoon session. The auction went:

The layout is:

East led a small spade to the 8 and West's ace. West returned the 9 of spades and Jonathan rose with the king, cashed four rounds of hearts and the KQ of clubs (East showing out), and a diamond to his hand. He then played a diamond to the jack which held, and a club to his hand, squeezing East in diamonds and spades.

This gave him +490 and 41.5 out of 50 matchpoints. Well played! Sometimes the difference between a near-bottom and a near-top is as close as a finesse.

Nashville NABC, Day Seven

2007-07-26T23:44:00.000-04:00

Dan and Jonathan Steinberg are going for back to back top ten finishes- they are currently sitting in 9th place after the first day of the Fast Pairs.

Wish them luck!

Nashville NABC, Day Six

2007-07-26T01:03:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Dan and Jonathan Steinberg on their second place finish in the Wernher Open Pairs!

This photo is from the ACBL Nashville Daily Bulletin, issue #7, page 16.

Here is a hand I declared in the first final session:

And the auction went:

Jon's 2NT bid asked about my hand strength, and my 3H response artificially told him that I had a normal hand at this vulnerability and position (you could argue that I had a minimum but I liked my two aces).

West thought for a few seconds before leading and then led the hK. After his slight tank on lead, I decided that he was unlikely to have hKQJ to lead from, so I thought that the hearts were likely either as they were or with singleton hJ in the East. Anyway, I won the first heart, and banged down sA and another spade, relieved to see spades 2-2. East won the spade, cashed the hJ, and then switched to the dQ.

I was at the crossroads: I was now pretty confident that hearts were 5-2, so East started with 9 minor suit cards. If he had 5 diamonds and 4 clubs, I could play dA-dK-diamond to endplay him into leading into the cAQ, but if East was 2-2-4-5 he could probably let his partner win the third diamond (if they could untangle the suit) and cash a heart -- then I would go down even if the club finesse was working! After long thought (you don't want to get a position like this wrong on a 50 top) I decided to win the dA, noting West's d6, cashed the dA, noting West's dT, and exited a diamond to East and claimed. Not that difficult away from the table, but the agony of buying West with a hand such as JT KQxxx Txx Kxx would have been excruciating, and we would not have finished second in the event. This board was worth 45.5 out of 51 matchpoints.

Actually, our last two rounds in the evening were incredible; we were sitting 13th with two rounds to go and made it all the way up to 2nd when all was said and done! I will show you all four deals (boards 9, 10, 13, 14) and how they matchpointed on a 51 top.

The second-last round was against Jackie Jarigese and Ross Rainwater. Here is the layout:

And the auction went:

Yes, Jonathan's 2NT overcall is a bit perverted, but you can't argue with success. I raised him to 3NT, and Jackie led a low club (!) which allowed Jon to make 4NT when he picked up diamonds. This was worth 50.5 out of 51.

Board 10:

Ross led the cA, as Jackie encouraged with the c7 (standard carding), and Ross switched to a low trump to the hQ and hA. I returned the hJ, Ross winning, and now he fell from grace by playing a diamond. I was easily able to take the remaining tricks, my clubs disappearing on the diamonds. This was worth 49.5 out of 51.

We were up to fourth.

It was the final round. I had left the table and let someone else turn dummy while Jonathan declared the 3NT+1 last round, so I had no idea that it was a super board. Actually, I didn't think we had a chance at a top 5 finish (our game was decent, but we had been 23rd at the half), but I thought a top 10 was likely if things went our way in the last round. (Remember, our last two rounds were super and propelled us a lot of positions upward).

The first deal, with everybody vulnerable:

North/South fell from grace by not doubling our 5D sacrifice. I always find it funny to preempt 4m because Jonathan has told me that he almost never does it and doesn't really know what a 4m preempt looks like, so everytime I do it I show him an 8 card suit or a 7-4 (or 7-5). This time, he knew what to expect and found a great raise to 5D.

As soon as they forgot to double we were getting a decent score; had they doubled, I would have needed to avoid down 3 for -800. North led the sQ, overtaken by South's K as he switched to a low heart in perfect tempo. I thought about this for some time and eventually concluded that there was no way South could ever switch to a heart from the queen here with that menacing hJ in dummy. I therefore rose hK, drew trumps, and conceded -200. This was worth 28.5 out of 51 matchpoints, beating all accelerated auctions but losing to the lucky stiffs who went -170 or (heaven forbid) +100 on our cards.

The final board:

With the West cards, I felt it unlikely that North/South could make 4S (certainly not if Jon led a trump), but didn't feel like staking a huge amount of matchpoints on it if I was wrong. (And yes, South really did pass 2H). In any case, Jon led the expected hK and now declarer could actually make his contract if he could see all our cards! In reality, declarer cashed dummy's dA at trick 2 and ruffed a diamond (I gave false count, d7 then d4). He cashed cA and ruffed a club, then went into the tank. I was ready for him: when he led the dJ from dummy, I played the dT in tempo! This play was irrelevant on this layout, but had declarer had the sJ instead of Jonathan, it would have made a huge difference. In any case, declarer believed me and ruffed low. Jon overruffed and eliminated dummy's last trump, at which point declarer claimed the sAQ for two down.

When I saw later that we were in 4th with a round to go, I was kicking myself for not doubling 4S which would surely vault us to 2nd. As it happened, +100 was worth most of the matchpoints anyway (43.5 out of 51) and we came 2nd, 7 matchpoints ahead of 3rd!

After a sloppy afternoon session, Jonathan and I played super in the evening (all of our bad boards were due to the opponents rather than us).

Nashville NABC, Day Three

2007-07-23T01:01:00.000-04:00

Dan and Jonathan Steinberg qualified for the third day of the Life Master pairs, but unfortunately things just didn't go their way today and they did not finish in the overalls.

Here is a hand that showed how the game was going:

Dan sat South, and N/S was vulnerable on the following auction:

2NT was game forcing. At matchpoints, how do you declare 3NT on the lead of the h7 to the h9 and hQ?

At IMPs, ducking would be clearcut since hearts are 6-2 or 7-1 given West's aggressive bidding. However, at matchpoints, this may not be the correct play. With the dK rating to be onside, or perhaps the hearts 7-1 as a fallback, Dan decided to win the first trick and take the diamond finesse. Unfortunately the dK was offside with hearts 6-2, and 3NT failed.

Hopefully they will have some better luck in a new event tomorrow!

Two hands from BBO

2007-07-12T17:47:00.000-04:00

Last night Susie and I were in the mood for some bridge so we rustled up a game on Bridge Base Online. We played 20 boards and things really went our way so we were up about 60 IMPs. It's important to note that on BBO the standard of the field is incredibly variable, so just being dealt mama-papa games is usually enough to win IMPs against the field, and if anything is at all pushy you're often the only ones bidding and making.

Here are two nice deals, both declared by Susie:

Our opponent Ekinci found the good lead of a heart. Displaying good technique, Susie ducked the first trick, won the second, crossed to the cK, and crossed back to the dA. On the cA, East now followed with the cQ.

Susie ruffed her club loser low in dummy as East discarded his last diamond. Susie now had a 100% solution to make 4S regardless of the layout of the opposing cards: she led dummy's last heart, discarding her last diamond. East won in order to return a trump, but Susie won with the s9 in dummy, ruffed a diamond with the sA, ruffed her cA with the sK, and claimed 4S. Well done!

This next one was a real gem.

We bid to 3NT on the auction shown. Ekinci led a low heart, so unless he was on a four-card overcall, Gyettick could be trusted to have a singleton honour. Sure enough, he played the hJ to the first trick and Susie made her first excellent play of letting West hold the first trick. Although this cost a trick in the heart suit, assuming East had an entry it would save him running 4 tricks -- and in any case, he might be endplayed late in the day to give the hK anyway.

Susie's initial plan was to strip the diamond suit and lead toward the clubs, hopefully either finding a friendly club layout or managing to strip Ekinci's hand of non-hearts in order to endplay him. However, when West returned a diamond at trick 2 and then showed out on the second diamond, a change of plans was in order.

West's discard on the 2nd diamond was the c2, playing upside-down attitude. Susie, therefore, had a strong suspicion where the cQ was. In that case, it was surely much better to lead toward the cT, so she won the second diamond in dummy and led to the cT.

When West rose cQ, the hand was all over. He switched to a spade, but Susie won in hand, played the cT (allowed to hold), crossed to the sK, and drove out the cA for 9 tricks. Had West ducked the cQ, Susie would have had to guess the layout, but she can always survive here even if she plays another club (West is forced to exit a spade, at which point she can play cash her spades and diamonds and exit a heart for a ninth trick).

I thought this a really well-played hand. Well done Susie!

London Regional Recap

2007-07-09T21:42:00.000-04:00

This week I played in the London regional all week with Jonathan Steinberg. As mentioned in the previous entry, we played well on opening day and won the pair game by a margin a little bit bigger than one board.

The rest of the week was not as successful. Playing with Heather Peckett and Mike Petras, we had no luck in the Wed/Thurs KO, losing in the first match to a strong London team. In the Thursday Swiss, we again did not play great and finished nowhere.
In the morning KO, the team lost our 2nd match (against Jade Barrett's team) and again failed to scratch.

In the Friday/Saturday KO the team finally played well and won the opening match by 50 and the second match by 40. However, on Saturday we lost to that same London team that beat us in the first KO! Oh well, at least we scratched.

On the final day, we won our first four matches in the Swiss for a huge score of 114 VPs on the 30 point scale. Unfortunately, we got blitzed by Dave Colbert's team in the 5th match, won a small victory in the 6th match (the cards were completely flat), and in the final match both tables missed a baby slam and we lost by 8 to finish 7th overall (had our teammates bid the slam, we would have been a close 3rd -- 1st and 2nd tied for the event).

Here is the slam hand:

Susie played with Martin Hunter on Saturday and came 3rd in the compact KO. In the final match, her team won by the incredible score of 109-0 (to ZERO!) over 12 boards. I've never heard of a skunking that bad!

In a week I am off to Nashville for the nationals. I'm sure I'll have plenty of hands from that event, provided there is internet access!

London Regional, Day One

2007-07-03T23:36:00.000-04:00

Dan started the tournament off with a bang, winning the pairs game with Jonathan Steinberg. Here's a hand that contributed to their victory:

Their auction went:

Dan, sitting South, chose to rebid 2H since the hearts would be important in a potential slam contract not because he ever planned on playing in hearts. When Jonathan supported spades, Dan started a cuebidding sequence. His 5D bid made it clear that he had no first round control in clubs or hearts but he must have good trumps since he was forcing to the five level. Without the ace of hearts, Jonathan signed off in a small slam.

This board gave them 6.5 out of 8 matchpoints.

Penticton Regional, Recap

2007-06-18T22:27:00.001-04:00

I just returned home from the regional in beautiful Penticton. We had a successful tournament; Jonathan and I won 90 points, winning a KO, coming 3/4th in the morning KO, and coming 3rd in both the Saturday A/X pairs as well as the Sunday A/X Swiss.

On Saturday, we were blowing away the field after the first session with a 69.5% game! That is really a big game in an A/X field. Unfortunately, what we had for dinner didn't agree with Jonathan and we had a poor evening game, but we rode our afternoon session to a comfortable 3rd overall. Congrats to the charming Janet Dunbar who ended up winning the event.

On Sunday, Jonathan and I played very well all day, as did Hendrick and Gerry, and we ended up 3rd overall. Out of 60+ teams in the event, that was pretty solid, especially since a lot of our opponents managed to play well against us, keeping us from getting large scores which are usually necessary to win a large event like this one.

In the final match, we drew Buddy Marsh's team; he is 80 years old but doesn't look or act a day over 65.

Jonathan and I saved our best match of the Swiss for the final round. Here is a great hand from the final match that helped us clinch a high overall in the event:

The deal was:

The bidding went:

I have no idea why Mr. Marsh didn't make a negative double with the West cards; perhaps they play the newfangled "positive" style doubles where 1S shows 4+ spades, but from the lack of alerts it didn't seem that way.

In any case, I had a marginal decision with the North cards over 1S, but really I think not raising hearts is clear with this hand. I doubt anybody would disagree with that. The opponents wended their way slowly upward, eventually creeping doubtfully into game. Because of their slow auction, I decided to double, as it sounded like Jonathan's club values were well placed, and any other tricks he had were probably cashing. Remember, Jonathan was marked with a good hand on our opponents' auction when I have the trashy North cards. On to the play.

I led a heart, and Jonathan won the hA and continued a heart. Declarer immediately took a club finesse and Jonathan started thinking. At this point, he can tell that I have very few highcard values, and I have 3 card heart support yet couldn't scrape up a 2H raise. The inference was clear: I had trumps, and little else. Therefore, playing for another diamond trick seemed pointless, and Jonathan correctly gave declarer a ruff and discard by leading a third round of hearts.

Declarer ruffed this with the s3 in the dummy, throwing a diamond from his hand, and crossed to the cQ in order to lead a diamond to the d8 (not a great play, but it went unpunished with the dJ onside). Jonathan won the dA, and played a 4th round of hearts! Declarer was really cooked now. He elected to throw his last club and ruff with the sT in dummy, as I threw my last diamond away. Declarer now cashed the cJ, and seeing clubs split, played the 4th round. Jonathan now ruffed in with his s8 (I was only a little surprised to see that card) as declarer threw his last diamond, and I underruffed, down to all trumps.

Now that we had given declarer two ruff and discards, Jonathan correctly played a diamond rather than another heart, and I overruffed declarer and exited with a spade to dummy's Ace to wait for my sQ.

That was a sweet +500 and 9 IMPs against the -100 our teammates recorded at the other table. We went on to win the match 18-2 in VPs for a strong finish to the event.

Thanks to Gerry and Hendrick for an enjoyable and successful week. They were great teammates and fine people.

(And yes: for those of you who know Jonathan, you may have suspected correctly that I entered the hands backward as Jonathan would never have allowed anyone else to sit North!)

Penticton Regional, Day Four

2007-06-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

Dan's team is starting to get rolling again, playing in the semifinals of the morning KOs tomorrow against Bruce Ferguson's team, and in the second round of the afternoon knockouts tonight.

Here's an interesting hand from the afternoon knockout match:

The contract was 2H, and Jonathan Steinberg, North, was on play.

The opening lead was the sK, which West overtook with the sA. He returned a spade to the jack and queen, and East played a third round of spades, ruffed by West with the hT.

West played a club to East's ace, and ruffed the fourth round of spades with the hQ. Jonathan overruffed with the hK, and led the first round of trumps from dummy: h2, h3, h5, diamond discard! Great play, and what an interesting first round of trumps in a partscore hand!

Jonathan cashed the cQ, and played dA and a diamond ruff to hand. He cashed the cK and led a club, and East's trumps were pickled. At the table he chose to ruff, and Jonathan discarded a diamond and claimed on an endplay.

Two hearts making two was worth 5 IMPs when 1N failed by two tricks at the other table. You can see that on the N-S cards 2H is a much better contract than 1N, where there are simply no tricks.

Good luck in the money match tonight!

Penticton Regional, Day Three

2007-06-13T19:25:00.000-04:00

Dan is in Penticton right now for the regional, playing with Jonathan Steinberg, Hendrick Sharples, and Gerry Marshall. Unfortunately they are hitting a few bumps (including drawing Mike Passell's team twice!) and having a little trouble building momentum in the team events.

Here is an interesting hand from this afternoon's knockout match:

Dan held the South cards, and Jonathan passed in first chair. When his RHO opened 1D, he felt this was a good time to stick in a 1H overcall, because if his opponents have a 4-4 spade fit this forces his LHO to make a negative double instead of bidding 1S, which results in Dan being on lead instead of his partner. Since Dan's hand was so weak, he thought it made more sense for his hand to be on lead to push into partner's strength. Also, since he was nonvulnerable and his partner a passed hand, the overcall was unlikely to get into trouble.

The negative double he hoped for appeared, along with a surprising but pleasing redouble from partner, showing a heart card! The auction then continued like this:

Dan duly led the jack of hearts, and 4S was held to four. At the other table, Dan's teammates reached the excellent 6S from the correct side, but unfortunately chose a line that did not cater to this lie of the cards.

On the expected club lead, win the ace and run the sJ. Play a second trump to the queen and play a small diamond. At this point, all you need is for diamonds not to be 5-1 offside. Even if South wins the king and switches to a heart, you just rise hA, draw trumps, and claim.

The team is playing in a Swiss tonight, and hopefully will achieve some success!

Waterloo Sectional

2007-06-12T15:05:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, Dan and I played knockouts at the Waterloo sectional with Sean Pryke and John Laufer. It's a nice little tournament with great hospitality and turnout.

The knockouts were structured with 12 board matches in the afternoon, and a 24 board final match.

There weren't a lot of technical interesting hands so instead here is my favourite hand, from the finals, at favorable vulnerability:

And the auction began:

As South, I doublechecked the backs of my cards to see if everyone was playing with the same deck! Then I considered that 5D clearly depended on the number of clubs partner holds, and with the IMP scale in my favour, I decided to redouble. If I got really lucky, maybe the vulnerable opponents would run to 5H!

I don't like East's takeout double since partner is already a passed hand and you have a bare minimum. There's no reason to think that you can take 11 tricks, despite the tempting vulnerability and the worry of being robbed. Sometimes preempts work.

Instead it went all pass, and Dan wrapped up 11 tricks on the cA lead. +800 was a nice result to bring back and it won us 9 IMPs.

We eventually won the knockouts by 49 IMPs after being down 1 at the half.

A Hand on BBO

2007-06-08T22:59:00.000-04:00

Playing a few hours against good friends Fred Lerner and Andy Stark, this gem came up:

Over Fred's 4H, my two choices were 4S and Double; I chose 4S. I chose this action not only to protect my hK from attack, but also because I felt the double would put too much pressure on Susie. Anyway, doubling would have netted an easy +500, but on to the play.

In 4S, my LHO led a diamond, which looked very much like a singleton. The way to make the hand now is practically straight out of a textbook:

I drew trumps, cashed 3 clubs, and led a heart to West. Fred cashed another heart, but on the third heart, I discarded a diamond from my hand rather than ruffing. Having reduced the hands to only diamonds and spades, Fred was endplayed to give a ruffsluff for making 4S. The position is not particularly difficult, especially if you've seen it before, but these things don't really come up that often at the table. Ace and a heart makes the play more difficult, but that lead is a lot easier to find double dummy. Even on Ace and a heart, it is makeable by cashing the Ace of diamonds, drawing trump, and leading the last heart and pitching a diamond from hand.

CNTC Final Results

2007-06-02T23:31:00.000-04:00

It's been a very exciting match- hopefully you watched today on Bridge Base!

I operated vugraph for the two afternoon sessions in the Closed Room, and Dan helped with live commentary in the vugraph room.

Sorry about the lack of hands recently- my laptop was needed for the vugraph operation so I haven't been able to upload any hands. I'll be posting some over the next day or so. For hands from the CNTC finals, visit the Vugraph Library on Bridge Base.

As requested, the result in the Seniors event is Carruthers 114, Jotcham 78. Congratulations to Carruthers!

Frukacz defeated Thurston in the finals of the CNTC 318-259. Good luck in Shanghai!

The COPC champions are:

Kamel Fergani- Pierre Daigneault
Thomas Gandolfo- Maurice De La Salle
David Willis- Bryan Maksymetz

Congratulations to all the participants and thanks to the CBF for holding such a great event. The hospitality was wonderful and everyone had a great time.

COPC, Day One

2007-06-01T23:08:00.000-04:00

Here are the COPC results after two sessions:

Robert Lebi- Dan Jacob 846.62
David Lindop- Jurek Czyzowicz 787.77
Aiden Ballantyne- Katrin Litwin 782.73

It's nice to see two of Dan's teammates finally getting some good luck! Hopefully it will continue tomorrow.

You can get the current results for the CNTC match on Bridge Base. So far Frukacz is playing very well and is leading Thurston by a small margin.

CNTC Finals

2007-06-01T19:45:00.000-04:00

Don't forget to log into BBO to watch the finals of the CNTC on vugraph!

After 3 segments, Frukacz is currently leading Thurston by 11 IMPs.

Winnipeg CNTC Semi-Final Results

2007-06-01T00:48:00.000-04:00

There were two upsets out of three matches tonight.

In the CWTC, the Gordon team fell to Sylvia Caley's team. Congratulations to Isabelle Smith and all her teammates on a solid victory. They won the round robin and won the final match handily. As a member of the losing team remarked to me, "They were just better than us today."

In the CNTC, the Thurston team cruised into the final, beating up on Ballantyne in a match that was never close.

Team Molson unfortunately lost a close match to Frukacz, who made it into the final. Congratulations to all members of that team. They played extremely well against us, and definitely got the better of the luck (although they really did play quite well).

We did bid two ~50% slams and both went down. If either one wins, we win the event. Waldemar and Piotr had an absolutely perfect card against George and Arno in the 3rd quarter to pick up 29 IMPs ( they were up 4 at the half). Although we picked up 19 in the 4th quarter, we couldn't quite manage the victory. Actually, our teammates were in a 50% slam (on a straight finesse for a king), and if that makes, we win handily. There was an appeal pending in case we beat Frukacz which they would likely have won, so the match was really 11 IMPs further a part than it might seem.

Tomorrow David and I are going to play in the COPC. We have played quite well this tournament and are getting along fine. I think this partnership might have a bright future. Wish us luck in the COPC!

CNTC Semifinal Scores

2007-05-31T15:43:00.000-04:00

Here are the results so far, hands will be coming later:

CNTC Semi Finals:

Thurston 67 109
Ballantyne 28 47

Molson 51 81
Frukacz 45 85

CWTC Finals:

Caley 76 118
Gordon 47 91

The CBC radio segment went well, although it was only available locally and unfortunately there is no recording on the internet. It was a lot of fun to be on the radio talking about bridge!

CBC Radio

2007-05-31T01:28:00.001-04:00

If you're in the Winnipeg area, tune into CBC radio tomorrow morning at 8:15am to listen to Susie and Danny Miles be interviewed about junior bridge! CBC Radio is doing a segment on the growing popularity of bridge.

If we can, we'll post a link to the clip later.

Winnipeg Quarterfinal Results

2007-05-31T01:07:00.000-04:00

CNTC:

Thurston 178
Todd 133

Bowman 128
Frukacz 164

Chevalier 162
Ballantyne 170

Molson 146
Nowlan 75

Matches for tomorrow are Molson/Frukacz and Thurston/Ballantyne.

CWTC:

Caley 156
Adachi 128

Gordon 160
Culham 118

Winnipeg CWTC, Quarterfinals

2007-05-30T20:27:00.000-04:00

I've had a request for the current scores in the CWTC- here are the results I have.

Caley 47 76 127
Adachi 38 64 98

Gordon 43 91 125
Culham 42 57 76

I'll update with the finals later.

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Five- Quarterfinals

2007-05-30T19:40:00.001-04:00

Here are the results so far as we have them:

Team 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q
Thurston 29 62 106
Todd 52 87 103

Molson 44 77 146 --
Nowlan 36 64 75 WD

Bowman 34 90 117
Frukacz 20 68 98

Chevalier 48 77 130
Ballantyne 41 71 121

There appears to be an error on the CBF site; these scores have been verified and are correct as of 5pm Winnipeg time.

I also now have 3rd quarter results for Molson, and I will try to update later with results for the other matches and some hands.

Molson really turned on the heat in the 3rd quarter to pick up 69 IMPs and allow only 11. Nowlan has conceded the match- Molson will advance to the semifinals!

Here are some hands from the 3rd quarter:

And the auction went:

After David bid 2S, I knew of the double fit, and I thought that we just might have a game if David had perfect cards. I bid 3S (semi-preemptive, mildly invitational) just in case David could raise to 4S. He knew all his cards were working and took a shot at game. With the friendly layout, 10 tricks were easy and we won 10 IMPs.

This hand drove another nail into Nowlan's coffin:

The auction was not what West wanted to hear after his aggressive preempt.

Our defense was ruthless. David led his singleton heart, and I played the hA (finessing against declarer's queen was very unlikely to gain). I returned the hJ, suit preference for spades, and David ruffed and underled to my sK. I played another heart, ruffed, and David cashed a spade and exited a spade. I won my cK and David still had two trumps to come for +800. Our teammates were +50 against 3NT and that was worth 13 IMPs.

David and I had our best card so far of the tournament this set. It seemed everything we did turned to gold. Hopefully we can build on this momentum and carry some over to tomorrow.

We have the evening off as the opponents withdrew, and will probably head to Tony Roma's for a nice rib dinner, and then head back and watch a movie or the basketball game just to relax.

Winnipeg CNTC, Final Round Robin Results

2007-05-30T00:18:00.000-04:00

There was a surprising upset in the final match of the round robin; unfortunately L'Ecuyer was blitzed and slipped out of qualifying position.

Here are the final standings:

1. Thurston, 407 VPs
2. Molson, 376 VPs
3. Bowman, 362 VPs
4. Chevalier, 351 VPs
5. Nowlan, 351 VPs
6. Todd, 340 VPs
7. Frukacz, 340 VPs
8. Ballantyne, 340 VPs

The next four teams were:

9. L'Ecuyer, 326 VPs
10. Jotcham, 323 VPs
11. Bertrand, 322 VPs
12. Dowdall, 315 VPs

The quarterfinal matchups for tomorrow are Thurston/Todd, Molson/Nowlan, Bowman/Frukacz, and Chevalier/Ballantyne.

There were a few interesting hands from the last match and we'll update when we can. Game time tomorrow is 10am, and Dan and David are sleeping in for the first quarter. I'll post updates as I get them.

Winnipeg CNTC Day 4 (Evening)

2007-05-29T22:22:00.001-04:00

Tonight, in the match after dinner, we played against Waldemar Frukacz's team. The boards were a little flatter than usual, and the biggest swing in our favour was 7 IMPs. However, David and I were flawless on the many partscore deals, and won 5, 7, 1, 6, 6, and 5 IMPs on them. Although there was a 12 IMP swing against us, this was the only adverse swing and was still good enough for a +18 IMP win, which translates into a 20-10 VP victory.

A brutal hand that my RHO opponent had to suffer through:

When I saved in 4S (who knows, once in a while these things even make!), my LHO thought for ages and finally bid 5C. Perhaps the correct call would be a forcing pass, leaving the decision up to his partner.

I led a diamond from the South hand, and David's queen lost to declarer's king. Declarer led the cQ to the cA, and happily tried to cash diamonds to dispose of a spade. It was a shock to him when David ruffed the 3rd diamond!! Now, he cashed the hKQ and tried to overtake the hJ with the hA, but he knew it was in vain and went down one. In order to make this hand, he had to unblock the hKQJ before trying to cash diamonds, but this is only necessary when I have a side 6 card diamond suit, and otherwise may cost the contract whenever I have 4 hearts. We won 5 IMPs on this hand when Arno led a trump against 4Sx and ended up +100.

We are sitting in 2nd place and can't finish any worse than 3rd. David and I are out the final round robin match as well as the 1st quarter tomorrow (we both like to sleep!) Tomorrow the knockout phase starts. We'll let you know the final round robin standings as well as our knockout draw as soon as we know.

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Four (Afternoon)

2007-05-29T16:04:00.001-04:00

In the second match, we played against the Bertrand team. The set looked decent to me and David (we had one clear large swing against us but we did everything else right). We bid a very thin NV 3NT, we jockeyed the opponents to the five level and set them a trick, and we took a successful unfavourable sacrifice against the opponents' game.

However, the big swing at our table ended up being a lose 16 swing. Actually, the opponents stumbled into a lucky 6C and made it, but 6C was never really on our radar (it was impossible to bid intelligently), so even had we played 5C and made it we would have lost 13 IMPs.

In fact, our counterparts at the other table duplicated all of our good results except one! They also bid the thin 3NT, took the unfavourable sacrifice, and duplicated numerous other plus partscore positions. We did pick up 12 IMPs where George and Arno were allowed to play in 4H for +620 where we pushed the opponents up to 5H for -100, but the end result was a loss by 11 IMPs. It's somewhat unusual to have your opponents play so well or luckily as to duplicate your plus positions, but that's bridge. There wasn't really much our team could do in this match, I think.

We received 12 VPs for this round.

After 18 matches, with only 3 left to play, the leaderboard looks like this:

1. Thurston, 345
2. Bowman, 322
3. Molson, 321
4. Todd, 297
5/6 Ballantyne, 296
5/6 L'Ecuyer, 296
7. Chevalier, 295
8/9 Jotcham, 289
8/9 Nowlan, 289
10. Frukacz, 288

Its still a dogfight near the bottom of the qualifiers, and team Molson is in a fight for 2nd place with Bowman. It is unlikely that any of the top three teams will drop lower than 3rd but anything is of course possible.

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Four

2007-05-29T14:14:00.000-04:00

Today's schedule began at 11am versus Laframboise, who was sitting in 21st place. Dan and David had the first match off to sleep in as they have been playing a majority of the matches so far.

The Molson team had a good set to win 23-7 in VPs. I don't have any hands right now as the next match began almost immediately but I will try to update later with hands from the afternoon matches. Molson is currently playing Bertrand, who are sitting 12th after 17 matches.

Here's a hand that Arno Hobart gave me from last night's match against Thurston that he found interesting.

This is board 19, E/W vul.

The auction proceeded:

The interesting feature of this hand is really the vulnerability; Arno, sitting East, took a vulnerable save against a non vulnerable game. The other interesting thing to note is that both games make except against a specific lead.

Arno's 4S bid was great as 3N makes except on the lead of the sK. 4S will also make unless North leads the cK.

The final result at the table was 5D down one.

Jerry Richardson also gave me a neat defensive problem from yesterday afternoon. Try it with one hand first on the auction:

You hold: A76 A4 J9873 T43, and partner leads the ace of diamonds (A from AK).
Dummy comes down with KQ98 J62 2 AJ762. You play the nine of diamonds (somewhat suit preference), and partner switches to a trump which you win with the ace. What's your plan to defeat the contract?

The winning play is to return a diamond. How can declarer get off dummy? If he plays a trump, the defense has a good diamond to cash when in with the sA, so he has to exit with the sK. The defense's best try is to duck the sK, and now to make the hand, declarer must exit a low spade, then later use a club entry to ruff out the sA tripleton.

So although it is possible to make it double dummy, in practice declarer will go wrong more often than not.

Here is the full hand:

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Three (Night)

2007-05-29T00:09:00.000-04:00

There were two more matches scheduled after the dinner break, both with an element of suspense as team Molson met L'Ecuyer in the fifth match and Thurston in the sixth match.

Here's a great hand from the L'Ecuyer match:

And the auction went:

Sitting South as usual, Dan decided to lead a heart, not only because it looked like it might be a promising source of tricks, but also because declarer might need to use the heart suit as transportation. A club lead was unthinkable with the cK almost certainly on his right.

On receiving the h2 lead, Nader Hanna went into a long trance and eventually called for the hQ, losing to David's hK. David returned a club.

At this point, Dan knew that declarer almost certainly did not have Qxx of diamonds (or the hand would play itself), so there was a way to guarantee defeat of the contract. Do you see it?

Dan shifted to a diamond! No matter where declarer wins this trick, he ends up being cut off from one hand or the other. In fact, Nader started running diamonds and Dan claimed 2 more heart tricks and the ace of clubs for +50. At the other table, the defender, perhaps mesmerized by the heart suit, cleared hearts and waited to get in with the cA. He's still waiting and Molson won 10 IMPs.

A tough push board:

The auction went:

Dan tends to preempt quite soundly, so when he opened the South cards 4C, David could still envision a possible slam. He bid keycard, Dan showed 1 with the cQ, and we ended in 6C. Bryan Maksymetz found the best lead of a heart, but with diamonds 3-3 Dan was soon scoring up +920. At the other table, the auction went 5C-P-6C-PPP for a push.

The final result in the match was 17-13 VPs for Molson.

The last set of hands was quite swingy and there were a lot of IMPs up for grabs. Team Molson played against Thurston, the leaders after 15 matches. Here is one of the interesting hands, board 13.

The auction went:

2D was natural and invitational, and 3H was a splinter, confirming diamonds as trumps. After Dan's 4H cue, David could simply have bid 7D, but he bid RKCB for safety's sake and they soon ended in 7D. Dan claimed at trick 1.

At the other table, Dan's teammates got into the auction (in fact, they got all the way up to 4S!), so it was more difficult for our opponents to investigate for 7. In fact, they ended in 6 and team Molson won 13 IMPs.

Although George and Arno had a very good set, David and Dan were too sloppy (starting at 8:30am had taken its toll), and this combined with a bit of bad luck ended up turning what could have been a comfortable victory into a narrow loss, 14-16 in VPs.

Here are the standings after 16 matches:

Thurston, 305 VPs
Molson, 286 VPs
Bowman, 283 VPs
Ballantyne, 272 VPs
L'Ecuyer, 272 VPs
Todd, 268 VPs
Chevalier, 266 VPs
Bart, 261 VPs

We've also been asked if we like to get comments. Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by commenting. We'd love to hear your feedback.

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Three

2007-05-28T15:44:00.000-04:00

Here's a midafternoon update on the results of the first three matches today. The event began at 8:30 am (ouch!) to allow time to complete six matches.

Team Molson's first match was against Jotcham, and here's a hand that won 10 IMPs.

And the auction went:

Over David's vulnerable notrump and transfer acceptance, Dan had a decision to make with the South cards. Unfortunately, he and David do not have a way to show a shapely invite with a spade suit, so he was forced to decide whether or not to overbid with 2NT or pass and risk missing a game. Well, Dan loves to score up a vulnerable game (don't we all!), so he held his breath and bid the aggressive 2NT. David's 3NT was not exactly what he wanted to hear (Dan was hoping for a spade fit), but with the round suits behaving beautifully 3NT rolled home for +600. At the other table, Ray Jotcham played in 3C.

Here's another hand from the same match.

The auction began:

What would you bid over 2NT with the West cards?

A lot of good players around the room passed 2NT, figuring that bidding was just gambling. You can see that 2NT is a poor contract and went down 1 on a spade lead.

David Sabourin and Jeff Smith were able to open 2C with the East hand, playing a system with an artificial 2NT opening, and responded 2NT showing a weak hand with the minors! They rested in 3D, making 5 for +150 with the friendly layout. Better than passing 2NT, but not as good as either pair in our match.

Jim Priebe with the West cards bid a hyper-aggressive 3C, Stayman, gambling on a heart fit. Right he was! With this layout there was no way to go down in 4H and Alan Lee made for +620.

Dan's teammate, Dan Jacob, chose to transfer to hearts with the West cards, and Arno of course super-accepted and made an overtrick! Two different unorthodox routes but two stellar results.

What do you think of Jim's Stayman and Jacob's transfer? Both were high-risk, high-reward actions, but we prefer the transfer to a Stayman bid, which will usually end in a very silly 3NT contract that may drift off 3 or 4 tricks, vulnerable.

The final result in the match was 17-13 VPs for team Molson.

Dan's team played Team Todd in the second match, and here is an interesting board.

And the auction went:

David led a low heart, and Dave McClelland guessed hearts normally for +980. At the other table, the player with Dan's cards doubled the heart cuebid holding only the Ace (a questionable decision, in our view, but certainly the right one here). Now our teammates judged well based on the information available to stop in 4S and were a bit surprised to find the hQ onside after all.

The final result in that match was 6-24 VPs for team Molson.

The third match of the day was against team Rayner.

On board six Dan engineered a swing.

Dan opened 1NT on the South cards and David raised to 3NT. We agree with David's decision not to bid Stayman because the hand is very flat; Stayman might lead either to an inferior 4S or simply give the opponents more help on defense.

West led the h4, Dan tried the h9 from dummy, and won East's hT with the hK. Dan crossed to dummy in spades and led the cQ which was covered. Dan then cashed out the spades, which were 3-3, and on the fourth spade both opponents discarded diamonds.

At this point, Dan was reasonably sure that the hearts were 5-3, since with 4 hearts East would likely have preferred to discard one rather than a diamond. After cashing the cT, felling West's c7, Dan led dummy's last club and finessed against the c9! He reasoned that with West having 8 major suit cards to East's 6, the finesse was a slight favourite over the drop. In addition, if the assumption about hearts was correct, West and East were wildly unlikely both to throw low diamonds -- East would have played the d4 holding a great 5 card suit. +400 versus the other table's -50 (declarer played for the drop) was a great result.

The final result in the match was 19-11 VPs for team Molson.

The fourth match is currently in play. George Mittelman has finally arrived so he and Arno will be playing the rest of the matches.

Dan and David are sitting out this match but will be playing later against L'Ecuyer and Thurston- check back later for results!

Here are the results after 13 matches:

Thurston, 260 VPs
Bowman, 244 VPs
Molson, 237 VPs
L'Ecuyer, 233 VPs
Ballantyne, 228 VPs
Chevalier, 215 VPs
Todd, 214 VPs
Bart, 212 VPs

Winnipeg CNTC Flight B

2007-05-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

Here's a hand from the first day of the CNTC-B, which began a day after the flight A event. Team Yurkowski had a great result on this hand:

Here's the auction. Although it may not be a typical auction, it propelled the North South pair of Dave Brett (North) and Alan Lee (South) to a great slam which goes down only on a heart lead.

Bidding the slam won the team 17 IMPs, and they are sitting seventh after five matches. Four teams will qualify for the knockout phase out of fourteen, and they are currently 5 VPs out of a qualifying spot.

Leaders after Day 2 (10/21 matches)

2007-05-28T00:16:00.000-04:00

1. Bowman, 205 VPs
2. Molson, 195 VPs
3. Thurston, 191 VPs
4. Chevalier, 171 VPs
5. Bart, 170 VPs
6/7. Bertrand, 168 VPs
6/7. L'Ecuyer, 168 VPs
8/9. Jotcham, 166 VPs
8/9. Todd, 166 VPs

Winnipeg CNTC, Day Two (Night)

2007-05-27T23:32:00.000-04:00

At 7:00pm the 4th match of the day started, and it was against the team right behind us in the standings, the Bowman team. At our table, we played against John and Bill Bowman (brothers).

They played extremely well against us, doing almost everything right. We had a solid set as well, but most of the decisions were E/W so we were idling for a number of boards.

The Bowmans did extremely well on this board, which earned them 11 IMPs:

With us silent, they bid:

An excellent result on a board that could be difficult to manage, especially since RKCB will leave you worrying about the keycard and trump queen issue.

Athough it felt pretty even at our table, our teammates had a disastrous set and we lost by 30. Now the Bowman team had a clear lead over us for 1st place, and we had a comfortable lead over the 3rd-place Thurston team.

The final match tonight had some wild hands. David and I had a solid card with only one bad board:

NONE VUL

You will be able to tell by the auction, starting on my right, that our opponents were not experts:

This had to lose a club and a diamond and we were one down. David had an impossible decision over 5C I think, holding 4 seemingly working cards and a nice fit with me. I don't blame him for his raise to 6C. At the other table (get this!) the auction went (2S)-5C-(P)-P!!-P for +400!! Seems pretty deep to me to pass the North cards on that auction. I'd sooner bid 7C than pass!

Anyway, our teammates had one bad board of their own but both tables were otherwise solid and we were able to win by 18 for a 20-10 VP win.

We'll post the scores after 10 rounds when they are posted.

Tomorrow morning it starts at 8:30am as they have to get six matches in. I don't really like the sound of that! We have to play against the tough Jotcham team, too. Ah, well!