Month: September 2010

Hi all

Another deal from Piedmont Wednesday.

It has been a long time ago I’ve had such a clean and powerful hand. Ten absolute tricks from top, unless of course fate spins an evil story on me and gives my LHO four times the Ten and also a doubleton . But how often does that happen?

My LHO opens 1 and RHO responds 1. Perhaps Peter Fredin knows how lure the opponents in a trap here, I don’t know. At my table I wasn’t able to get the opponents to double me in 4, instead they took the push to 5. I have only one defensive trick, so I lift myself to 5. Too much for RHO, the double gets pushed through the table.

1. Obfuscation part 1
2. Obfuscation part 2, complete with theatrical look of insanity
3. Drats!, I’ve been uncovered

LHO leads the Ace of and dummy comes down:

If only I had an entry to dummy! I felt like Indiana Jannes trying to access the Sacred Chamber of The Eleventh Trick. When East shows out on the first , West goes into the tank… and continues a small for East to ruff.

Thank you! Now I can extract the sole remaining trump, and cross over to dummy’s 5 to pitch my losing for +650.

If EW don’t touch or take a ruff, NS can only take ten tricks with as trumps. East can take eleven in because North doesn’t have an entry to give South a ruff.

Hi all

Here’s a deal from the Wednesday teams night at Piedmont. The discussion invoked almost physical violence. In an uncontested auction South gets to declare 6. West leads a small . What’s the best approach?

Two paths: take the safety play in ( King and then small towards the Ten), or, if the lead smells like a singleton play trumps from top.

Do the statistics perhaps provide an answer? Any 4-1 trump split occurs 28.26% of the time, but you can only tackle four trumps in West, that leaves 14.13%. Compare that to the splitting exactly 1-5, which is close to 7.27%. So it looks like we’ve got a winner, safety play beats singleton 2-1.

But…

Bayes Theorem (credits to Geoff for explaining me):

P( singleton | lead) = ( P( singleton) * P( lead | singleton) ) / P( lead)

Read this as:

The odds the being a singleton given a lead are equal to the odds for a singleton , multiplied by the odds for a lead given a singleton, divided by the odds for a lead.

We’ll assume West always leads a singleton if he has one, so:

P( lead | singleton) = 1
P( singleton) = 0.0727
P( lead) = 0.0727 + 1/3 * 0.9273

That last part means that in 1/3 of the remaining space will be the lead chosen. We’ll ignore a broken trump holding as lead option.

This all calculates to more than 19%. So compared to the safety play, this is the superior path.

Well, this was pretty much an eye opener for me, very counter intuitive.

At our table Geoff (East) decided his hand looked like a weak two in . After South’s take out double I took maximum advantage of the vulnerability and put up a massive wall by jumping to 6. Let them figure out if and what slam they have at the 6-level! North took her plus and doubled. When the defence slipped up by not leading trumps twice, we got away for -500. Not a bad deal if you get your odds right.

Hi all

As you can see I’ve updated the look of my blog (again). I had some issues with the old theme and I decided to make a switch. There are still some small issues to attend to, but I’m sure it’ll prove to be a better experience.

Trentemøller has a new album: Into The Great White Yonder. Still electronics-driven, dark & ambient, but unfortunately less formidable than The Last Resort. Check it out on Pandora or Grooveshark.

Here’s another deal from the BBQ Swiss in El Cerrito, a 13 IMP pickup.

1. Strong
2. Waiting

Partner took the slow route (4 instead of jumping to 5) but was unable to make a cuebid. At the table I assumed Antony was holding a couple of possible useful Queens in addition to genuine support. 6 looked to be reasonable safe and on a finesse at worst. Funny to see that partner couldn’t cuebid the suit he controlled because I was ahead of him.

Viking style. With a boatload of points and finding out about a fit with a lot of room to spare is like duck soup. A breeze. Easy as pie. Like taking candy from a baby. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Simple as ABC.

1. Big
2. 0-7 HCP
3. Bigger, 20+
4. 5-7 balanced
5. Relay
6. No 4 card Major, no 5 card minor
7. Relay
8. 3-2-4-4
9. Aces?
10. One
11. Do you have the magic King?
12. No
13. Like a hot knife through butter

Hi all

Last Saturday I was the Methusalem in a team that for the rest consisted of junior players. As you can see, I still haven’t lost my skills in frivolous bidding. Antony cooperated joyfully.

This was the auction from my point of view:

1. Of course this is by no means a vulnerable opening, you have an impossible rebid over the expected 1 by partner
2. 4th suit forcing
3. Asking for half a stopper/more information

I thought my hand improved during the bidding, partner doesn’t seem to have any wastage in opposite my void. I was more than a tad off, for this was the deal.

Antony felt my slight distress and discomfort at the table and waved his right hand towards West like a true Obi Wan. “You will not find the killing lead.”

Well, it worked out better than expected when West found the single lead for us to make it: the Ace of .

Antony ruffed, ruffed a in dummy, took three pitches on dummy’s and cross ruffed the rest of the tricks.