Follow-up to post-preempt decision

Well, at the virtual table I passed here without much thought. As Alex mentions in the comments, I am in general a devoted non-sacrificer. But let’s revisit this. What is partner doing? Based on his failure to bid anything the first time, or to bid 4S the second or third time, we can be confident he does not have a diamond-suit-plus-spade-fit kind of hand. No, he has a bucketload of diamonds. In context, I think we have a nice fit; when I preempt, he must expect about 1 card in his very long suit on average. Two and a ruffing value (if they don’t pull my trumps) is a nice bonus. It was a bold action to save over 3nt, and he must have a very long semi-solid suit. Can we raise the sacrifice a level? In retrospect, I think we can. Of course, I have come under the influence of seeing the hand record, here.

As you can see, 5D gets out for 300 (4S goes for 500.) As a curiosity, check out the par on this hand. NS score highest in notrump, making 5 for 660. So is 5NT par? No, because we get out for 500 in six diamonds! A par sacrifice against 5NT must be a rare bird, and one I only recommend hunting with handy access to the hand records.

Funny post-preempt decision

In a friendly imp match on bridgebase, I had an interesting decision: White/red, I had AKT9xxx Txx xx x. I was second seat, and it went:

1C-3S-X-P:

3NT-P-P-4D;

P-P-4H-P;

P-?

Any thoughts?

Just another 2-imp swing

This hand is from a home team game. Play 5D on the SK lead:

Dummy: Axx QJ8xxx AJx x

Declarer: x Ax KQ9xxx Kxxx

Declarer opened 1D in second seat, white/red; the full auction was P-1D-1S-2H; P-3D-4C-5D; AP. Dummy had a tough call over 4C -- as it happens, even with partner having Ax in hearts, diamonds might be the best game. Discussion of the play below…

Vulnerable, LHO must have almost everything to bid at the 4-level; if he is 6-5, I suppose he could be missing the HK. Running the HQ next seems to cover almost every case. If it holds, you play a club to the K (to keep righty off lead in case hearts 4-1) then have enough tricks, with at least two club ruffs in dummy followed by pulling trumps; maybe 3 club ruffs if lefty has no trump to lead. If, more likely, the heart loses, your plan is to use the long hearts, which works unless the HK was stiff (lefty can’t have 4). You even survive diamonds 4-0 when hearts break. After unblocking HA, you play DK, DJ and start hearts; righty is helpless since you can overruff and pull his trump, and still have just enough pitches. I can also see an argument for starting hearts with the ace, in case lefty has stiff K. This may lead to more complicated play when righty has KTxx and they tap dummy, but I think you always survive.

At the table, LHO held KQTxx Kxx –- AQJTx. I don’t know declarer’s actual play, unfortunately, but he went down 1. Maybe he cashed a high trump from dummy before working on hearts, which looks natural but is fatal on the 4-0 trump break. The lesson is not to pull a round of trumps “just to check” unless you are really sure it doesn’t cost a vital entry; this is easy to miss here because you only need that entry on 4-0 trumps.

I was at the other table, and didn‘t make that 4C bid on the black two-suiter. Any opinions on that? We got lucky because my lefty bid 3NT over her partner’s 3D, down 2 on a spade lead when the heart hook lost. Win 2.

Wait, did I imply that 3nt is routinely down? After 3 rounds of spades, I’m finished if declarer just runs diamonds – no pitches avoid the squeeze/endplay, even if I unblock my spade spots so partner’s is highest. Work it out. Of course, I had only bid once, so this line wasn’t clearly marked. There is a mild inference from partner’s failure to raise, but hardly certain. To defeat 3NT legitimately, I need to somehow convince partner to switch to clubs at trick 3, which is presumably impossible, and he must produce the 9; I don’t know if he or declarer had it. As I said, just another 2-imp swing.

Not quite

(Some spots corrected from original post--thanks, Kenny.) I played in a Chicago-area sectional Swiss yesterday with Drew Becker and Kenny Zuckerberg/Bill Drewett. It was a good turnout numerically, with about 50 teams. As for quality: There were two teams in the (stratified) field with national-caliber players, but as for the rest …it felt as if every time we came back with a moderate card, our teammates had a 1400 and an 800 for a blitz, and vice-versa! I know there were some decent teams out there, but we didn’t seem to be playing them. After 6/7 matches we were undefeated, had beaten both good teams (in close matches) and had 101 VPS. In the Swiss I wrote about in July, 100 clinched for my team after 6, but that was a flighted regional; yesterday 101 was good for only a 1 VP lead over Katz/Demirev, Miller/Carmichael, and Lehman/Melson. They would be playing the other star team, so our chances were fairly good. Alas, we suffered our first loss by 1, they won by 2, and that made the final score 111-110. I was left to contemplate the overtricks I had blown against 2NT on the final board of the day. But if there was any justice, the imp my partner earned on defense against the eventual winners back in our second match would have proved decisive:

North: JT9x Qx QJTxx Ax

West: KQxx Kxx Axx KQx East: xxx xxx K9xx JTx

South: Ax AJT9x 8 xxxxx

Partner (West) opened 1NT, passed around to South, who balanced with 2C showing hearts and a minor; North bid 2D (denying 3 hearts) and South corrected to 2H and played there. Drew led a small trump; declarer won the Q and played ace and a club…and I won the trick, because Drew had dropped an honor under the CA. I managed to get a second trump on the table, and this defense held declarer to his contract. This was a 1-imp gain for our side (see comments for the sequence at the other table.). Sadly, this particular imp was not worth the VP we would need at the end of the day.

Of course, a diamond underlead could accomplish the same thing…maybe my club plays should convey suit-preference if partner doesn’t unblock, so he can underlead, but that is hardly routine. Finally, notice that if declarer decides that not letting me win a club trick is the vital issue, he needs to lead a club from hand so he can duck if partner splits. This might be the wrong play, of course; it could look bad on poor breaks.

NFL Playoffs

All you NFL fans, the NY Times has a free just-for-fun pool I decided to enter. You can see my picks at http://projects.nytimes.com/nfl-playoff-bracket/bracket/53964045

I'm with a lot of people in considering the Chargers the team to beat, although I'll be pulling for the Patriots. The Pats have a tough opponent in the Ravens even before they get to SD. The Colts aren't dominant but should handle the Bengals or Jets next week; but if the Ravens get through the Patriots, they could bounce the Colts. The NFC seems quite evenly matched and I won't be real surprised however things go. Well, if Minnesota wins I'll be surprised; they haven't looked good at all lately. I'm picking the Saints only because of the bye and home field; any of the other teams will give them a tough time though.

All the matchpoints

It’s rare for 100% of the matchpoints to be at stake on any decision. Look what happened on this hand. In a robot duplicate I held AJ98 7 A73 KJ532 and opened 1C. It continued 1H by lho, X by partner, up to me. I think this is an obvious 2S bid. 1S is a nothing bid that could be on 3 trumps with no H stopper, so to me 2S shows only something like 14-16 support points, which I have easily. The field disagreed unanimously: 24 of 24 bid 1S! So, when North bid 4S, I was unknowingly in a top or bottom situation, looking at:

North: KQ54 QJT Q6 T764

South: AJ98 7 A73 KJ532

West cashed a heart and led the ST. I played SJ, S8 and he pitched a heart. I opted to overtake and lead a club (I must note I erred by leading the 4 rather than a higher spot, although this turned out not to matter. Never waste your smallest spot from the short hand!) RHO hopped CA to lead a heart; I correctly pitched a diamond and lefty won and played a 3^rd heart, RHO ruffing. Now a simple matter to overruff, pull trumps and guess clubs, playing LHO for Qx (which he held) since he would lead a stiff, for making 4 and all the matchpoints. Almost...

See, I use the keyboard input on bbo, which works fine; no typos for some time now. When following, you just hit the rank; when not, suit then rank. *But* if you just hit a rank, it assumes the last suit you played if possible. You see where this is going? By just hitting A, I “overruffed” with the DA instead of the SA! That was down 2, and exactly 0% of the matchpoints. You can see all the results at http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?traveller=2701-1262208601-558614&username=jlw77

Robot Statistics

Most of you are BBO users, and probably know of the robot duplicate tournaments that were introduced earlier this year. You play against three robots (the program GiB, on one of its faster, less skillful settings) and your scores are matchpointed against other humans playing the same hands. You always get the most hcp at the table. The attraction of this format is that you have many more key decisions per hour than you do in a normal human game; you wind up declaring about 55% of the hands, and the hands go by pretty fast. As a result some people I know are total addicts…I’m a very mild but steady addict, playing 3-4 12-board sessions each week. Of course, the context of some decisions is very different from real bridge, where you wouldn’t (I hope) follow the rule of “never count on partner’s judgment.” You can read a long series of articles on Glen Ashton’s blog and some on Memphis Mojo’s. As far as tactics, I basically open a 14-18 notrump (a bit liberal on distribution) and 19-21 2NT. This is not only to hog the hand, but also because partner’s bidding is not quite as bad as in other auctions.

Partly because it is rare to have useful statistics on individuals in bridge, I got curious about breaking down my results and those of others. Bridgebase will give you a file with a month’s worth of results, and I wrote a parser to break these down by who declared. I might compile more statistics at some point. Here’s what my program outputs now, from being fed the last 3 months of my results (SD=standard deviation):

North declared 105 hands(24.36%): NS averaged 55.22%, SD = 23.15

East declared 41 hands(9.51%): NS averaged 53.77%, SD = 28.04

South declared 243 hands(56.38%): NS averaged 60.55%, SD = 26.31

West declared 37 hands(8.58%): NS averaged 61.80%, SD = 27.91

Pass declared 5 hands(1.16%): NS averaged 50.81%, SD = 10.13

Total of 431 deals, Average: 58.60% SD: 25.93

(Statistics exclude 1 average minuses.)

Comments: It’s not surprising I average better as declarer than as dummy. This doesn’t necessarily mean I should hog it even more – on a hand where I artificially made myself declarer by putting it in an inferior contract, my average would certainly be less than the 60.55% above. In fact, I’m quite satisfied with averaging 55% as dummy – this is a rare instance where we can say for sure that any advantage over the field represents solely bidding judgment! Good players who I’ve looked at tend to average 53-55% as dummy – this partly represents bidding to the right level, and partly that the field sometimes takes hand-hogging to excess. Finally, note that the swingiest hands are when I defend. The field doesn’t like to pass, so defending leads to some tops and bottoms. I defend a few percent more hands than most people I’ve looked at. (One reason is I avoid marginal takeout doubles, fearing partner’s insanity.) The results are acceptable, with a mp average on defense only about 1% less than my overall.

The highest MP average I’ve come across is Mark Lair’s. This could surprise you only if you didn’t know he plays the GiBs quite regularly. Here are his stats for a 2-month period:

North declared 558 hands(30.56%): NS averaged 55.07%, SD = 23.15

East declared 132 hands(7.23%): NS averaged 57.14%, SD = 25.97

South declared 1009 hands(55.26%): NS averaged 62.42%, SD = 24.68

West declared 120 hands(6.57%): NS averaged 55.20%, SD = 27.18

Pass declared 7 hands(0.38%): NS averaged 62.69%, SD = 16.47

Total of 1826 deals, Average: 59.32% SD: 24.72

(Statistics exclude 72 average minuses.)

I can certainly live with being just 0.7% worse than Mark Lair, at this odd but entertaining form of the game.