The Gargoyle Chronicles: Event 3 - Match 3

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Event 3 - Match 3 - Board 7

Board 7
Both sides vulnerable

♠ Q 9 6 3 ♥ J 8 6 ♦ 3 ♣ A K 10 8 3

I pass in first seat. Partner opens three diamonds in third seat and buys it. RHO leads the deuce of clubs. Their convention card says "low encouraging."

	NORTH Phillip ♠ Q 9 6 3 ♥ J 8 6 ♦ 3 ♣ A K 10 8 3

	SOUTH Jack ♠ J 8 ♥ Q 7 4 3 ♦ A K J 9 8 6 5 ♣ --

West	North	East	South
Marcus	Phillip	Nathanial	Jack
	Pass	Pass	3 ♦
(All pass)

Three diamonds? On a five-loser hand? I hope partner wouldn't have done this in first seat. And I'd just as soon he didn't do it in third seat either. He might make four hearts opposite a psyche.

I rise with the club ace. East plays the seven, and I discard a spade. I cash the club king and discard another spade. East plays the four; West, the five. If "encouraging" means West has an honor, then I suppose the club honors are split.

If I don't have a heart trick, I need to pick up the diamonds. If I do have a heart trick, I need to hold diamonds to one loser. But it doesn't really matter what my objective is. Low to the jack is my best play in either case. Sometimes one spurns a trump finesse to avoid a ruff. But in this case, I welcome a ruff. If the diamond finesse loses and they grab a heart ruff, that establishes the fourth round of hearts for me, and I've made my contract.

I lead the three of diamonds--seven--jack--deuce. I play the diamond king--four--club three--diamond ten. That makes nine tricks. I hope the opponents weren't planning on leading a club against three notrump. I cash the diamond ace, pitching another club from dummy. West pitches the club six. The missing clubs are the queen, jack, and nine. The honors are presumably split, but I don't know who has the nine. East might well have decided it was too important a card to signal with at trick one.

If I can take a heart trick, I'll make four. West probably would have led from ace-king of a major, so East must have at least one honor in each major. In fact, he must have exactly one honor in each major. Otherwise he would have an opening bid. So I know the heart honors are split. If they are three-three or if I can duck out a singleton or doubleton honor, I will make a heart trick.

I have two ways to duck out an honor: (A) I can play low to the jack, then lead low from my hand. Or (B) I can lead the queen from my hand. If West wins this, I lead toward the dummy and duck. (A) works if West has shortness, and (B) works if East does. Does either play offer any extra chances? Yes. (B) allows me to pick up honor-ten or honor-nine doubleton on my left. My queen forces West's honor. Then, when I lead toward dummy's jack and see the ten or nine appear, I can cover, eventually establishing my seven. So (B) is a standout, especially when you consider that East is more likely than West to have short hearts anyway.

I lead the queen of hearts--deuce---six--ace. I ruff the return and lead a heart to the jack. Making four.

	NORTH Phillip ♠ Q 9 6 3 ♥ J 8 6 ♦ 3 ♣ A K 10 8 3
WEST Marcus ♠ K 7 ♥ K 9 5 2 ♦ 4 2 ♣ Q 9 6 5 2		EAST Nathanial ♠ A 10 5 4 2 ♥ A 10 ♦ Q 10 7 ♣ J 7 4
	SOUTH Jack ♠ J 8 ♥ Q 7 4 3 ♦ A K J 9 8 6 5 ♣ --

I wonder why West ducked the heart queen. Couldn't I have been three-three in the majors?

I don't care for the opening lead. I would have led the spade king. Leading long, weak suits against pre-empts frequently seems to accomplish nothing other than to allow declarer to take quick discards. If you lead a short suit and catch dummy with values there, at least declarer rates to have some length in that suit, so he doesn't have any quick pitches. Make dummy's club ace the spade ace, for example, and the spade lead doesn't hurt. As the cards lie, a spade lead beats three diamonds a trick. That's not as good as a heart lead, which beats it two tricks. But it's better than letting them make it.

I commented above that East is more likely than West to have short hearts. Why is that? West is known to have four or five clubs and a doubleton diamond, and I will assume hearts are not three-three (else my decision is irrelevant). If West has five clubs, then he is either 4-2-2-5 or 2-4-2-5. But if has four clubs, he is almost surely 3-4-2-4. 5-2-2-4 is contraindicated both by his failure to pitch a spade on the third diamond and by his choice of opening leads. If he chose to lead a long suit, his five-card suit would be a more natural choice.

The other table played three diamonds making three, so we pick up an imp. They probably got a club lead as well but misplayed the hearts even worse than I did. I turns out (A) and (B) were both wrong. Assuming I'm right about the split honors, I had a 100% line available: play low from both hands, ruff the return, and play low from both hands again.

Now I have to ask myself why I didn't think of that. I suppose it's because my first thought was that I had to guess who had the doubleton. Once I found a play that improved on that, I was happy. Deciding when it's OK to stop thinking is one of the hardest problems in bridge. I"m sure if I were to encounter this as a problem in a book ("Find a sure trick line for an overtrick, assuming split honors."), I would solve it. But at the table, no one tells you there is a sure trick line. If you don't see one right away, how do you know whether to keep looking or not? I confess I have no idea of how to avoid errors like this.

Table 1: +130
Table 2: -110

Result on Board 7: 1 imps
Total: +2 imps

No comments:

Post a Comment

About This Blog

First, a word or two about who am I so you have some idea how seriously to take the advice you find here. I retired from tournament bridge in 1992 (coincidentally, the year my daughter was born). At the time, I had accumulated a little over 5000 masterpoints. I had won numerous regional events and had finished second or third in several national events. Annoyingly, I have never won a national event of any significance. (The qualification is necessary. I did win one national event of little significance.) My best result was second place in the Grand National Teams (with John Lowenthal, Michael Becker, Ron Rubin, Michael Rosenberg, and Brian Glubok). I have theories about why this is, but I won't bore you with them now.

I am still in contact with many of my friends from tournament days. So I still discuss bridge and, occasionally, still write articles for Bridge World magazine, some of which you can find reprinted here: Phillip Martin's Bridge Articles

I have always enjoyed writing about bridge and have, from time to time, considered starting a blog. I think there is a void in the bridge literature that I can make some attempt to fill. Bob Hamman has stated that most people play bridge by asking themselves what they should do. Instead, they should be asking themselves what is going on. Once you figure that out, what to do will often suggest itself. I think he is right about that, and I think bridge literature is partly responsible. Bridge books and articles focus on the unusual and the spectacular. They can get you in the habit of looking for opportunities to shine, which isn’t what you should be thinking about.

The late John Lowenthal, my partner for years, was perhaps the king of doing the unusual, especially on defense. But he always found these plays by being alert to what was going on, not by simply looking for opportunities to do something unexpected. If declarer spurned a finesse John expected him to take or failed to attack a suit that John expected him to attack, John would ask himself why. Frequently, the answer to this question would reveal the entire deal. Then John could be creative and think about finding some way to deflect declarer from the winning line. And, often, he succeeded.

What I am going to attempt to do in this blog is to show by example how one should think about the game. The focus will be on process, not on results. How do you figure out what is going on? How do you try to conceal what’s going on to the opponents? How do you try to clarify the position to partner? These are the skills that separate the expert from the intermediate player more than the ability to execute a backwash squeeze. And, for this purpose, almost any deal can provide material for discussion.

What I propose to do is to play in BBO robot individuals and report on each deal in detail, focusing on the questions I ask myself and how I reach each decision. I will report on each deal, not just the ones I find interesting or instructive. This blog will probably not be of much help to a beginner, but I think it will be instructive for an intermediate player. And my expert friends will finally see what is going on inside my head when I’m in one of my interminable huddles.

I will be South, but, following convention, I will always make South declarer in the diagrams. Thus my reported compass direction may change from deal to deal.

I should point out that not all of my ideas are mainstream. I considered including a catalog of quirks, but I decided that was unnecessary. They will become apparent in due time.

The Gargoyle Chronicles

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Event 3 - Match 3 - Board 7

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers

Blog Archive

About This Blog