New York Times 2011/04/02: A Good News, Bad News Situation

To: Phillip

Re: Your 4/2/11 New York Times column

Cc: Victims on Bridge Distribution List, Blogs, and Facebook “Bridge” Group

I have a Good News, Bad News type of story about the same deal that is in the 4/2/11 column. The link for it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/crosswords/bridge/02CARD.html?ref=crosswords

Dealer:  South Vul: None	North ♠ Q9 ♥ QJ95 ♦ Q852 ♣ 532
West ♠ K763 ♥ 82 ♦ J9 ♣ AQJ84		East ♠ 5 ♥ K1043 ♦ 10643 ♣ 10976
	South ♠ AJ10842 ♥ A76 ♦ AK7 ♣ K

The bidding at my table:

Perhaps you don’t like our bidding, but what would you done instead? Note that North showed his spade support instead of raising diamonds. Our 1M-2M raises weren’t necessarily all that great & 3S originally would have been weak w/ 4 trumps, so 3S now was quite likely to show only 2 trumps or a pretty bad hand w/ 3 (probably <= 6 junky support points). Also, in standard types of systems, jump shifts by opener are made on <4 card suits moderately often.

Lead: ♥8 (same as in the column)

Incidentally, to head the usual pathetic remarks, we were NOT playing in the Women’s Pairs! However, the ACBL often used the same deals for some concurrent events at the Nationals. I like that practice because it lets players from those events discuss lunacies, or even occasional triumphs, on mutually played deals. It may not be that great for writers because it reduces the amount of ammo available to them. However, there’s usually an abundant supply anyway, at least of fiascos. 🙂

BTW, I have played in Women’s and Men’s events at the same time! — Especially some directed by the late Maury Braunstein, the Chief ACBL Director & inventor/user of wacky movements. They mainly occurred when he was in charge of some tourneys w/ a fairly small # of tables for Men’s Events (20+ years ago & usually for a one session weekday afternoon Sectional). He provided us w/ an extremely welcome big increase of ambiance for a few rounds or so; the men would go into a Women’s section! Who says the good old days weren’t really all that good?

OK, I’m sure that fascinates all of you, but unfortunately it’s time to get back to the hand.

I played the ♥Q and E ducked pretty smoothly. I couldn’t be sure what was happening since EW played 3rd & lo, but I had a hunch E had the K (& thus presumably the 10).

Then I floated the ♠Q. W won & returned another spade. E pitched a club. It appeared that he didn’t like clubs, but maybe he thought that any true info might only help me (that was probably right). With him having only one spade, I was most hoping he might hold all the important cards were out: the heart guard(s), long diamonds if they were not 3-3, and the CA.

Then he would be in a 3-suit repeater! Thus, I could make 6. Note that 3-suit squeezes do not necessarily repeat, especially if the victim unguards certain suit(s). [Amazingly, it also can be the case when declarer has only one loser! :-)] It is left as an exercise for the reader to show that he couldn’t stop a 2 trick gain on this hand if he guarded everything! (Don’t you just love those kinds of statements?)

But even a simple squeeze to make 5 could be there too. So I cashed another spade. W seemed to encourage in clubs (too bad), I threw a club from dummy & E pitched a lo heart. Now the last spade: another club from W, a heart from dummy & a club from E.

First, The Bad News: It wasn’t the CA. It seemed that the layout was probably now:

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ — ♥ J9 ♦ Q852 ♣ —
West ♠ — ♥ 2 ♦ xx ♣ AJ8		East ♠ — ♥ K10 ♦ xxxx ♣ —
	South ♠ — ♥ A7 ♦ AK7 ♣ K

Some of the diamonds were honors, but it made no diff. Other layouts were logically possible bridge-wise, but usually didn’t matter unless W really guarded hearts.

It was time to test diamonds. W dumped a club on the Q. So I played the last diamond, unloading the CK. E was endplayed.

Now, The Good News: At least I made 5. And More Good News Later On: It was worth 21.5 out of 25 (altho not as high a %age as in the Women’s Pairs). Draw your own conclusions. 🙂 Actually, it appears to me that declarer can always make 5 regardless what the defense does, even without the crisscross squeeze reported in the paper. However, there is some guesswork re whether to give up on 6, hooking in spades, the way to get to dummy to do so, etc. Furthermore, even making 6 wouldn’t have gained much. It was going to be tough to beat a few +500’s our way!

That’s all folks! — At least for now.