A certain symmetry

While I didn't play last Tuesday an acquaintance pointed out this neat hand from the Woodberry duplicate.

Both sides have a double fit in a major and a minor and a major is usually the place to be at pairs but on best defense you do better in the minor on this hand.  Par result is -130 for N/S which I see occurred at one table

If N/S are defending hearts I cannot see anyone finding the DD defense to hold it to 8 tricks (diamond lead, ruff the return, underlead all the club honours to the jack for another ruff with a spade to come).  However declarer will likely lose two diamonds and a ruff anyway in the natural order of play.

If E/W are defending spades it should be possible to match the DD result although I see no one did.  After a top heart lead East plays the queen showing the jack.  Now West can switch to his club.  East hops with the ace on the first round of trumps, gives a club ruff and West underleads his hearts to get a second ruff.  Is there any alternative defense with those clubs threatening on the table?

The bidding is interesting too.  Most North's didn't open which I can understand but now is it practically impossible to get the spades into the auction and being outranked in clubs you will usually defend a heart contract.  

If North does open then the spade fit is found after 1C-P-1S-2H-2S.  East will bid 3H now and the question is can North/South justify bidding again at this vulnerability?  If you play support doubles and a weak NT (not recommended!) then perhaps South can risk it knowing of a likely double fit.  Otherwise maybe North can place their partner with only two hearts and not more than 4 diamonds (although playing Walsh style some South's may have longer diamonds than spades) and again bid a third spade based on the double fit.  

Might East make a matchpoint double of this thinking 3H is making?  As you can see from the traveller this gives you good odds.  If it makes you were getting a very poor board anyway and a double and successful defense takes you from an average to an outright top  

One final thought.  A precision club auction might start 2C-P-3C and now E/W might well get too high.  And a canape auction could start 1S-P-2S and have the same effect.

Simple by Foxymoron

The origin of the nursery rhyme Simple Simon is quite interesting, and goes back a long way, Simple Simon's Misfortunes and his Wife Margery's Cruelty is a ballad from about 1685

Apparently it all started a day after they got married, and poor Simon seemed to put up with the mistreatment. The Simple Squeeze in bridge is something of a misnomer. It just means that one opponent is guarding two suits and, in the ending, he cannot keep both guards at the same time. The ingredients are that there is a threat in both hands and an entry to the opposite hand.

None of the online players found the squeeze on the following hand, whether they were in 3NT, 6C or the best contract of 6NT. There were crucial differences.

Tony Ratcliff, your scribe's sometime partner in Welsh events, reached the almost 100% slam here with a good auction. It was pretty difficult to reach the best spot of 6NT, which also has 12 top tricks.  In 6C, on the KH lead, Tony drew trumps, discarded his heart on the fourth diamond, and took the spade finesse. If one is playing in 6NT, this is too dangerous and we should play the simple squeeze, cashing the six clubs and four diamonds to reach an ending with the nine of hearts in dummy and the ace and jack of spades in the South hand,. West has to hold the top heart and needs to bare the king of spades to have a chance, but South will not jeopardise his excellent contract, and the overtrick will be close to a national top. Making 6C was well above average.

 

Of course, the self-kibitzers will reach 7NT and make it, and they will wonder why the 1 in 32 chance they took by playing the squeeze raised suspicion. That line requires West to have all four heart honours and the king of spades, whereas the simple line of finessing the king of spades ... really is simple.

Simple has more than one meaning of course. I recall having a scalp infection many years ago and the doctor advised me to switch to a simple shampoo instead of a herbal one. "I thought simple was a herb?" I replied, annoyingly.

Nature's Law by Foxymoron

The great bard began, in Nature's Law 

            Let other heroes boast their scars,

            The marks of sturt and strife;
            And other poets sing of wars,
            The plagues of human life;

The Robot could have been forgiven for not being aware of Burns but it could have been programmed with Burn's Law which is to lead trumps against doubled contracts. It would have done better on the following hand:

North had a normal 1H overcall, and the Robot correctly decided to play for penalties when Mary Rutter, West, reopened with a double which the Robot passed. It was difficult to lead a small trump against that, as that could cost a trick, so Burn's Law was ignored, not fatally. A low trump might have beaten the contract two, but instead East led the jack of spades. Declarer covered, and West won to return a club, ducked by North. East won and needed to play a diamond, or a low trump, at this point, but persisted with a second spade, fatally. Now West was stuck when she won that trick. She continued with a second club, but North won ruffed a club and played the ten of spades discarding a diamond. East could ruff, but that was with a trump trick, and now he was unable to stop declarer making a club ruff, two minor suit aces and four trumps. 

There are some darts terms which have crept into bridge for the different duplicate scores. 120 is Shanghai, from the finish T20, 20, D20. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY, preferably typed in caps when playing online, is a Maximum in darts, and is best used when the opponents have just let you make 1NTx but also quite useful when they have let through the third overtrick in 1NT. Bull and Double Bull for 50 and 100 are common in many games. The Big Fish is slang for 170 from the maximum finish. And finally the late and great Sid Waddell coined the phrase Lipstick and Eyeshadow for a 160 finish, T20, T20, D20. I was pleased to score it in one of the two ways it can be scored, the other of course being 1SX=.