Second String by Foxymoron

 The beginner is taught to cover an honour with an honour, and often does so religiously. I have lost count of the number of times Zia has guessed the layout on the principle that if they don't cover an honour it is because they don't have it!. And it often costs little to try and induce a cover.  The power of the closed hand means that they cannot see what the right defence is.

North did a bit too much on this board and South's hand was a bit of a disappointment to him. East led the normal king of hearts, asking for count which West gave. Now declarer drew trumps and played for clubs 3-3. A very reasonable but unsuccessful line. Given that there could be a trump loser, this is a poor slam, but a bit of cunning might have made it. At trick two declarer should lead the ten of clubs from dummy. West will surely cover this (after all North might have Axx) and North wins and draws trumps and crosses to the king of clubs. Declarer can still play for clubs 3-3, but now has a second string to his bow. He should lead the nine of clubs from dummy and see what reaction he gets from West. It costs nothing, and if West plays low you might decide to play for clubs 3-3 still. Or you might reason that West would not have covered at trick two with ♣Hxx. If West covers another honour with an honour you are home. With an unexpected overtrick as well and probably all the matchpoints in the country on this SIMs board. To save the overtrick, West has to duck the ten of clubs at trick two!

The expression "second string to your bow" is very old and comes from archery. It appeared in John Heywood, Proverbes (1546):

Yee have many strings to your bowe, for yee know,

Though I, having the bent of your uncles bow,

Can no way bring your bolt in the butte to stand ;

Yet have yee other markes to rove at hand.

Sadly, in today's climate of allegations of cheating in online bridge, any pair scoring +1460 will be viewed with suspicion. There has been a plethora of suspensions including county directors and internationals, Chess is worse with tens of thousands of online accounts closed for cheating.

20210413_commentary.pdf (ebu.co.uk)

gives all the hands with interesting commentary by Paul Bowyer. Congratulations to Dominic Flint, the London President, and his wife Pamela Reiss, for their splendid 72% defending the human race against the robots who were second.

Breaking Bad by Foxymoron

When trumps break 5-0 it is very easy to give up hope, but Matthew Bingham emulated his wife's never-say-die attitude of a few weeks ago, on the way to another fine win. Breaking Bad was a popular neo-Western American crime series about ten years ago which was very popular. It had nothing to do with bad breaks at bridge, but featured a chemistry teacher who became a drug dealer after suffering one or two bad breaks in life.

4NT was key card in hearts, and 5S showed two and the queen, so South was forced to bid 6H. In theory this good contract cannot make, as West can always overruff a spade and play a trump and declarer is a trick short. The Polish Grandmaster Savielly Tartakower has a famous quote:  "No one ever won a game by resigning", He wanted to state that unless and until you continue to play the game till the very end, you would never know that you ultimately won or lost.

East led a spade which didn't really help, and declarer won in dummy, and crossed to a trump, West foolishly playing the ten, revealing the bad break. Undeterred, Matthew cashed three diamonds, pitching a club from North and two more clubs. Now Mathew led a club from dummy and West ruffed low, fatally, Now North could overruff, and ruff a spade with the nine of hearts and he was home. West needs to discard on the club, and when North ruffs and ruffs a spade high, he can overruff and return a trump and declarer is a trick short. Still nothing is lost by trying!

Careless Talk by Foxymoron

 The World Class player Michael Rosenberg once wrote that if you are declarer, you should regret every bid your side makes other than the final contract.  I was impressed a few weeks ago with Richard Creamer's approach of bidding slam on his second turn and I even tried opening Six Clubs on one hand in the Garden Citiies Heat. The idea that "careless talk" can be expensive stems from a World War II poster series, which are very much collectors' items nowadays. One example:

On one hand last night it was relatively easy to select the final contract after the initial exchange between our side as my partner defined her hand fairly well with her first response:

South's 3D showed an invitational raise in hearts, about 10-11 with 4 trumps. One could explore the slim chance of grand on the North hand, but it would need perfect cards. As Bob Hamman was fond of saying, "Don't play me for perfect cards, I never have them!"  Also even opposite four small hearts, slam will have play, so I think the practical choice is to bid it.

On the normal lead of the jack of diamonds the first thing to observe is that if trumps are 2-1 you can give yourself an extra chance by eliminating the pointed suits and then playing ace and another club. If West has Kx of clubs then you are home as he will be endplayed. But trumps were 3-0 so that will not work. Still one can ruff two spades in South and then play ace and another club,. If West has something like Qxx Jxx Kxxxx Kx he will again be endplayed. Here, of course, the slam comes in from the main chance of the king of clubs onside.

If West does have the KJx of clubs, you will probably go off, but it might still be made. You can ruff two spades in South and one diamond in North and now play three rounds of trumps ending in South. If West has KJx of clubs and the king of diamonds, he has been squeezed can be thrown in with the king of diamonds to concede the twelfth trick in clubs. Of course this line will fail if East had the king of clubs. Sometimes simple is best, especially as a club lead would have beaten you anyway if the king is offside!

Alarm Call by Foxymoron

 One of my favourite music videos is the above by Björk, with the lines:

It doesn't scare me at all

This is an alarm-call

So wake-up, wake-up now

Woo-oo-ooh!

Today has never happened

And it doesn't frighten me

The video was directed by the late and tragic Alexander McQueen. It can be viewed at the following link and you can skip ads after 5 seconds: 

björk : alarm call - YouTube

What has this to do with bridge you might ask? Well, in bridge an alarm call is the play of an unusual card to get partner to do something unusual and not to continue the suit he has just led. Sadly, this was pearls before swine when it occurred today:

North's 2S showed hearts and a minor and South's 3C was a poor 3-card raise. North leads the king of clubs, the system card from AK, and South would normally play the queen here, to show the jack. North knows that South has three clubs and therefore the jack is the unusual card and the alarm call.

If North reads it, the defence can take five ruffs in the red suits. North lead the ten of hearts, asking for a diamond and South ruffs, returns a diamond, gets another heart ruff, gives another diamond ruff and gets a further heart ruff to complete the dénouement. Sadly this inference was missed despite South playing the jack of clubs. No North-South managed a plus score, so this would have been an outright top instead of below average.

Deep Mind by Foxymoron

 Google acquired the company Deep Mind in 2014. A chess-player who once attended coaching sessions I ran, Demis Hassapis, founded it. The programs Alpha Zero and Alpha Go have become the best "players" of  chess and go respectively, by teaching themselves. They have avoided the number-crunching approach of previous AI software and just learn by playing millions of games on their own. Already humans have no chance at either of those games. Curiously, bridge (and to a lesser extent poker) are still defended by the human race. I recall composing a chess study in 1981 and it is coming up to its 40th anniversary in a month or so. I plugged it into the best chess program today, Stockfish, and it still cannot solve it. Something to do with the horizon effect. It is worth referring to briefly. The full solution is in Wikipedia if you are interested. Just search for Grotesque (chess).

The interesting aspect of this position is that it does not require any great chess ability to solve it, although such luminaries as Kasparov, Speelman and Nunn only cracked it in about half an hour. But it does require a lot of logic. 

In bridge, they also lack something called "intelligence". However, today, Robot West and Robot East surprised me by having a remarkable auction. If I did not know better, I would think they had seen each other's hands.

I regretted not trying something esoteric as North, such as overcalling 1NT, when the robots galloped into the good Six Diamonds here. And on a club lead, the Robot played it well too. It won with the ace, cashed the ace of diamonds, and crossed to the ace of hearts. Now it cashed the ace, king of spades pitching losers from dummy, crossed to the king of hearts and ruffed a heart with the nine of diamonds. All the defence could score was the king of diamonds. This line works about 74% of the time, whenever there is a singleton diamond honour or the diamonds are 2-2. Could the robots have really conducted such an amazing auction knowing what they are doing? Well, I think that Robot West was stuck after the negative double. Now 2NT shows a weak NT and 3NT "shows" 18-19 so it felt that it had to "make up" a 2D bid. It explained it as 5+ spades, 4+ diamonds, and one could almost see Robot East having an orgasm when it looked at its seven-card support. And when it bid 5D, West now cued 5H, presumably looking for a grand, but Robot East decided it did not have enough for that. 100% for EW, unsurprisingly.

Some rough edges, but the robots are getting there.

Help by Foxymoron

 It was good to see Rachel and Matthew Bingham recording their first win at the Woodberry Pairs today, only a couple of months after returning to active play. They used to win regularly at the club, but have had other interests in recent years, as well as raising a family.

Today they needed some help from the opponents to win, and the last board epitomised some of the gifts they had: I am reminded of the famous words:

When I was younger, so much younger than today

I never needed anybody's help in any way

But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)

(And now I find) now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

There was no real chance from the start, but Rachel persuaded her opponents to misdefend. She was grateful for the top, which helped her and Matthew to 64%, well clear of second.

I don't think West should raise with only a singleton ace of clubs, and this caused East to misread the hand. West started with two top hearts and then cashed the ace of clubs and played a third heart. Declarer ruffed and played off all the trumps. Declarer had cunningly cashed the king of diamonds en route, so that there was no entry to dummy and this persuaded East to discard the king of clubs playing South to have AQxx of diamonds. If that were the case then declarer could always make it on a minor-suit squeeze, so East should assume that South has only three diamonds and two clubs, even though that seems unlikely. As the famous detective said: 

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth - Arthur Conan Doyle

Jolly by Foxymoron

 The expression "jolly" meaning "favourite" seems to come from horse-racing, from the 19th century and from the phrase "jolly old favourite" meaning  the most likely horse to win. Perhaps using jolly for emphasis as in "jolly good show". In two-selection events, the jolly will be "odds-on". In bridge the contract is a jolly when it is a favourite to succeed; in other words, odds-on. 

Richard Creamer and John Pemberton were jolly after they bid the only slam to make on the following hand tonight, which was the highlight in their otherwise very average evening:

The auction was short and sweet. Once East learned of the four hearts opposite, shown by the negative double, he didn't need much for slam and just punted it on his second round. The expression "short and sweet" was already proverbial in 1539, when it appeared in Richard Taverner's translation of Erasmus's Adagia. Over the years it was occasionally amplified, as in James Kelly's Scottish Proverbs (1721): "Better short and sweet than long and lax."

Slam is around even money, and illustrates the principle of restricted choice quite well. If the defence leads a spade, you will win and now have to broach the trumps. There is little to go on but South, who overcalled, rates to have more spades than his partner so fewer hearts and you should start with a heart to the king. Now, if nothing interesting pops up, you just have to hope they are 2-2 which will occur about 40% of the time. But you also have the extra chance that South has a singleton queen or jack of hearts. Then you will run the ten of hearts on the second round. Unfortunately you will lose to QJ doubleton, but you will pick up singleton queen or singleton jack with South. Overall your chances of success, a priori, are around 46%, Does that mean you don't want to be there? Not at all! Consider the auction. North-South have 11 spades between them and yet only competed to 3S. They are unlikely to have singletons or voids, which means that the chance of 2-2 hearts has gone up dramatically. Not to 100% as South could have a small singleton heart for example, but to somewhere around 75%.

This makes the slam a big jolly! If all your contracts are odds-on you will not go far wrong.