Bridge with imagination

 Although I am not a member anymore this hand was played against two Woodberry members at the Young Chelsea Mixed Pairs so I think it qualifies for the blog.

"Director!" I hear the opponents call at the next table.  The score on this board cannot possibly be correct.  Probably one of ours I say.  Sure enough the director comes over to me and I confirm that West did indeed make 3NT + 1 on hand 18

As I said to the pair who called the director you clearly don't have enough imagination

So for fun as an exercise to the reader how did this result happen (hint there is one card in the South hand that gave the defence a problem)?

Bonus question why did 3NT+1 score below average for EW?

I will reveal all in a few days :)

The Closed Hand by Foxymoron

The above expression is given in the dictionary as the "declarer hand in bridge", but I was surprised that two other meanings of which I was aware were not given. One is the acknowledgement of defeat (or the greeting at the start) in a two-player match such as snooker by the touching of a closed hand. The other, with a black closed hand, is the symbol of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

It is the first meaning that is the theme of this week's blog, which features an interesting hand from the SIMs at the Woodberry on Tuesday.

Three pairs reached the pushy slam. One was in 6H by East going off, one was in 6H by West making and finally one was in 6S by East going off. There is nothing to choose between the contracts you might think as all of them require guessing the spades. Let us say that you are playing 6H by East on the lead of the eight of clubs. You win and draw three rounds of trumps ending in West.

Now you lead the queen of spades from dummy and North covers perforce while you win with the ace. Now the right line is to run the nine. Suitplay, the omniscient computer program, tells me this is wrong and you should cash the jack. It is an excellent piece of software by the way. It is freeware and can be downloaded at SuitPlay (jeroenwarmerdam.pythonanywhere.com)

However, it has to make some assumptions about what the defenders do and do not know, and this is where the "closed hand" comes in to the picture. If a defender can see the eight and the nine, he or she should duck with Kx and cover with KT doubleton when the queen is led. If the defender cannot see the eight and the nine, he or she should cover with Kx. So, here, if you are playing it from the East hand, you should play North to have Kx (or singleton king) and run the nine on the second round. If you are playing a slam from the West hand, then you should play for North to have covered because he has KT doubleton, and play as Suitplay does and cash the jack.

There was not much difference playing in Six Spades, again by East on a club lead. Declarer crossed to the ace of hearts and led the queen of spades but David Herbert subsequently went off. As Pope said:

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

Oscar Wilde quipped:  ‘There are two ways of disliking poetry. One way is to dislike it, and the other is to read Pope.’

Mike Bull and John Bernard were the beneficiaries of 6S-1 and this helped them to a near top, and a fine win nationally with 66.18%. And why should North cover from Kx, which Suitplay regards as "not optimal"? Well, just consider for a moment how you would feel if South had T9x or T8x and you duck ...

As your scribe was not there, I relied on Graham Osborne's excellent booklet to write my blog. Another interesting hand which helped the winners to their national success was the following.

The key on this hand is not to bid slam, which might well fail, but to play it in no-trumps and Bull-Bernard, which sounds a bit like a dog, achieved this well. They had an uncontested auction which started 1H-1S-2C-2D. The last is fourth-suit forcing, best played as game-forcing. Now I prefer 2H as North, treating the hand as six hearts. South's 3NT ended the auction, and they had avoided playing in 5C, which should have scored zero, but would have actually scored 20%. 

Graham Osborne thought that slam was against the odds, but I thought that both 6H and 6NT were odds on, and so it proved when I plugged in the hand to Bridge Analyser.

That shows that all three slams are with the odds. While there are only 11 tricks if hearts are 3-2, there are excellent squeeze chances with the trump squeeze in 6H looking the best option. But as can be seen from the Woodberry and national results, you don't need to bid a slam to score well. You just need to play it in the higher-scoring no-trumps. 3NT+3 was worth 69% at the Woodberry, and even more nationally, so more than acceptable.

I recall Tiger Woods being interviewed by Sarah Stirk, the Sky commentator, after a solid start in the first round of the 2006 PGA Championship at Medinah. He was pleased with his score, and said to Sarah, "If you had offered me a 69 this morning, I would have accepted". She smiled.

Bid Boldly by Foxymoron

The heading is half of the title of a famous book by the late Rixi Markus, one of England's best ever players, who rivalled Helen Sobel as possibly the best woman player in the world. The book is still available on Amazon.

Andrew Conway did not have the luxury of a safety play on a hand this week as he was in a grand slam. Some optimistic bidding had reached a poor contract, but he seized his only chance to make.

West, Conway, started with 1H, playing four-card majors, and North, Lamford, made an aggressive weak jump overcall of 3D. East, Verran, might have bid 4C but chose 4D and West bid Key Card Blackwood, 4NT. East showed two key cards with 5H and now West bid 5NT asking for kings. East bid 6D, a modern treatment of this convention, which either showed the king of diamonds OR showed the other two kings outside the trump suit. Knowing that they held all the aces and kings, Andrew decided that this was enough for grand and bid 7H. 

Following traditional thinking, North led a trump to the ten and queen. Conway led another heart which went to the ace, and a third heart drew a disappointing seven from South. The diamond length suggested that South would have the longer hearts, but Andy looked deeper and rose with the king, dropping North's jack. There were two good reasons for this. Unless the queen of clubs dropped, West would have to ruff a club which he could not do if trumps were 4-2. In addition, if South had JT76 in hearts, he might have played the other honour on the first round - the principle of restricted choice. 

When hearts were 3-3 and the queen of clubs dropped doubleton, Andy secured an unsurprising top for his 2210.

If North had not bid, then EW would have played quietly in 6NT, so Lamford was hoisted on his own petard by his weak jump overcall. This phrase, which indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice, seems to have first occurred in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4:

For 'tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard; and 't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

Absolute Zero by Foxymoron

The very old gambling game Fan-Tan is thought to have originated in the fourth century in China. It is peculiar because it seems to be unaware of zero. The "house" removes small objects from a big pile until either 1, 2, 3 or 4 remain. Players bet on which of those it will be. Zero was invented in Mesopotamia around 3 BC, and the Mayans invented it independently around 4 AD. It seems the Chinese were not "aware" of it, or their game would have remainders of 0,1,2 and 3.

The game originally offered pay-outs of 3:1, but nowadays there is a commission on winning bets, often as high as 5%. If the house take is zero, then the game can be beaten, as 4 is slightly more likely to be the remainder. Just think of a random number between 4 and x inclusive. The remainder when 4 are removed at a time is slightly more likely to be 4.

My partner and I reached a slam last night at the Woodberry, where I think the chances of success were absolutely zero. Given that is -273.15°C, I guess you could say it was cold ...

We  bid, uncontested, 1C-1H-2H-2S-4H-4NT*-5S*-6H. It is the nine of clubs away from having some play, but with the actual cards there is no layout which gives it a chance. 2S in our auction was a game try, and 4H accepted. 5S showed two and the queen, and the damage had now been done.

I have some sympathy for my partner's actions as North, but slam always rates to be slightly against the odds even if the fit is better. A simulation on Bridge Analyser, giving partner a 14-count with 4 hearts, has the following matrix:

The above mini-chart shows the percentage for each number of tricks (on the top row) that North will make in hearts. So, slam will make 42% of the time. One needs it it to be 50% to be justified in bidding it.

Another useful bit of software is the Kaplan-Rubens hand evaluator, fairly accurate on balanced hands. That makes the North hand 16.75, and slam rates to be poor opposite a 14-count. For completeness, the South hand weighs in at 13.85, so fairly normal to accept the game-try of 2S. And fairly normal to make only 11 tricks.