Curate's Egg by Foxymoron

In May 1895, the satirical British magazine Judy published a cartoon by artist Wilkerson, showing a timid curate and a fierce-looking bishop at breakfast in the bishop's house. The bishop says, "Dear me, I'm afraid your egg's not good!" The curate, desperate not to offend his host and superior, replies, "Oh, yes, my Lord, really – er – some parts of it are very good."

The expression "Curate's Egg" is now used for something which is "good in parts", and such was the case in our auction on the following interesting hand at the Wing Cup, an annual tournament in aid of the Alzheimer's Society at the Woodberry this week. As my mum died of that horrible illness, I always try to take part.

At our table, East opened a strong NT, West transferred to hearts, and East bid 2S. This, a transfer break, showed a maximum with four trumps. West continued with 3C, natural, and East bid 3H, waiting, and showing a stronger hand than 4H. Now West's 3S and East's 4D were cues, and West bid 4NT, Roman Key Card Blackwood. In my partnership with Leonid, West, we play what is called 1430, and my 5C bid showed 4 key cards. Now West asked for the queen of trumps with 5D and I denied it with 5H. West, looking at a possible trump loser, bid 6H which ended the auction. I might have bid 6D on the West hand, asking partner to choose between 6H and 6NT, but that is with a considerable amount of hindsight and there was no guarantee East would get that right. He should, with the fitting Qxx of clubs, choose 6NT. Maria and Derek Essen scored the top here when they sailed into 7NT and made it. Unfortunately, they did not do as well on the other 23 boards!

The play in 6H was interesting. South will lead the queen of diamonds, perhaps, and declarer wins with the ace and lays down the ace of hearts. When South drops the queen, it is right, according to the principle of restricted choice, to play for this to be a singleton rather than QJ doubleton, and all the declarers in slam made 13 tricks. They crossed to the ace of diamonds and finessed the nine of hearts, getting a good score. Strangely all the declarers who languished in game only made 12 tricks.

Asking for More by Foxymoron

Oliver Twist was perhaps the most famous example of someone asking for more, when the soup he received was not sufficient and he asked, politely enough, for more. It is depicted in many Dickens articles:

Oliver asked for more by Harold Copping

"What has this to do with bridge?", I hear you ask. Well, when you have all the key cards, you can ask for more, in particular the queen of trumps and any kings. It does not quite stop there, however, and in our game this week Mr Bumble gave the wrong response to "asking for more". This was the hand:

South opened a weak 2D and our auction began quite well with West doubling as he is too strong to make a simple overcall. North might have raised but did not and East bid 2NT, Lebensohl, intending to show a diamond stop on the "slow shows a stop" method. West bid 3S, showing a good hand and East cued 4D, showing spade support and the ace of diamonds. Then West bid Roman Key Card Blackwood, 4NT, and East showed one key card with 5D. Now West's 5H asked for the queen of trumps, and anything more that East had to show. The right response to this was 5NT, saying that East does have the queen of spades, does not have any kings, and does have "more", being the two rounded-suit queens which West needs for grand. Instead East bid 6S, and West could not do more. We were surprised to find that 6S+1 was worth 75%, and I recalled Erasmus in Adagia: regione caecorum rex est luscus.

Second Bite by Foxymoron

Defence is the most difficult part of the game. Try the following defensive problem which was faced in the Metropolitan Cup today. When the opponent did not solve it, Dave Cleal made his contract, helping himself and his partner Paul Felton to the top spot on the Cross Imps with a fine average over 49 boards of +0.89. The Woodberry Bridge Club represented London B in the event, and were second behind Surrey B.

                                                            South

You are South and the auction is shown. Partner leads the three of spades and declarer plays low from dummy and your king wins. How do you proceed? The full hand shows that you need to lead a low club, which is a remarkable defence.

Real Bridge, which hosted the event, produces a colourful and informative record of the play. After South won the spade and not unreasonably returned a diamond to the queen and ace, Dave drew a second round of trumps. I think this is wrong as South surely does not have a second spade or he would have played one. Only now did Dave lead a club from dummy and South had a second bite at the cherry. If he had ducked this, declarer would have no way home, but when he won and cashed the king of diamonds, declarer was able to cash his winners and cross ruff for ten tricks. 

The phrase "second bite at the cherry" predates "second bite at the apple" which both originated in the mid 19th Century but a search of the Internet for the exact earliest use proved fruitless ...

Noli Me Tangere by Foxymoron

The above phrase, which means "Touch me not" was reportedly spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognised him after his resurrection. It was depicted in art in a painting, also called Noli me tangere, by Correggio. This is in the Museo del Prada in Madrid, which is well worth a visit.

Its relevance to bridge is that one often has to decide whether two adjacent honours are touching or not, particularly when the opponent plays one. The principle of restricted choice is a key one in bridge; it states that when someone plays one of two touching honours, their partner is twice as likely to have the other touching honour. When I got this wrong this week at the Woodberry, I scored a complete zero.

We bid, P-(P)-1H-(2H)-3H-(3S)-4H-(4S)-P-(P)-5H-(All Pass). I expected a bit more for my partner's 3H bid, but we would have had a bad score for defending 4S, which only one other pair bid. Malcolm Morris, East, and Matthew Hendrickson, West, did well to push us to Five Hearts. East led the queen of diamonds which was interesting, and I thought that this was more likely to be QJ doubleton than a singleton, and definitely was not Qx. It is not clear that the rule of restricted choice applies here, as players very rarely lead the jack of a side suit when they have QJ doubleton as partner is likely to be confused. Also a singleton queen, on this auction, is a dangerous lead which might save declarer a guess. To cut a long story short, I drew trumps and when I discovered that East had one trump, I played for East to be AJxxx x QJ AQxxx, or the like, unsuccessfully. Had East led a normal jack of spades, and provided the defence cashed their club winner at trick two, I might well have gone off anyway. It seems normal to play for West to have QJx or QJxx in diamonds.  In the end, virtue had to be its own reward, a phrase that seems to have originated from Cicero.

Force Majeure by Foxymoron

The origin of the phrase force majeure is around 1820. The principles behind the force majeure clause originated in England. In Taylor v. Caldwell, an English court decided that circumstances beyond the control or fault of two contracting parties excused performance under their contract.

In bridge, force majeure should not really apply, as one or other partner is usually to blame for reaching the wrong contract. Disagreement on whether a bid is forcing is a common reason for a debacle and this is within the control of the contracting parties. As there are a mere (4*(22)^35-1)/3 distinct bidding auctions (around 10^50), comfortably less than the number of atoms in the universe (around 10^80), the keen student can agree which bids force partner to bid again. One of the contestants on BBC's Mastermind had a misunderstanding of what a "force" was when he responded (from Dumb Britain):

But I digress. In this week's duplicate, two strong players had a disagreement on whether 3H was forcing on the following hand:

The auction, uncontested, was 1H-1S-2C-2NT-3H-Pass. West thought he had limited his hand by 2NT, and East was showing a weak 6-4. East thought that 3H was forcing, showing six hearts. Readers might like to decide whether 3H would be forcing in their methods. My view is that it is non-forcing as that is how one bids with a weak 6-4, just worth an opening bid.

Nobody reached the reasonable 6H which will make if the heart finesse is right and has chances when it is not. However, only one person made 12 tricks in 4H. The right line, on the spade lead is to win and run the jack of hearts. South will win and exit with a trump, but declarer can run all the hearts and South is squeezed in the minors. In the six-card ending he has to keep four diamonds and three clubs and this cannot be done. The only better results for EW was when North injudiciously saved in 4S for -1400, an Owain - after the rebellion of 1400.  A clear case of monochromacy.

Cut the Link by Foxymoron

Four Musketeers from the Woodberry had a successful day at the London Metropolitan Bridge Association Teams of Four on 9th July. There were quite a few Woodberry members who also did well, in particular Andrew Clery and Bill Linton in the team that finished fifth.

One of the most interesting and complicated boards was the following:

Stefanie Rohan did well on this hand. East, Paul Lamford opened 1C and John Cox, also a Woodberry member, doubled as South. Stefanie, West, redoubled and David Willis, North, upped the ante with 2S. East and South passed and Stefanie made the practical bid of 3NT.

North led the seven of spades to the ace and South continued with the ace and another heart to West's ten (ducking works well) and North's queen. Now North switched to the eight of diamonds which South won with the king. At this point South needed to cut the link with a club shift, but instead missed his chance by playing a third heart. West won and cashed her red winners to squeeze North in the black suits. John, an expert who has won the Camrose for England, realised he had to play a club quite quickly afterwards.

As David Burn once said, "An expert is one who knows what he should have done just after he did something else".

The winning team, left to right, Paul Lamford, Stefanie Rohan, Chantelle Girardin, Ken Barnett.

Quant by Foxymoron

Years ago the only meaning of "quant" was a punting pole used by those going up and down our canals. And it was a useful word in Scrabble.

The computer era spawned a number of new words and quant was one of them. It is short for quantitative analysis and any trader in the stock market is familiar with it and the quant network.

In bridge, the word QUANT is used on convention cards most often to explain the raise of 1NT or 2NT to 4NT, and here it means quantitative. The convention card police asked me to explain QUANT on my card in the Camrose, which seemed very petty. Partner is invited to go to six or to pass. A more refined version deals with what happens if partner then bids at the five-level or six-level in a suit. The former is best played as the response to simple Blackwood, to avoid bidding a slam off two aces. The latter is usually played as showing a good 5-card suit which might play better than no-trumps. 

Shelley Shieff judged well on the following hand.

We had the simple auction 1NT-4NT-Pass and it transpired that 6NT needed the clubs to break 3-3, a 36% chance. Of course they did on this occasion and we scored well below average as many pairs just punted the slam. There was a certain irony that a quant was originally a punting pole. So, the operation was a success but the patient died.  This very old expression stems from 1829 in the US:

29 August 1829, Savannah Georgian (Savannah, GA), pg. 3, col. 1:

A successful operation!—A late paper has the following paragraph: “Amputation at the hip joint. This operation was performed about two months ago at Odinburgh (Edinburgh) by Mr. Liston. The operation was successful, but the patient died!“