Most people will recognize the title of the blog as a Muppet song. By Piero Umiliani. Indeed it is the song with the fewest different words that has reached the top ten in Britain, peaking at number eight. We aren't taking up too much space giving the full lyrics. And each verse is the same!
Mahna Mahna Do doo be-do-doMahna Mahna Do do-do do
Mahna Mahna Do doo be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do-doodle do do do-doo do
What has this to do with bridge? Well, a hand on Tuesday intrigued me as only three of the ten pairs reached the normal contract of Four Hearts. Which should have been reached whether playing simple Stayman, puppet Stayman or muppet Stayman:
Nine of the ten pairs played in game, with only the Chairman, Ed Sanders playing with the treasurer, Kevin Robins, reaching slam as one of them was wearing his rose-coloured glasses. Liz and Andy Clery were the beneficiaries of this optimism and the resulting top helped them to a big 66%.
East invariably opened 2C (or sometimes a Benjy 2D) and rebid 2NT to show a balanced 23-24. Some play that 2C-2D-2H shows either hearts or a balanced 23-24 and this is known as Kokish. Partner relays with 2S and 2NT then shows the balanced 23-24. There are versions with reverse Kokish so that 2H shows 25+ or hearts. Or, as I do with some partners, an opening 2NT can show 23-24 balanced.
After East has shown the strong balanced hand, West should bid some form of Stayman, invariably 3C. Now East will usually bid a 5-card major and bid 3D with one ore more four-card majors. Then West should show four spades, often by bidding 3H, which is the "muppet" element of the convention. East will bid 3NT and now West can complete the description with 4H which East will pass. At our table, we played simple stayman and played in 4H by East, in theory the top spot. Ken Barnett led an eccentric jack of clubs, and your author won and knocked out the ace of hearts. Chantal Girardin won and shifted to a diamond, East won, drew the trumps and finessed the nine of clubs. Now a spade to the ace, was followed by cashing the other high club, crossing to the king of diamonds and discarding a spade on the last club. A spade to South's king forced him to concede a ruff and discard. South had a chance to shine by unblocking the king of spades under the ace to avoid the endplay. Of course the unblock only gains if partner has the queen and ten of spades. And it would lose if declarer had the queen of spades, an unlikely scenario.
There is another interesting line of play which is called an "intra-finesse". I might have led a spade to the nine and if it forced the king or queen, I could potentially pin the doubleton ten on the way back. If South plays the king or queen, you can play him for KT or QT doubleton and this is the right play in isolation in the spade suit.
Not wearing rose coloured glasses at all, just a bidding misunderstanding. Bidding went 2C-2D-2NT-3C-3D-(X)-4D...? We'd never discussed what the 4D meant, and after thinking about it for ages I decided Kevin had 1+ 3-card major and long D's, and that Liz's ("I just bid it to confuse things") X was void-showing. My options had therefore shrunk to 6NT or 6D, and with the apparent bad D split I thought 6NT was safer. "Partner, 4D shows both majors with no slam interest, and 4C would have shown slam interest" comes under the heading of things never discussed with any partner. The only problem will be remembering which way round it is when this next comes up in 4 years time....
ReplyDeleteI think if you agree puppet stayman then 4C/D showing majors after a 3D response are implicitly agreed (and this shouldn't change just because of a double). Although with some partners I do explicitly agree 4m as natural. Failing that 4C should be the majors slam try on general principles as it leaves more space for the 2NT bidder although you would need to discuss even more continuations to make that extra space worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan, I agree in principle that if you play a convention then you've implicitly agreed to play all the continuations of it. It just doesn't work in practice if you've never heard those extensions. This isn't an excuse for not knowing it btw - I'm just exploring the practicality of an issue that probably affects a huge number of club players who don't play a huge amount (in my case ~3 times a month). I agreed to include Puppet Stayman in my system with all partners around 5 years ago, but the discussions were only about the 3C-3S responses. Those have come up maybe once/twice a month, but this is the first time the 4D bid has come up in 5 years. I have a similar issue with Lebensohl: I use it primarily to distinguish between hands with something & hands with nothing, and it comes up about once every 3 months. I know 3M and 3NT between them show/don't show a stop in opps' suit, but I can never remember which is which, and again it's only come up (at my level of playing) once in 5 years. Lots of people in clubs will have these problems, and certainly one answer is to play fewer conventions! But I find it makes things more fun to play them at Pairs, and accept you'll suffer the occasional disaster on the basis that "a bottom's just a bottom" :-)
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