Merry Cheatmas

                                                         North                            

                                                               ª A943
                                                               © AK84
                                                               ¨ QT84
                                                               § 5

 

                                                        South

                                                               ª K2

                                                               © 32  

                                                               ¨ A32

                                                               § AQJ432

The EBU were very suspicious of the above online hand where the Rueful Rabbit had made 7NT. South opened 2C, intended as Precision, showing 11-15 with 5+ clubs, and North bid 2D, intended as a relay opposite an Acol 2C. South rebid 2NT showing a non minimum with 6 clubs and North thought this was 23-24 so raised to 7NT. West led a neutral seven of spades, How do you make this contract And what lead would beat it?

The above hand from the Woodberry Xmas Party, (liar - Ed.) reminded me of one from the Xmas party three years ago in non-Covid times. We had two visitors who were slightly suspicious:

Belsnickel and Krampus, two of the Woodberry's seasonal visitors, reached a poor 6NT by South in the Santa Claus Pairs 3 years ago. How should "Belly" play it on the lead of the king of diamonds from Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, West? RRR's nose let him down here. Which lead would have beaten the contract, which was cold on the actual lead?

And if you want to know the solution, then why not turn up at the Woodberry on 4th January, when we will resume F2F play at the club. Lateral flow tests highly recommended and masks obligatory 

Space Odyssey by Foxymoron

The Woodberry Bridge Club used modern technology to play in the 2001 US Nationals, and scored in a field of people they had never met. In 2001 there were several thousand tables in the US, so the scores were indeed indicative of how well you did. They will be on the Woodberry website in a couple of days.

There was one grand, on board 4, and it was a tricky one to play:

Richard and Debbie had the misfortune to see the Robot and Sam Nim reaching grand here, with East reversing and then bidding Key Card Blackwood. On the diamond lead, Debbie covered so that was that, but I think the Robot would have played the simple line of ruffing the third spade and made anyway. It is somewhat better than Hal was as you can see.

Reaching 7H is not easy. Richard Pavlicek recommends the uncontested auction 1D-1H-2C-2S-3H-4NT (simple Blackwood!; it was in 2001 and probably in 2010, the year we made contact)-5D-5NT-6D-7H. But it is easy with hindsight. And how do you play it? Well on say the QS lead you cash a top trump and discover the bad break. Now you can ruff a spade in dummy for your 13th trick, but that might not work as you might be overruffed. Or you can play the club-spade squeeze, and that does not work. Or some double squeeze. So many lines. If you made 7H you would get a top - in 2001, in 2010 or in 2021. And 7NT does not make.

And you can view all the hands at one of these links, depending on your browser security:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gv32nsd7tajxzq/7u01.pdf?dl=0

https://tinyurl.com/kynnuvja

https://tinyurl.com/2p98wppm

All three seem to work. The last is presented nicely.

And the full results at the Woodberry, laboriously compiled by scorer Nigel Freake, are at:

https://tinyurl.com/3mvt9b82

Tatties O'er the Side by Foxymoron

My friend Victor Silverstone sadly passed away recently at the age of 80. He was well-known to Woodberry members as he played in most London events and I had the pleasure of being at the Camrose and Senior Camrose with him. He was always a pleasure to chat with, in his broad Scottish accent, and I used one of his tips recently in the Lockdown League, playing for Woodberry. West is on lead against 4S, and in the other room led a trump and the contract made.

Victor's advice was to lead the top card in a suit where partner has doubled for the lead. Our auction went, with South dealer, 1S-P-2C*-X-2S-P-4S-All Pass. 2C was artificial and game-forcing and double showed clubs, so I led the queen!

Red suit leads are immediately fatal, and declarer can succeed easily as well on a trump lead as he can just play a diamond to the jack or king after drawing trumps. However, the queen of clubs is a dagger to the heart of the contract and now East has safe club exits after trumps are drawn. I am sure the opponents thought I was self-kibitzing but I wasn't.

I remember Victor saying, on a similar hand. "Leid th' hi'est caird or it wull be tatties o'er the side". This is wonderful Scottish Slang and gives our tip for the day.

"Lead the highest card in the suit in which partner asks for the lead, or it will go pear-shaped." And the last expression is much newer, from pilots in the Air Force who performed loops which were imperfect in the air. If they weren't round, they were "pear-shaped", as mentioned in the 1983 book Air Force South Atlantic.

RIP Victor. You were a great player, but an even greater person. 

His funeral is at Carpender's Park, Lawn Cemetery Watford at 11 am on 13 December.

Hehu by Foxymoron

The digit eight is the most common number within pi, with four the second most common. Interestingly, or boringly dependent on your view of maths, the numbers 2, 4 and 8 are the only ones that occur more than 10% of the time. Only slightly, mind you, as there are 100,000,791,469 eights in the first trillion digits of pi.

The Hehu, or Ogdoad, is in the dictionary as a set of eight things. Considered to have come into creation before the world did, the Ogdoad consists of four couples—eight individual deities—who balance one another and the nature of the cosmos.  Each pair correlated with one of the primary elements of the universe in the Egyptian belief system, i.e., water, air, light, and time. 

Eight-card suits in bridge are certainly not the most common, but they are more frequent than nine-card suits. Voids are even more common of course. Three voids - and three eight-card suits - on a single hand is very rare, but it occurred in the SIMs this Tuesday

In our room East overcalled 4H over 1D, and I had little choice but to bid 4S. North felt that he could not move on, but East added one more for the road and South tried again with 5S. North was now happy to have a second bite at the cherry and added a sixth. Six Spades could not be beaten as three hearts could be ruffed in dummy. The origin of the phrase is 19th Century, and apple was later replaced by cherry for no particular reason.

And "one more for the road", comes from Frank Sinatra:

We're drinkin', my friend

To the end of a brief episode

Make it one for my baby

And one more for the road

In this room, a club lead would have defeated 6D, but naturally enough East tried to cash the ace of hearts. Now the diamond suit is interesting. A singleton ace is no good to you, so you need to find a singleton queen, and, mirabile dictu, there she is. Ian Macleay made the right play to bring home his thin slam.

Triple or Progressive?

 An interesting squeeze which led to two extra tricks occurred at the Woodberry Weekend.

We were busy debating whether it was called a triple squeeze or a progressive squeeze until Nigel helpfully pointed out that they were just two different names for the same thing!

East opened 1NT. South overcalled 3 diamonds. West then bid 4NT, which East raised to 6NT.

The contract looked difficult as there were only 10 top tricks.

South led 5 of diamonds, won by declarer with the Ace.

East then led a spade, unsuccessfully finessing the queen.

North then returned a spade to the Ace.

Declarer then cashed two diamonds, discarding a heart from hand.

North discarded a spade on the King, but when the Queen was led, she had a problem as she was guarding all three remaining suits.

In practice, a club was discarded.

Declarer could now cash 4 club tricks, and on the 4th club North was again squeezed in the major suits.

The heart discard enabled the slam to be made.

Horror Vacui by Foxymoron

The above expression is often translated as "nature hates a void", a concept in Physics called plebism (nothing to do with Andrew Mitchell!). It is attributed to Aristotle and means that there is no such thing as a void. Plato also thought that, as a void is nothing, it cannot exist!

There were certainly plenty of voids on yesterday's hands, and one of these allowed a grand slam to be made. Someone dealing many million hands with Bridge Analyser believes that only 2% of hands allow a grand slam to be made, so an average of about 0.42 grand slams in a set of the 21 boards we play each week. Yesterday two grands were makable.

Bridge players do not generally hate voids, but judging what they are worth is not easy. On the following hand, Al and Judy certainly did hate the fact that North had a spade void, but as EW had 11 spades between them this was very likely:

A competitive and lively auction was judged well by Bill Linton, South. West thought 6H was bid as a sacrifice so he doubled, but the spade void in dummy and the singleton club with South meant that there was no defence. A rare score of +1210 for NS was a top.

The other hand with two voids was the following, well bid by Jim O'Donoghue and Ian Macleay to a small slam, even though 7D can be made by ruffing out the hearts. This only needs the hearts no worse than 5-2 as well, so is a pretty good grand, even though EW have only 19 points.

West might bid 6C instead of 6D. This is clearly a grand-slam try, and asks for good trumps, but would the message have got across? And it was not necessary, as 6D+1 was a top.

All Roads by Foxymoron

The proverb "All roads lead to Rome" derives from medieval Latin. It first appeared in writing in 1175 by Alain de Lille, a French theologian and poet, whose Liber Parabolarum renders it as 'mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam' (a thousand roads lead men forever to Rome).

I thought of the saying yesterday when discussing the auction to 4H on the following hand from the Autumn SIMs. I am pretty sure that all will have played the hand in 4H, but the auctions might well have been different. Playing "Benjy Acol", South can open 2C (or 2D if that shows 8 playing tricks in a suit). The rebid of 4H shows nine or ten tricks, and North will pass.


A slightly different diagram as the booklet and BBO record is "not yet available", but Sally Brock's excellent comments are. If South opens 1H, as I did, North will respond 1S, and South is too strong for 3H, non-forcing, so is pretty much forced to bid 4H. All roads ... Even an attempt to show extras by bidding 3C over 1S will just get preference to hearts when South will bid 4H. All roads ....

All roads do not lead to ten tricks, however ... If West leads a passive trump, declarer can make an easy 11 tricks by leading a spade up after drawing trumps. Andy Conway found the best diamond lead against me. I won in dummy, East playing the king, and drew trumps and led a spade up straight away. Andy had to guess whether I had one or two spades. Some of the time I have two spades, the defence can take three tricks anyway, so I think it is right to win. But Andy and his partner Leonid Balakhchev had a fine win with 69% so it would be churlish to criticise his decision on this board.

Can East help his partner in this decision? Only with some defensive agreements. East has a choice of which heart to play on the first round, and would need an agreement that his heart carding is "linked" to the key suit. He has to diagnose that this is spades, first of all, and then he has to have an agreement that low high in hearts shows an odd number of major suit cards. Armed with this information, West can win the first spade for a good score. However, declarer can avoid this "exchange of information" by only drawing one round of trumps and then playing a spade. Now West has only seen the eight of hearts and doesn't know whether East has a higher or lower one. He will probably assume that the other heart is lower and still duck the first spade, playing his partner for a doubleton. Bridge is a game of "imperfect information" and defence is harder than offence.