Glasgow vs Zimbabwe

When a school from Zimbabwe contacted the SBU looking for a friendly bridge match they were put in touch with me, as the teacher of a school club in Glasgow. I arranged the match on RealBridge, which turned out to be between two schools in Harare, Dominican Convent and St John’s, and The High School of Glasgow representing Scotland.

After the inevitable connection difficulties and general confusion (“you can leave the ID number blank!”) it looked like we had maybe seven or eight tables. Given that it’s always better to have substitutes than empty spaces, I reduced it to six tables and combined some teams. After four rounds of two boards each, these were the top three:

Glasgow #2	Niamh R & Rachel Y, Kevin R & Michael K	61 VPs
Dominican #1	Tinashe Z & Daniel R, Nomalangu N & Vongai T	52 VPs
St John’s #2	Susannah P & Gabriella B, Taona Z & Ngavatendwe N	48 VPs

It’s no coincidence that all of the top teams had at least one pair that bid and made games (and Glasgow had two). Bidding and making games is the key to success in Teams matches.

Overall it was quite a chaotic hour of bridge, but I enjoyed seeing all the youngsters play and hope to do it again soon. Most of them had never used RealBridge before, but that didn’t seem to matter much and they picked it up very quickly. There were a few skipped boards for slow play, one unusual 4♦x-8, but also some good play and plenty of potential for the future.

Below I’ve chosen three hands to write about, where there are some good teaching points to pass on to the mostly beginners who were playing. As it’s the most important part of the game, in each case I’m going to focus on declarer play.

In this deal two East-West pairs got to 3NT. Will it succeed?

I encourage my pupils to count top tricks in NT contracts. A quick count reveals that this is one of those happy deals where we’ve been dealt enough top tricks to make the contract (1 Spade + 0 Hearts + 6 Diamonds +2 Clubs = 9). In practice we might get an extra Heart too, but certainly there are nine tricks there for the taking, and indeed both declarers in 3NT made the game easily.

Here 4♥ from North-South was a popular contract, but it didn’t succeed as often as it should have.

For the 3NT contract above we counted sure winners, for this high-level suit contract we instead count expected losers in each suit.

In Diamonds there are two certain losers (but only two, as we can ruff the third and subsequent rounds).

In all of Spades, Hearts, and Clubs we count ½ a loser – meaning that sometimes we will lose 0 tricks and sometimes 1 trick, depending on if a finesse in that suit succeeds. So depending on our luck with finesses we will lose 2, 3 or 4 tricks

The correct way to play the hand is therefore to draw trumps with a finesse, take the Spade finesse, then decide how to play Clubs.

In practice most declarer’s instead failed because they didn’t draw trumps, and West got a ruff with the Ten of Hearts - the message being to draw trumps straight away unless you have good reason not to.

This last deal shows a useful technique, where we don't draw trumps straight away.

Suppose we are sitting South as declarer in 2♠. We have four trumps in each hand, plus a short suit in both our hand and dummy. The fact that we have these shortages means our plan should be to cross-ruff the hand. That means not drawing trumps at all, but instead going from side-to-side ruffing everything we can.

On this deal cross-ruffing makes a lot of tricks. We can make four Diamond tricks (Ace and three ruffs in dummy), four Heart tricks (Ace-King and two ruffs in your hand), plus the Ace of Spades and Ace of Clubs. That makes ten tricks total.

Well done St John’s declarer Emmanuel M who followed a similar plan to make 1♠+2.              

Buchanan vs Bonnyton

Last night Anna and I played in a Realbridge match against Bonnyton, in Glasgow Division 1. Afterwards, Anna said she thought we might be Division 2 players. We lost the match 15-1 overall, although it was fairly close on our table.

The opponents made several 24 point 3NT games, did better on the distributional hands (we missed the sacrifices), and benefitted when we underbid a couple of hands at the end. Overall it was quite a long evening, with a delayed start and a further delay while one of their team went to look for an iPad charger - turns out he was in Tenerife, hence he was the only one playing in a vest.

But amongst the 24 boards we had at least three or four triumphs. This was the best of them.

Playing our weak NT system I opened the West hand a natural 1C. Anna replied 3C, which for us is 10-12 with Club support. She has a strange hand, and maybe should bid something different, but I'm not sure what. As we tend to do when we have a good minor fit, I bid 3NT.

North lead a small Heart (the 5). I was a bit worried about my lack of a Diamond stop, but dummy has them well covered. In fact Spades are the issue. South won the opening lead with the Ace of Hearts and I dropped my Jack of Hearts. A great ruse. South continued with Hearts. I hastily took the King and 11 more tricks in the minors for 3NT+3.

Afterwards North claimed the Spade switch was obvious, but I like to think my deceptive Jack of Hearts (looking like someone with JT or making KJ) fooled South into continuing Hearts. This was the full hand:

You can see that on the other table our opponents played 5C-1, perhaps a sounder contract but much easier for the defence to take their three tricks. In the other match 5C made when the defence tried three rounds of Spades, and 3NT made on another Heart lead and continuation.

 

Halloween bridge

John and I had an OK game last Tuesday, playing for Team Buchanan against Gilmorehill. The first hand we bid up to 6H, and I'm glad I was dummy as my hands were shaking from all the sugar from trick or treating. The slam made, but not much else did. Through misunderstandings and optimism I kept putting John in hopeless contracts. He played them well for down one, maintaining good concentration while dressed as a Jedi throughout.

In defence I was more alert than usual, and had a full count of declarer's points and shape for most hands. There was one I was proud of; after a disastrous AH lead setting up declarer's King I kept concentration and later ducked twice to cut declarer off from dummy and get the contract one off. That was the highlight. A lowlight was 2S-1 when I guessed trumps wrong with K9x opposite QTxxx. I first lead the Queen, then instead of finessing on the second round made the cowardly play of the King.

Another lowlight was the hand below. 

After a poorly controlled auction I ended as East in 3H, where actually you'd like to be in game. They lead a Spade, and I immediately started on Diamonds. The defence won and played Ace and another Heart. At this point I can virtually claim nine tricks; four Hearts, two Spades, one Diamond and a Club. I just need to ruff a Diamond and return to hand with a Spade to draw trumps.

But I had another plan. Leaving the Jack of Hearts in dummy as a trump policeman I started on the Clubs. If they had of split I would actually get 11 tricks. But they didn't split; someone ruffed the second round of Clubs and now I only had 8 tricks.

This didn't both me too much at the time - I was glad I wasn't in 4H, but I did wake up at 5 am the next day with an uneasy feeling then the correct play on this hand occurred to me. 3H-1 when I should have had 3H=.

In the end we lost the match 4-12. 

Derryvolgie Bridge Club

Despite numerous visits to Belfast, this was the first time we managed to get to the local bridge club. Several times during the day I put our system card in front of Anna but she waved it away, insisting that she was going to play on instinct alone. As it she got lucky, as there were no difficult bidding hands. Her declarer play was also excellent, making crucial overtricks on all her contracts.

I played a single contract of 2♠, which got 21% after I should have done better.

We got a few gifts from lax declarer play, but also suffered when the local declarers bid ambitious contracts and made them. During the first half I was wondering if we should have gone on the more challenging Thursday-night game, but then a series of 0% scores reassured me we were in the right place. The low-point was when doubling them in 2♥, making with an overtrick.

It was a friendly atmosphere and nice talking to people. Anna hasn't since commented on the poor quality of my chat so I assume it was OK.

Here's an interesting hand from early on.

Danny Anna W N E S 1♥ - 1♠ - 3♥ - 3NT - - -

I opened 1♥ and rebid 3♥. I was close to rebidding 3♣, who knows where we would end up then. As it is Anna bid a sensible 3NT, and got a Diamond lead.

She won with the Ace and with the aid of a Heart finesse took 9 tricks. This scored exactly 50%, beating a few pairs who stopped short of game and one in 4♠. Those in Hearts took 12 tricks.

Overall we came third with 59%.

Team Buchanan vs Hamilton

This Glasgow league match started at 1930 to accommodate us and I just made it on time, after finding a parking space on Cadzow street. When I reassured the rest of them that John was arriving soon on the train there was general uproar: "The train?" but he got there in time to start.

In the first half we barely had any hands. In fact the strongest hand I had all night was 14 points. So lots of defending. Once when declarer in 2NT finessed I smoothly ducked my King, and the contract went down one. Afterwards John explained that if I just defended normally and took my King and returned his suit it would have gone two off.

This was a rare hand I got to play:

I opened the South hand 1H and rebid 2H. 

On seeing dummy it looks like I possibly have one loser in each suit. But when the lead was a Club, I thought I was going to take 10 tricks. Heart to the Ace revealed the bad news, and now as well as two Aces I now have three trumps to lose, which luckily I can afford as I'm only in 2♥.

I made 2♥= but possibly we should have been in game. Twice more we stayed low, once making 3♥= then 3♠+1, so maybe we were slightly underbidding.

Apart from that things went well. I got rather warm and might have been sweating a lot as one of the opponents tactfully said that I was very warm-blooded.

On the final hand the opponents were about to play 2♥, but I made a takeout double. The opponents were shortly in 5♥, which I felt obliged to double. Obviously it then made, for a bad finish of -550 points, but overall Team Buchanan had done enough to win the match 15-1.

 

Team Buchanan vs St Mungo

This was the second match of the season for the newly formed Buchanan team, but the first outing for John and I. Last week e had a practice night at the club, and have also been using the Cuebids App. It was therefore good that we didn't have any bidding misunderstandings, and played a reasonable game. Although I was able to remember the more complicated parts of our system I still haven't quite got the philosophy of playing five-card majors and 2/1, and sometimes I'm surprised by how weak John's hand is.

The first hand I played was 4♠x-2 after John raised my 1♠ opener straight to game on a zero-count. Unfortunately this time the opponents weren't making anything (except 3NT, so technically we got the par score). Near the end I opened 1♥ with a nice 17 count and after John made a simple raise went straight to game. It had no play, unless an opponent revoked, which they did, but we were nice and let them take it back.

The other three hands I played all went off one or two, where if I'd have guessed right I'd have made it. Guessing right is the hallmark of good players, and I didn't have it tonight. This was my only highlight:

Love all S deal ♠ A K Q x x ♥ Q x x ♦ x ♣ A K x x ♠ x x ♥ A K x x x x ♦ A x x ♣ J x

Danny John W N E S 1♥ - 4♦* - 4♥ - 4NT* - 5♦ - 7♥

John opened the the South hand 1♥ and I knew that the only cards I cared about were the missing keycards; ♥AK and ♦A. But for some reason I feared an immediate Blackwood might be misunderstood so went through an unnecessary splinter. When I found John did have the keycards I duly bid 7♥.

West led a Heart. With 12 top tricks the obvious thing is ruff a Diamond for the 13th. So win the first Heart in dummy with the Queen, then cross to the Ace of Diamonds, ruff a Diamond, and cross back to hand to draw trumps. Although neither John or I spotted this at the time trumps were 2-2 and he duly made 7♥=. The other tables all made 13 tricks in 5♥, 6♥ and 6♥, so a good board for Team Rowan.

Overall we lost the match by a mere 1000 points, leading to a 10-6 loss.

Southwold Summer

Anna and I played an evening at the Sole Bay Bridge Club. We mostly defended, and mostly defended well, but the key to doing well in Matchpoints is to get a few gifts from your opponents, and that helped us to 66%. I had a couple of deep thinks (very slow) that made no difference.

We also played a few hands with Christine and Stanley. A few times we pushed them to high in the bidding, so when I doubled them in 5♥ they were expecting to go down. What would you lead from:

♠ A 9 8 x x x ♥ x x x ♦ K x x x ♣ -

Your side has bid and raised Spades, and they've bid and raised Hearts.

I found the bold lead of a low Spade,. In a book of bridge stories this would definitely be the lead to beat the contract, putting Anna in with her King of Spades to give me a Club ruff. It's not good playing it safe and starting with the Ace of Spades, as it's too likely declarer or dummy has a singleton Spade, then you lose the chance to put partner in for a ruff. I specifically lead the ♠2, to ask for a low suit return.

Turns out it didn't matter which Spade I lead. This was the whole deal:

All Vul W deal ♠ K ♥ Q T 9 x x ♦ J x x ♣ J x x x ♠ A 9 8 x x x ♥ x x x ♦ K x x x ♣ - 7 7 9 17 ♠ Q J x x ♥ - ♦ A Q x ♣ x x x x x x ♠ x ♥ A K J x x ♦ x x x ♣ A K Q
Danny Christine Anna Stanley W N E S 1♥ 2♠ 4♥ 4♠ 5♥ x - - -

There are four top losers, but look at how my lead lets 5♥x make. Declarer's Spade loser disappears when he wins his singleton King, a nice surprise. Then he draws trumps and runs the Clubs, throwing a Diamond loser.