Rub of the Green by Foxymoron

I had always assumed that the expression "Rub of the Green" came from snooker or golf, but a little investigation shows that it is much older. It was first used in the game of bowls. A 'rub' is any hindrance or impediment that diverts the bowl from its proper course. Some of the early 16th century references to rubs are figurative, and so we can assume that the literal term 'rub' was in use before then. Shakespeare alludes to a rub in Richard II, 1593:

Lady: Madame, wee'le play at Bowles.

Queen: 'Twill make me thinke the World is full of Rubs, And that my fortune runnes against the Byas.

Chantal and Ken did not get the rub of the green on the following hand from yesterday's Woodberry Pairs event:

Chantal opened a multi with a good suit. It had one flaw, too many points outside the suit, but this was not the reason for the bad result. North overcalled 2S, natural, and East doubled, which was "Pass or Correct". He wants to compete in hearts if partner has a weak two there. South's redouble probably should be SOS, asking his partner to bid another suit, but it was undiscussed and North passed it. Poor Ken had nowhere to go. He took his chances on trying to beat 2Sxx but all E-W could take was a heart, a club and three trump tricks. -840 and unsurprisingly no matchpoints. Sometimes you just have to take a bad result on the chin.

The Curious Incident by Foxymoron

"To misbid a hand is a misfortune, but to misdefend it as well looks like carelessness", might have been an Oscar Wilde quote if he played bridge. He did play cards, and would have disapproved of the current spate of online cheating episodes. "One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards" was one of his more astute observations,

On this hand, we both misbid and misdefended. We did have winning cards, but did not use them properly:

Mike and Carrie Eden were the beneficiaries. I thought I had a normal 1S overcall of a strong club, but I think showing a two-suiter would have been better. We play that one-level overcalls are natural, somewhat avant garde I know, but as Vampyr pointed out, I might only have ♠KQxx and not much else. I am vulnerable, however, and I would have raised to 4S on East's hand. Instead she made a fit-jump of 3D, and when South bid 4H, I passed as I thought I had good defence. I would still have bid 4S on the East hand - it is a thirty-point pack.

I kicked off with the king of spades, on which East showed four spades, and continued with another high spade and South ruffed, and led the ace and queen of hearts. I won, continued with another spade and South ruffed and drew the remaining trumps. East had to guess on the last of these whether to keep three diamonds and three clubs or to keep four clubs and two diamonds. She "guessed" wrong and the game came home. I was quite pleased to get 10% on the board, which shows that only 9 out of 10 cats bid and defended the hand correctly.

How should East reason? Well, Conan Doyle might say:
Gregory:  Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the switch to a singleton diamond at trick two.
Gregory: There was no diamond switch at trick two.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

So, West surely has two diamonds and East should keep four clubs and the game will fail. Of course, West could have a diamond void, and South might have AJxx of diamonds and AK doubleton of clubs. Surely West would have bid Four Spades himself if that were the layout. Defeating Four Hearts would have been worth a solid 60%. Why is that? Well a couple of declarers in Four Spades ruffed the heart lead and drew trumps. Now the defence had four tricks. You need to play on diamonds before drawing all the trumps. Good to see Roly, Jenny and Gerry make the doubled game with correct technique!

Leonardo's Robot by Foxymoron

 

Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.” 1995 was the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's Robot, which was rather impressive for the time, in that it could sit up, wave its arms, and maybe even respond to Stayman. 25 years ago, bridge robots had not made that much progress, passing forcing bids and the like. Even now they do some odd things. Robot West's interpretation of Cappelletti on the following hand was systemically correct, but quaint:

In a robot tournament, West thought it was only worth one call, and chose 2S, showing spades and a minor. What else?

They are getting better though. In today's Woodberry Pairs, they came second with a solid 56%, over 10% ahead of your author. This was the first Thursday afternoon Woodberry Pairs and the event got off to a reasonable start, but we could do with some more tables, so why not give it a try? It is every Thursday at 3 pm and there is always a human host. Stefanie and I are happy to play with anyone who does not have a partner. 

Robot East played this hand far too well today:

I led a normal spade, and Robot East won the trick and finessed the queen of hearts, the right percentage line in the suit. I guess it knows all those by now. It then finessed the diamond, and ran the jack of hearts, pinning North's ten. It now repeated the diamond finesse, cashed the nine of hearts, the ace of diamonds, the remaining hearts and the two other spades ending in dummy. North was squeezed in clubs and diamonds, and did her best by discarding a club, playing me for the jack, but to no avail. I suspect it just played off its winners and stumbled into the squeeze. No doubt, when the Robots learn self-kibitizing, they will be even stronger, bidding and making 6NT with an overtrick. Of course a leading Italian World Champion would find the opening club lead to break up the club-diamond squeeze and get a top for conceding only 6NT=. Different game nowadays ...

The Dentist Coup by Foxymoron

 Anybody looking at the auction below would think that West showed touching faith in his partner's declarer play, but the truth is that 2NT showed g22-24. When I plugged the East hand in to K-R, it spat out 23.15, so I have to give Vampyr credit for good judgement there. We split the range so that we can distinguish bad hands with 20-22 from those that are worth game!

West decided to look for a 5-3 major-suit fit with 5-card puppet Stayman and East showed a four-card major with 3D. West closed proceedings with 3NT and South led the six of hearts. Stefanie won and played a club to the eight, won by North's ten, and a second heart came back. Now East led the king of clubs and South was caught in a dentist coup. If he ducked, declarer can cash the major suit winners and exit with a third club and South is toast, as he either resurrects dummy or gives declarer TWO diamond tricks. If, in the ending, South leads the jack of diamonds, East ducks! In practice South won the second club and exited with another heart, but this just cost the overtrick as declarer unblocked the spades and enjoyed the winning clubs, for 90% of the matchpoints. Ironically, Phil Mattacks and Ken Rolph would have won if they had just saved the overtrick.

The Dentist Coup featured in several books in the 1970s and is a legal play, unlike the Alcatraz Coup, where declarer retracts his revoke having discovered the location of a key card. One I came across recently is the Superglue Coup, related to me by John Probst, a founder member of the Woodberry Bridge Club and doing pretty well despite a couple of strokes. Declarer is playing an ambitious 7H with QJT98 opposite A7654 in dummy and leads the queen, but the next player follows with both the 3 and the 2 at the same time, as though they are superglued together. Now the declarer, knowing the odds, rises with the ace, but the next player shows out. Charlie the Chimp, of course, has the K32.

Ogdoads by Foxymoron

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad (Ancient Egyptian: ḫmnyw, a plural of ḫmnw "eight") were eight primordial deities worshiped in Hermopolis. The question "what do you call an eight-card suit?" with the standard answer "trumps", post-dates that by about five thousand years, but there is an argument that an eight-card suit should still be called an ogdoad, now in the language as any set of eight similar things.

The chance of no eight-card suit in an evening of Woodberry bridge is around 71%, and the chance of exactly two eight-card suits is very small, about 4%, but this happened in last night's SIMs event, won by John Pemberton and Richard Creamer, raiders from the YC, although Woodberry members. The first eight-card suit was well-handled by most. Although Roly Harris gambled and lost.

When Robot East raised his metal brother to 3C, Roly had visions of a singleton club opposite. However, as Bob Hamman used to say, you should not play partner for perfect cards and 4S on the second round was enough. If Roly had bid 5S, asking for a club control, he would have survived, but Robot East had no difficulty leading its partner's suit against the slam. Not a bottom, as one South played in 4H on two rounds of clubs and a spade switch, cutting off the dummy. Despite this gift Robot and Robot only managed 48%

The second ogdoad was also interesting:

East opened 3C at Vampyr's table, and South found a reasonable double. North went for all the chocolate biscuits with 3NT and East had a difficult lead. I don't think maisymoo's choice of the jack of clubs was unreasonable but it allowed North to make ten tricks. It got worse for East-West when declarer won in dummy, ran the queen of diamonds and repeated the diamond finesse, West covering. Now North led the ten of spades, and East has to cover that to block the spades. When she played low, declarer had four spade tricks and could establish his eleventh trick in hearts. Most Easts opened 4C, which is "just right" as Goldilocks would say, and North-South got a solid 60% for just letting them play there, two off. There is always one overbidder, and this time it was Simon Batt who reached the giddy heights of 6C, doubled by South, and that might have been the national bottom, as it was a SIMs night. For the very good cause of Children in Need. The club gave the proceeds to the charity, and if you do want to make a donation, then you can go to the site at www.ecatsbridge.com

Knowing Me, Knowing You by Foxymoron

 One of the most useful agreements you can have with your partner is how to play uncontested sequences like 1C-1S-2S-3C. It is vital that you both know whether this is forcing, and the guideline I use, for better or for worse, is that all ABBA sequences are forcing. A is the first suit bid and B is the second suit bid.

Another iconic ABBA line is "Breaking up is never easy". This is true both in relationships and bridge, and seeing a squeeze is one thing, breaking it up is another. Doug Dunn thought he should have found the winning defence against Ken Barnett but it was not easy,

Chantal did well to raise to 2H - an ace and a doubleton is enough for a simple raise even without the double - and Ken had an easy game bid. Harvey Fox, East, led the king of clubs for reverse attitude and guessed well to lead a low club at trick two. If West had held J5 of clubs, he should play the jack on the first round. Now West exited with the jack of diamonds, and Ken won with the ace as North and cashed the ace of hearts and the ten dropped from East. 

He cashed the king of hearts and the diamond winners and threw West in with a heart. West was worried that East had the K of spades with no ten, so did not want to broach the spade suit. He therefore exited with a diamond, but North ruffed and cashed two more rounds of hearts squeezing East in the black suits.  A spade return would have broken up the squeeze, and if North has QT doubleton of spades there is no defence. So West has to cater for the above layout when he can beat the contract. So a good recovery by North and worth 77% of the match points.

However, North missed a better line. After cashing the top heart, he should cash the second diamond and ruff the master diamond and now finesse the jack of hearts. If East wins the queen of hearts, he would be endplayed to lead away from the king of spades. This works on the actual hand and if East has Qx in hearts. If East has a fourth diamond he cannot break up the squeeze from his side. The declarer following this line would make a useful overtrick and a 95% board as East would still get squeezed in the black suits after trumps are drawn.

The least successful auction was the above, perpetrated by JB and NS. 2H instead of 3H would have shown a good hand with hearts from JB and would have been my choice. South clearly interpreted it as a splinter for spades, although it was not clear where the missing nine hearts would be. He signed off in 3S. And North should clearly bid 4H over that but had a senior moment. The other JB appears to have done better this week.