Bridge in Canada

I'm in Prince Edward Island (or "the island", as the folks around here refer to it) to visit Jessica's mum for Christmas. We had the extended family for the couple of days either side - a total of 14 people, with the requisite amount of seafood chowder, quiche and roast turkey. All quite an undertaking. 

On the day we arrived, I had a quick check to see if there were any nearby bridge clubs, and discovered that there was a game with a guaranteed partner at the extremely nearby Haviland club - just a few minutes walk through the snow, and right next to the sea. 

Everyone was very welcoming, and inquired what I was doing on the island. I had a nice game with Ray Malone, who sometimes does some teaching at the club as well, and we tried out a fairly basic 2/1 system. 

Looking at the website, we appear to have finished third, with 58%. As far as I can tell, that is comparing East/West percentages with North/South percentages and I don't remember there being an arrow switch, but as Paul pointed out when I visited Chennai, third is probably an appropriate place to finish as a first-time visitor. The results are here: http://clubresults.acbl.org/Results/270256/2016/12/161219A.HTM 

We would have finished in a comfortable first place had I not forgotten to duck the second spade on the board below. For some reason I became convinced the suit was 4-4 when North returned the 2, but failed to take into account that if they were 4-4, I could afford to duck a second round.... 

The next board where I failed to make a game was a little more interesting, although looking at it again, I think I just overthought things, and it should be fairly simple. 

How do you play 4 spades as East after the defence take the first two tricks with a heart to the Ace and a ruff, and play a club?

The correct line, I think, is to simply cross to the ace of diamonds and take a spade finesse. I was concerned that by doing this I would cut myself off from the heart winner in dummy, so I played a low spade immediately, successfully managing to find the only way to fail on the actual layout, which was Kx with North. If the spade finesse loses, you're still ok as long as South doesn't have another spade to return, as now you can unblock the hearts and draw the last trump by crossing to dummy. If the spade finesse wins, of course, you don't need the second heart winner. 

Anyway, it was a fun afternoon, and a very picturesque setting: 

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year from Canada!

Winter Pairs 1

It's September again, and that means the club's premier pairs competition, the Winter Pairs, has started. Norman and I got off to an enormous start, with a score of 68.3%. John Di Mambro and Douglas Mitchell got an almost-as-enormous 66.23% to finish in second place, so the race is well and truly on. The format is that your top 4 scores out of 7 evenings count, so another couple of really big scores will be necessary if we want to win, but we've certainly given ourselves the best chance. 

We only got a below average score on 4 boards out of 24. Here's one of them: 

I played in 3NT. I won the first heart trick, hoping the suit might be blocked (it is), and ran the club queen. When this won, I could see 10 tricks for the taking. I cashed everything before taking a diamond finesse - confident that South would not have bared the diamond K, and was held to 10 when it lost. I'm not quite sure how three people managed to make 11 tricks even after getting a heart lead - maybe winning the lead and taking a diamond finesse immediately? Perhaps it's tough for South to cash two hearts on that line when they can see that that sets up a heart trick for declarer. 

Buchanan Congress Pairs, plus more

This month was the Buchanan Congress. I've had some success in the Congress over the past few years, winning the Pairs with Norman in 2014, and finishing second in both the pairs and (I think) the men's teams last year. This year was not so good. 

I played in the pairs with Danny. He has a good account of it here. He charitably missed out the hand below: 

I played in 3NT as West (I don't quite recall the auction, but I suspect I responded 1NT to Danny's 1♥ opening, and then accepted his invite). 

North led the ♠6, and I won this on the table, and counted 11 tricks, 4♦s, 5♣s and 2♠s. For some reason, I had completely neglected the existence of the ♦K... 

I cashed the ♠K and the ♣A, and then claimed, stating that I would make 4♦s and 5♣s. South correctly pointed out that, erm, no, I didn't actually have 4♦s, and we immediately called the director. Given that I'd set up the defences' ♠ suit for them, and that they had the top three ♥s to cash, we put the score in as down 3, and got on with the next board as the director went away to make a ruling. 

I'm not quite sure what happened in the end, but the director spoke to us after the session, and told us she was planning to rule the contract to 3NT making! Looking at all 4 hands, I think this is (astoundingly) probably correct. There's just no way for the defence to get more than 4 tricks, both the major suits are blocked, and the ♦T is dropping on the first round, so there's no way to get that suit wrong.

I absolutely agree that when a declarer has made a claim as ridiculous as this, you should be as harsh as possible in determining what a "reasonable" line of play is. but as long as I pitch a ♥ and not a minor suit winner when South cashes his (only) ♠ trick, the contract is there for the taking. 

I haven't actually checked what happened with the ruling - according to the results it's still down 3, so maybe the opposition objected to this ruling - given that it would take us from joint 5th up to 4th place in the consolation final, I wasn't inclined to argue. 

♠♥♦♣

This Wednesday it was a standard aggregate night at the Buchanan, and I played with Norman as usual. We finished third East/West, with John Donaldson and Jimmy Jordan winning. This was probably the most interesting hand of the night:

Norman opened the West hand 2♣, and after I showed a double negative, we were able to settle in 4♥, for an excellent score. I think both the play and the bidding are interesting. First, do you open the West hand 2♣? I'm generally convinced by the argument that with a 2 suiter you just open one of the suits, but I think this hand is just too strong. Here's a hand where you're a big favourite to make game:

♠xxxx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣xxxx

And here's another where slam is nearly laydown:

♠xx ♥QJxxx ♦xxx ♣xxx

Is partner supposed to bid with either of these hands? Given that in both cases you have a fairly big major suit fit, can you rely on the opponents to come back in on either of these hands? I think the answer to both is no, and I'm happy with Norman's decision here.

Now, assuming you've navigated the bidding and are playing in 4♥, what's your plan? You can be pretty confident of 5 tricks outside of ♥s, which leaves you needing 5 tricks in ♥s. How do you go about getting them? On the lead of the ♦2, I was optimistic of cashing 4♦ tricks, but when N ruffed the fourth with the ♥9, that was also good enough for me - as the trumps are now 2-2 I can now basically just draw trumps while ruffing two spades in dummy. I suspect after three rounds of ♦s stood up I should have started cross ruffing things immediately, but it all worked out.

Next weekend is the YCBA congress in Harrogate. I'm playing with Martin Stephens, Frazer Morgan and Peter Stephens (over the course of the three days). Phi Morrison is also there, and has helpfully organised all our accommodation, but isn't actually playing in any of our teams. On that note - congratulations to Phil, Frazer, Phil and Alex for winning the right to represent Scotland in the Chairman's Cup in Sweden.

The second best hand I've ever held

Haven't posted anything in a while. 

In the meantime, I won a silver prize at the National Men's teams (playing with Jun, Adam and Paul - slightly awkward winning a silver prize with two recent Camrose players in our team, but these things happen). I won a silver prize playing with Jun at the Melville Congress. Finished second in the club's pairs championship (congratulations to Christine and Ian, who led it from the start), and Hillhead have managed, for the first time (I'm told) to retain our place in the first division of the West District League. Unfortunately, Merchiston didn't quite manage to do the same, and we were relegated in the East District League. 

Despite all that bridge, the hand I'm going to post is one I was dealt playing casual bridge at Martin Stephen's house last week. I was dealt the South hand below, and Becky opened 1 heart on my right... what's your plan? 

National League weekend 2

The second weekend of the National League was this weekend. Full results are available here. Congratulations to the team of Mike Ash, Alex Adamson, Finlay Marshall, Arend Bayer and Patrick Home, who won the division. They went in as favourites (and in fact would only narrowly have missed out on automatically being in the first division), and won out in the end. Congratulations also to the Burn team, who will get to play in the First Division next season. Also well done to Brian Short, Alan Goodman, Sam Punch and Stephen Peterkin, who won the first division with over a match to spare (Derek Saunders also played in that team, but I think he only played the Saturday of the second weekend, so hadn't played enough boards to qualify for the Camrose). Phil S and Frazer will be the third pair in the Camrose team for the first weekend, with Alex and Phil M as their reserves.

We did a lot better in the second weekend than we did in the first, but had left ourselves with just too much to do to catch the teams in front. Even beating the Burn team 15-5 on Saturday didn't do enough to close the gap when we narrowly lost a couple of matches in the afternoon. We had the best score in the second weekend, narrowly ahead of Ferguson and Adamson. Here's a full table with scores from both weekends (since the version on the national league website requires you to do some arithmetic). 

Captain	First Weekend Score	Second Weekend Score	Total Score
ADAMSON	87.7	78.08	165.78
BURN	90.1	70.48	160.58
FABEN	64.22	85.44	149.66
SHENKIN	74.69	67.45	142.14
FERGUSON	56.41	81.37	137.78
CLOW	53.25	69.69	122.94
GUTHRIE	53.43	67.13	120.56
WICKENS	81.83	36.73	118.56

♣♦♥♠

The most exciting hand of the weekend was the very first board of the very first set (although we didn't play it first):

Adam opened the North hand 1S. By agreement we open most 7 loser 8 counts, and he has a 5 loser 7 count, so this isn't horribly off system (he does have ways of showing a longer minor in most auctions). East decided not to bid, and after a bit of thought, I bid 3NT. I wasn't sure whether we had any explicit agreement about 3NT, but it pretty much has to show this sort of hand. Adam asked me what my minor was with 4C, and when he jumped to 6, I figured that AKQJ9754 was almost certainly a better trump suit than whatever he had in mind, and corrected. East wasn't kind enough ot make a Lightner double, so I rolled in an easy 940. Note that you can make 7 of either minor, but only if you arrange to play it from the short hand to avoid the ruff. 

The auction went slightly differently at the other table: 

Having right-sided the contract, there was no lead that could avoid a couple of overtricks in this contract, and we chalked up 18 IMPs for 940+850... Note that 13 tricks in hearts are cold if played by East, but West can only make 12. 

We spent a few minutes in the pub wondering if you could construct a hand where each player can make exactly one grand slam, before realising that we pretty much had a template for one here - swap a few of North's spades with a few of East's diamonds, and West is cold for 13 tricks in spades, whereas East can only make 12. Each player can make exactly one grand slam. 

♣♦♥♠

I've enjoyed playing the National League this year, and will definitely be looking to enter again next season. Whether Adam and I will stick with the strong diamond, or find anyone who's willing to play in a team with us if we do is yet to be seen...

The organisers currently have a consultation going on to come up with suggestions for the format. While obviously I have a selfish interest in keeping the second/third divisions as they were at the end of this season, I'm not convinced I'd bother entering if I knew I had to play in the third division for both weekends, so I think there's probably a good argument for keeping the format the same as it was this year. It also seems fairer to people who didn't enter this year for whatever reason, or want to rearrange their teams. Given that the league is essentially an international trial, I think that for it to take a full 2 years before you can even get into a position to be eligible for international selection is probably a bit much.

It did feel slightly unfair that the shorter matches in the first weekend counted the same as the longer matches in the second weekend, but at least in the second division they weren't that much shorter (and we still wouldn't have made it into second place even if you scaled up the second weekend scores by a factor of 16/11), so overall I think the format worked, I just wish we'd managed to play a bit better in the first weekend, so we could at least have kept it interesting.

Winter Pairs 3

The Winter Pairs is the Buchanan club's main pairs competition, the best 4 scores out of 8 collected from September to April count towards your final score. Last year, me and Norman finished third overall. This year, we started off badly with a below-average round, but have now followed it up with two scores in excess of 60%. We'll need a couple of really big scores to be in with a chance of winning, but it's a good start. 

Here's one where I made a different decision to literally everyone else in the room who was faced with the same problem (although I don't know how many people that was). 

Playing matchpoints, what's your call? I thought it was a pretty easy pass... I only have 2 cards in each major, I have a bare 12 points. Partner hasn't opened either a weak 2 in a major or a Lucas 2, so I thought it was long odds on that the opponents had a major suit fit, and are going out outbid us if I come into the auction. I just don't think it's odds on that I go positive if I open this hand, which is surely the only consideration when opening 4th seat playing matchpoints. 

As you can see from the traveller (slightly rotated from above - I was actually East), no-one else was both put into the same position as me and made the same decision. I can only assume that a number of people opened in third seat and that some were playing a weak NT, and decided to open my cards 1N, but I'm sure at least a few people must have been in my position, and decided to go ahead and open anyway. To be fair, I don't think I would have gone down in 2♣, so if I was destined to buy the contract there, then I was not correct to pass. 

I posted the hand on Bridge Winners, and as I write this it's exactly split down the middle between 1♣ and pass, so clearly pass isn't quite as clear cut as I thought, but it worked out well for us this time. 

We had a few unlucky boards towards the beginning, made a few mistakes in the middle, and were given a few gifts at the end, all adding up to 61.51%, which is a decent score, but almost certainly won't be one of our top 4 scores if we do go on to win the competition. 

Next week, East District League match - I'm playing with Adam, so we can get a bit of practice before National League, and the Chris Harrison Pivot Teams, where each member of the team plays 8 boards with each other member of the team. Norman and I are playing with Maria Jackson and John Di Mambro, and we're hoping we can finally win a Buchanan club competition - last season we finished either second or third in every single one... 

National League Weekend 1

We played the first weekend of the National League this weekend. With the Second Division splitting to form Second and Third Divisions after the first weekend, our first goal was to avoid qualifying for the third division. With a couple of matches to go, it was looking close, and then we lost heavily to the Burn team in our penultimate match, and didn't think we were in with much of a chance. Luckily, a few of the other teams who were on the verge of qualifying also lost, and a big win in our last match was enough to see us sneak through in 7th place (8 teams in the 2nd division). You can find the full table here. 

Rank	Name	Score	Carryover
1	ADAMSON	184.17	87.70
2	WICKENS	172.96	81.83
3	SHENKIN	157.85	74.69
4	BURN	147.33	90.10
5	GUTHRIE	140.18	49.80
6	CLOW	137.05	53.25
7	FABEN	127.37	64.22
8	FERGUSON	119.30	56.41

We do actually move up a bit when you remove the games against the lower six teams, with a somewhat more creditable 6th place, but we're still a good way behind the three teams at the top. We did manage to beat both Wickens and Adamson in the first round, but it will have to be a pretty spectacular set of scores next weekend if we're going to overcome that sort of difference. Ian Burn's team is the biggest winner from discarding the matches against the bottom six, gaining a full 40 VPs when compared to Adamson, and actually starting the second weekend at the top of the division, despite only finishing 4th overall.

The reason we didn't do better is mostly because we didn't play well enough. There were, as there always are, several chances that we could have taken which would have seen us win the matches we lost. We managed an impressive 20 IMP swing out on one board (both 6CX and 4HX+2 making against us...). Our team mates had a similar sort of weekend, some ups and some downs. If you believe the Butler, we were pretty evenly matched - they were .19 IMPs a board better than us, just sneaking positive, whereas we were just negative.

Adam and I had a couple of system mix-ups, but most of our errors were just straight up errors, and could just as easily have been made if we had been playing Culbertson, instead of the strong diamond we (for some reason) have decided to adopt. 

Here's one where I think we were a bit unlucky:

Seeing both hands, you might not be overly excited to play in 6 clubs, but on the auction I (with the West cards) knew that Adam had exactly a 4-3-1-5 shape and 11-15 points... given that there were only 13 points missing outside of diamonds, I felt that 6 clubs was at worst going to be an even money chance, and just bid it. Adam played it quite nicely, winning the opening lead, ruffing two diamonds and playing off three rounds of hearts, hoping North would have to win and would be endplayed in spades. Unfortunately North had another club to return, and the slam was one off. South did have the spade 10, so the slam can make double dummy on the intrafinesse in spades, but that wasn't really a very realistic play, unless you're wiling to run all the clubs and back yourself to read the spade suit when South has to find two discards. 

We'll get a bit more practice in before the next weekend, and hopefully I'll be a bit sharper, as we'll be more definitely in the middle of bridge season. First goal, once again, will be to avoid qualifying for the third division next season...