Manning Foster

The Buchanan has several club competitions each year. The Manning Foster Cup is a teams-of-four event, starting with a first round, and followed by a semi-final and a final. Norman and I are playing with John Di Mambro and Maria Jackson, which I think makes us the favourites for the competition, although it must be close with Betty Bell, Peggy Donaldson, Fergus and Lina Kerr. Anyway, the first round was on Wednesday, and we finished a comfortable first place in the qualifiers, with 121 VPs from 9 matches. Betty and Peggy's team were a close second (we beat them by 6 IMPs, for what it's worth, but a 3 board match probably doesn't tell you much). I think we're hot favourites to meet them in the final - the semi is a 24 board match that has been scheduled for a week on Monday.

I thought this was slightly interesting from an ethical perspective. Norman opened 1♦, and North made a 2♠ overcall, *alerted by her partner*. I passed, and South bid 3♣ (not alerted). Norman figured I had a bust, and decided it was a sensible time to stay quiet with his 18 count (I mostly agree), and North bid 3♠, all pass.
Before I led, I asked about 2♠, and South explained that she'd misread it as Lucas, having missed the fact that Norman had opened the bidding. So what's the situation? South clearly is in possession of unauthorised information (her partner didn't alert her 3♠ bid), but on the other hand, 3♠ is impossible if 2♠ was Lucas, so I think she's probably entitled to pass. On the other hand, I think she's probably obliged to explain the situation as soon as she realises what's happened (ie, before she passes 3♠). 

With this information, I'm still not sure Norman is in a position to bid (if he does, I think he just has to guess to bid 3NT).

Note that while I said I agree with Norman that bidding over 3♣ is probably wrong, there are two reasons he might have known something was up. 1. the alert: ok, so a lot of players alert weak 2s when they shouldn't, but that's no reason not to ask, especially when he does genuinely have something to think about (I guess there's a slight worry that if 3♣ is passed round to me, I might have some UI that stops me reopening on marginal hands, but I still think it's right to ask). Second: South had already passed. If South has a passed hand, and North has a NV 2♠ bid, then surely it's unlikely that I've got a complete bust. This isn't quite as clear cut, as South could easily have one (or even, at a push, both) of my kings.

As in so many of these stories, I failed to call the director at the time. I probably should have. In fact, I think I should probably have a rule of just calling the director whenever there's any doubt, but there is that general impression at the club that somehow you're accusing people of something when you do this. Is there a ruling to be made after 3♠ is passed out? How do you think this auction should go? 

Bonus question - can you see how to make 10 tricks in no trumps on the EW cards? 

Edit - I had the wrong hand diagram. Fixed now. In other news, I may learn to proof-read one day, but that has not yet happened... 

Aggregate - slam bidding

Played with Norman on Wednesday in the aggregate tournament at the Buchanan. We managed to finish on exactly 0 points overall, which was not great given that I think we had the balance of the cards... 

Two slam hands, one that I think is hard to bid correctly, and one where I'm quite surprised by how hard people found it. I'll do them in reverse order: 

Exactly two N/S pairs out of 11 managed to find a grand slam on these cards. The reason I'm surprised is that these hands seem to be almost tailor-made for a remarkably straightforward auction. Playing simple Blackwood, this would go: - 2NT - 3♥ - 3♠ - 4NT - 5♠ - 5NT - 6♠ - 7NT. South has 7 tricks in his own hand, and no matter what flavour of Blackwood he's playing should be able to find out that his partner has the missing Aces and Kings. So why didn't people manage it? My guess is that most people just don't consider the possibility of bidding a grand slam. 

Having said that, here's one where Norman and I failed to bid a slam at all: 

I opened  1♦ the West cards, North overcalled 3♣  and Norman bid 3♥. What should I do now? I decided just to bid 3NT. I knew there was some possibility of a slam, but it's hard for me to see how we can get there, and with our methods its also hard for us to stop in 4NT if I do go past 3, so I was worried about that. Note that there are 12 tricks available in ♥, ♦ or NT, but it has to be played from the East side, as otherwise a ♠ lead sinks any chance of any of the slams making. Not sure how best that should be negotiated in the auction - I think maybe 3♣ just did it's job.

Danny Hamilton has been operating the vugraph all week at the Commonwealth Nations Bridge Championships. We decided on Tuesday to take part in the Open Pairs tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have some interesting stories from that. Our initial plan was to play whatever system the winning team was playing but having looked at the Hackett's convention card, we've chickened out of that, and are going to play the simpler Benji Acol that the gold medal-winning Wales team were using (only national teams are eligible for medals).  

Thursday at the GBC

Martin Stephens came over from Edinburgh on Thursday night (making good use of his paternity leave!) and we played at the GBC. There were a few interesting boards. 

I got a good score on the board below. How do you play 4♠ on the lead of the ♥J? No opposition bidding.

I think the only chance for 12 tricks is for ♥s to be 3-3 and the trumps 3-2, so I cashed two top trumps and played off the hearts for 12 tricks and a joint top - only one other East managed to make 12 tricks. According to the travellers, only 1 received the ♣ lead that legitimately holds this contract to 11, so I think I played this one well (although it's possible I'm missing something). 

We didn't bid optimally on the the hands below (although we still managed to take over 60% of the matchpoints). 

Our auction was 1♦ - 1♠ - 2♣ - 2♥(*) - 2♦ - 3♠ - 3NT AP. 

I'm not sure where I could have bid better. I suppose I could just bid 2NT over the FSF bid, but I'm not sure where we go from there. Maybe my normal bid is in fact 3♥, bidding out the shape - which then allows partner to know we've got a ♦ fit? I'm not really sure what's standard on this type of auction, which is probably worrying, as this is a pretty basic FSF auction. 

After the jump to 3♠, I thought about going on, but didn't think Martin's spades were likely to be as good as they are. Any suggestions for how you and your favourite partner would have bid these hands to 7♦ (or even the more reasonable 6♦) appreciated. 

I don't have an electronic record of board 30, but the heart position was something like this: 

	♥ 5
♥ AQJ76		♥ T93
	♥ K842

Angus led the ♥Q from the West hand against 3NT, and Martin had about 8 tricks, and so decided to hold up. Angus switched to a ♦ to get his partner in, and the ♥9 came back. Note that at this point if Martin covers this, the ♥s are blocked, and the opponents can cash no more than 3 ♥ tricks to go with their ♦s. Note that Gerry can't prevent this by unblocking at trick 1, as then the defence can once again only cash 3 ♥ tricks before they are stopped.

I wish I had the whole hand, as the decision of whether or not to hold up at trick 1 was actually quite an interesting one, but I probably won't even manage to get 13 cards in each hand if I try to make it up... 

We didn't have a great final score, a few unlucky boards, a couple of misunderstandings and several that were poorly played (a few each), but it was fun, and I nearly beat the taxi Martin got back to Q street station on my bike. 

League fixtures are in now, and I'm playing in the second division in the West District (which is a higher standard than it was last year, but I think our team should still be favourites), and will be making some appearances for Jake Corry's Merchiston team in the East District. In fact, with that and a few other events coming up, my calendar is rapidly filling up with bridge... 

St Andrew Bridge last Friday

Played with Norman in the St Andrew Bridge Club last Friday (Jess was out playing rugby). It's a much stronger field that we usually get at the Buchanan, although obviously still quite mixed - Cliff Gillis and John Murdoch and the Outred's probably being the strongest pairs (that I know of - there's a good chance there are stronger pairs I don't recognise). For a pairs tournament, there were an unusual number of interesting slam hands... 

There was one board where 7!d was cold, but our opponents collected a comfortable 75% of the matchpoints by cashing their 13 top tricks in 6NT (the latter was a bit lucky, but 13 tricks in diamonds pretty much only relies on a 3-1 break in trumps, with a couple of other chances).

Here's another one:

I opened the E hand 1!c, and when Norman bid 1!h, I decided a splinter in !d was the best way of describing my hand. I jumped to 4!d, which specifically shows a void (3!s would be a singleton in an unspecified suit). Norman's response is now "exclusion keycard". I realised at this point that I couldn't remember what we meant by that... apparently we just stick with the usual 1430 structure, including the trump suit in the responses. This clearly isn't optimal, as it means that on this auction we have to go past 4!h when Norman has 0 keycards, but it at least has the advantage of being easy to remember... 

Anyway, as I wasn't really sure what Norman's response meant, I didn't quite have the confidence to raise his 6!h bid to 7. I think it's more likely than not that he has the 3 missing aces, but as 6!h+1 was worth 80% of the matchpoints, I was probably right not to take the gamble.

A competitive auction that we definitely got wrong: 

I think the first two bids from both of us are fairly normal. However, something went wrong at some point, as we ended up pushing the opponents into a cold slam... 

I bid 4!s because after Norman has shown lots of spades and very little defence, I was confident it would be a cheap save. I think Norman's 5!s is a little more suspect. It could be a cheap save over 5!h, or it could push the opponents one level higher - but if it does the latter, he has to be pretty confident they're not going to make it. I thought for a long time about my final bid. I think this is one of those situations in which it's almost certainly wrong to let the opponents play undoubled, but I couldn't really see how a double was going to make any difference to the score. In retrospect, this was wrong, as a double can gain us something on the hands where 5!h already wasn't making. 

As the cards lie, the slam is a lucky make, and as I thought at the time, 6!s was not cheap against game, so after 6!h, we were stuck. not sure if this one was just unlucky, or if one of us could have done better

We bid the hands below sensibly to a very good 6!d contract, which was only managed by one other pair. A poor board for those who got greedy and decided to play in 6N, but a reasonably good one for the one pair that managed to stop in 3N... I think there are just too many points between the two hands for 5!d to be the right place at matchpoints - once you're past 3N and you know you're only missing one keycard, I think you just have to take the plunge... 

Finally, there was one more "slam hand", on which I went for 1700 "saving" against the opponents' 650, but the less said about that one the better... 

Getting to grand

Played aggregate at the Buchanan Bridge Club yesterday. Norman and I won by a good 1000 or so points, probably helped by being the only pair to successfully get to 6♥ on the board below. However, I was slightly disappointed we didn't manage to bid the grand... 

Our auction went like this:

I think maybe if I start with 4♦, a cue in ♦, implicitly agreeing ♥s, then Norman can bid 4♠ next, which must imply a club control. Note that 3♠ in our methods is definitely a stopper ask for no trumps, although I think it must retrospectively become a cue-bid after I bid 4♦ - in which case Norman should probably still bid 4♠ over 4♦, as I must have shown a pretty serious slam try. However, I'm still not sure if we're getting to grand - I can count 3 tricks in ♦s, 5 in ♥s and 2 aces, so there need to be three more from somewhere. It's very likely that Norman can ruff at least one ♠ and set up at least one ♦, but I'm not sure I can find out enough to actually be able to count to 13. 

At Ian Aitchison and John Donaldson's table, the auction was somewhat more unusual, however. I'm not actually able to enter it on the bridgebase handviewer. It started off sensibly enough:

However, Ian's choice as West in this situation was a double... 

Apparently this is an "inadmissible bid", and basically the only penalty is that Ian has to find an admissible bid instead - with the caveat that his partner is barred from knowing that he has a take-out double of 3♠, which I guess means he doesn't know for sure about the spade shortage, or that Ian has any extras. Ian chose to bid 4♥, which I think probably isn't right, especially after his attempted take-out double, as slam doesn't look out of the question, and partner is pretty much barred from bidding on unless he has an absolute monster - I'd have tried 4♠, even if it does commit us to the 5 level. Added advantage is that it must show a hand that's something like take-out of ♠, meaning that partner no longer has any unauthorised information (I'm not sure if you're allowed to take that into account when making your bid?)

An impossible throw-in

The Sunday was a teams event, and Ed Jones came down to join us. I played with Ian Angus, and Martin Stephens with Ed. This is actually a pretty strong team, and we managed to make the main final despite being a good 20 IMPs down after the first 10 boards of the 26 board qualifier. In the final, I played possibly the worst bridge I've played for about 4 years. Not really sure why, I think I was probably mostly just tired.

Anyway, I'm not going to write about any of the hands I played in that session, so here's one where Jun got an interesting result. He lost two of the first three tricks in 3NT, and then made his 11th trick on a throw-in... 

I'm not sure if that was the actual auction, but I do know that Jun, with the long ♦ hand, ended up as declarer in 3NT. The lead was the ♣5, and Jun went up with the ♣A to take a ♦ finesse (he now thinks, and I think I agree with him, that this was a mistake. Basically, the entry to dummy can be used for something more useful than taking a ♦ finesse, so you should save it for later). Anyway, this lost, and North returned the ♣4 - as Jun puts it "kindly giving him a picture of the entire club suit". Jun ducked this, and put in the ♥Q on the ♥ return. He now cashed a top diamond and South showed out. Jun continued with another top ♦ on which South showed out again, and exited with the ♦5 (preserving the beer card), as North also showed out. This was the actual ending, with South having failed to follow twice in ♦s:

When South now wins this ♦ trick, he has to give declarer access to dummy, and an 11th trick (and, actually, a 12th trick, but that's overkill, as he's already lost two). With the 1 trick transfer, that brought Jun's total up to 11. Note that if South hadn't revoked, Jun was stuck in hand and could only make 10 tricks, as he'd eventually have to play a ♥ away from the AT. 

So now the important question... does this hand qualify for a beer? 

Harrogate (part 1)

I wrote most of this post on the train back from last weekend's shenanigans at the Yorkshire Contract Bridge Association congress in Harrogate. I went down to Harrogate on Thursday night with Sally Stephens and Jun Pinder. Ian Angus brought Martin and Phil up to join us, and the others in the house were Phil Morrison, who works in Leeds, so came over on Saturday afternoon, and Ed Jones, who joined us on Saturday night after playing a Gold Cup match in Darlington. We all stayed in a big house in the centre of Harrogate, which is an excellent way to enjoy a bridge congress (we did the same at Peebles in December), and a lot cheaper than staying in a hotel.

I played the Friday afternoon pairs with Jun, and we managed to finish above average, which I think is my only above average finish of the weekend... here's one hand where I was given an easy enough route to 11 tricks on the actual lead. On a different lead the play would have been interesting - not sure if I would, or should, have gotten it right.

West led a ♣, and now it's easy to make 11 tricks. You'e only ever going to lose tricks to a ♦ and the A♥. What's interesting about the hand is what happens if West leads a ♠. As the cards lie, you can now make 11 tricks as long as you duck the first ♠. East returns a ♣ (or a ♦, although you have to win that in hand), and now if West takes the A♥ when you lead towards the KQ (either time) he rectifies the count for a simple squeeze in ♠s and ♦s against his partner. If he doesn't (and you read the cards right), you can safely duck a ♦ into the East hand. I think you can usually get this right, as you can get a pretty good count on the East hand before you have to make the decision.

Against players who must have 6 cards for their weak 2s, this doesn't seem like the right line, as there's every chance you can avoid losing a spade trick if West has both A♥ and the third ♦, on which layouts these squeeze lines don't work. However, as the East hand was later described as super-maximum for a weak 2 in this pair's style, I think ducking the ♠ probably is right, as winning could be disastrous when West has a second ♠.

In the next instalment of the Harrogate chronicles, an interesting throw-in from Jun...