In Friday’s Game at Citrus Springs on my last board the hands were:
KQTx
Jxx
Axxx
xx
Axx
AK
KQJx
AKxx
Sitting South I opened 2 clubs with this nice 4 Losing Trick Count hand and 5 Quick Tricks. Since we have a system that shows control cards over strong 2 club bids, my partner bid 3 clubs showing an Ace and a King in different suits. Sleuth that I am, I identify the King of spades and Ace of diamonds. What excuse could I offer for bidding anything less than 7NT. Bang! The tremor set my Diet Coke can in motion but thankfully it stayed upright!
LHO opens the Queen of clubs and the “pleased as punch” smile drains from my face. We got a problem Houston! At 7 NT there is no end play, and with only 11 top tricks there is no squeeze. It is clear that making the slam is going to be based on the play of the 7 card spade suit. I first set out to establish a couple of phony decoy threat cards hoping to crowd somebody’s hand and lure the defenders into making a telling spade discard. I take the Ace of clubs, the King of clubs and the Ace-King of hearts. Everybody follows suit. Now I have given them three potential winners to stew about, the Queen of clubs, Queen of hearts and Jack of spades.
Next I play 4 rounds of diamonds with West following suit and East playing one diamond and pitching a couple of hearts and a club. I then go into the tank trying to remember the four blogs that I have written on bridge probabilities.
(a) I do remember that “all other things being equal” that finessing the Jack of spades would be a 50% probability, but are all other things equal? Its biggest appeal is that if it is wrong, it will put a sudden end to this misery.
(b) Now I need to test if all other things are equal. Emile Borel, the noted French physicist, also wrote the first definitive treatise on bridge math in the late 1930’s entitled Theorie Mathematique du Bridge. Borrowing from his physics expertise, he laid down the “law of attraction” that length in one suit attracts shortness in another and that shortness attracts length. An adjunct to this is his “law of vacant places.” Once you have fully identified the distribution of one suit (in this case diamonds were 4-1) the likelihood of a defender holding any particular card in another suit is directly proportional to the non-diamond cards that he held. West originally held 9 non-diamond cards and East held 12 non-diamond cards, so the odds are 12 to 9 that East has the Jack of spades. Now the success of the finesse has become about a 43% probability.
(c) What about the 7 card spade suit. I remember that when the opponents hold an even number of cards they are likely to break unevenly. Even if spades are 4-2 as predicted, the missing honor could be doubleton, but that only happens in the newspaper. If it happens it will happen as i will first lead the Ace and King
in the spade suit.
(c) There is another rule that says when opponents have the 5 or 6 cards in a suit, finesse for the King or Queen, but not the Jack! In order to square that with the 7 card rule above, it must be that holding the ten in the suit makes a difference. Behold, I have AKQT in spades. This enhances the 3-3 split to 52.4% probability. Actually this rule is based on another probability rule called the “Deletion Principle” which also explains that time honored saying “8 ever, 9 never.”
I play the King o f spades from the dummy and Ace of spades to my hand and now lead a spade toward dummy. Both defenders follow to the Ace and King and LHO follows to the third lead of spades. The moment of truth! I am committed to taking the play with the best probability. At this point making 7 NT has become a side issue, I just want to make sure that if I lose bragging rights, I have an iron clad excuse for blowing the contract. I play the Quuen of spades and the Jack comes “oh so slowly” out of East’s hand.
I am thinking that this must be a cold top. Six no trump is unbeatable no matter what the lead or how you play the spade suit. How many pairs are going to bid 7NT in matchpoints and then also get the 5th grade math correct? Yesterday morning I quickly checked the results and found that out of 13 pairs playing the hand, one other team bid the Grand and they actually made it. I give credit to Eve Taylor sitting south and Lorraine Carrier her partner.
You may be saying that all that math is tiring and hard to remember. Actually the detail stuff is all window dressing, but nevertheless valid. If you remember the finessing rule for 5 and 6 cards you will make 7 no trump.
You can access my four earlier blogs on the odds and ends of bridge by looking in the archive in the right hand margin of the blog. I wrote about the Law of Attraction and the Law of Vacant Places in Odds and Ends of Bridge (Part1) dated August 28, 2007. I covered the finessing rule with 5 or 6 cards outstanding in Odds and Ends of Bridge (Part 2) dated September 6, 2007 and about the Deletion Principle in Odds and Ends of Bridge (Part 4) dated September 12, 2007. It also proves that at my age the only chance you have of remembering something is if you write it down and tape crib notes on your right wrist. Now you know why I never wear short sleeve shirts!!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Give Respect, if Respect is Due
I have often recommended Larry Cohen’s free internet newsletter. If you have not looked at his newsletter in the past 6 months, it is worth revisiting. The newsletter has taken on a new feature which provides 4 sets of East-West hands for readers to bid and then he gives the likely or best bidding sequence, some rationale and comment and a score for your bid. The East and West hands are separately shown, so you can actually bid them with your partner without the double dummy advantage. Larry says this material is intermediate to advanced, but they are tough problem hands and are not going to be a pushover for anybody.
His lead article this month is a lamentation that no bridge convention has ever been named after him, while Marty Bergen has almost a dozen. After a worthwhile review of the basics of 4th seat opening bids, he puts a new twist on the Rule of 15. He says that we should augment the Rule of 15 by using CRIFS for deciding whether to bid or fold. CRIFS is an acronym for Cohen’s Rule In Fourth Seat. The rule is intended to be applied to 10, 11 and 12 point hands that actually meet the Rule of 15.
The rule is not about points, spades, distribution, but rather brings into play a human factor, the skill level of your opponents. After all, you do not have to play this hand; you can throw it in and move on. If you look left and right and see two highly competent, competitive players who will compete for the bid, and then play and defend like demons, do not touch your bidding box, do not pass Go and slip that marginal hand back into the tray. Alternatively, if you see players who you would like to make permanent opponents, pick your spot and go for it. If you open that 10 point hand hand, it is not considered good form to tell you opponents why you did so.
This is not the first time I have read about analyzing your opponents. A prominent professional team in discussing their opening lead discipline said that they prefer to use the more informative “Jack Denies” system, but that unfortunately it gives the same information to their opponents, so they only use it when they judge that their opponents don’t know what to do with the information!
As I thought about this sensible advice, I recollected that I had heard this same general advice before by a lesser known author. Sure enough, I found the same theme in a blog post I wrote in April of 2007 titled Rate Yourself as a Partner. This was a series of 12 tests of a good partner and you get a point for each “Yes” answer. The second item asks:
“Do you give expert players a little respect? The David and Goliath scenario hardly ever plays out at the bridge table. If you opponents are frequently known to play at the 55% level, you will do well against the field holding them to an average board. Find another time, place and opponent to demonstrate your cleverness.”
I think that blog post was one of my best and would be suitable to be reread before each game. Maybe suitable for framing! If you want to read that blog post, look in the archive in the right margin of the blog and locate the posts for April, 2007.
Now back to CRIFS. The underlying concept is valid, but I don’t need one more hard to remember acronym to tell me to duck when trouble is on the horizon. I doubt CRIFS will become a “biggie” in bridge vocabulary, and I think Larry Cohen was just having some fun at Marty Bergen’s expense.
His lead article this month is a lamentation that no bridge convention has ever been named after him, while Marty Bergen has almost a dozen. After a worthwhile review of the basics of 4th seat opening bids, he puts a new twist on the Rule of 15. He says that we should augment the Rule of 15 by using CRIFS for deciding whether to bid or fold. CRIFS is an acronym for Cohen’s Rule In Fourth Seat. The rule is intended to be applied to 10, 11 and 12 point hands that actually meet the Rule of 15.
The rule is not about points, spades, distribution, but rather brings into play a human factor, the skill level of your opponents. After all, you do not have to play this hand; you can throw it in and move on. If you look left and right and see two highly competent, competitive players who will compete for the bid, and then play and defend like demons, do not touch your bidding box, do not pass Go and slip that marginal hand back into the tray. Alternatively, if you see players who you would like to make permanent opponents, pick your spot and go for it. If you open that 10 point hand hand, it is not considered good form to tell you opponents why you did so.
This is not the first time I have read about analyzing your opponents. A prominent professional team in discussing their opening lead discipline said that they prefer to use the more informative “Jack Denies” system, but that unfortunately it gives the same information to their opponents, so they only use it when they judge that their opponents don’t know what to do with the information!
As I thought about this sensible advice, I recollected that I had heard this same general advice before by a lesser known author. Sure enough, I found the same theme in a blog post I wrote in April of 2007 titled Rate Yourself as a Partner. This was a series of 12 tests of a good partner and you get a point for each “Yes” answer. The second item asks:
“Do you give expert players a little respect? The David and Goliath scenario hardly ever plays out at the bridge table. If you opponents are frequently known to play at the 55% level, you will do well against the field holding them to an average board. Find another time, place and opponent to demonstrate your cleverness.”
I think that blog post was one of my best and would be suitable to be reread before each game. Maybe suitable for framing! If you want to read that blog post, look in the archive in the right margin of the blog and locate the posts for April, 2007.
Now back to CRIFS. The underlying concept is valid, but I don’t need one more hard to remember acronym to tell me to duck when trouble is on the horizon. I doubt CRIFS will become a “biggie” in bridge vocabulary, and I think Larry Cohen was just having some fun at Marty Bergen’s expense.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
A Tribute to Ina Mills
Ina Mills was my duplicate partner on Friday. The only risk in writing about Ina is that I won’t find the words to adequately give her the credit she deserves. Friday was a great occasion for me because I got to play with Ina; it was a great occasion for Ina since she was celebrating her 90th birthday. This later bit of news caught me off guard, since she looks and acts and like a youngster anxiously waiting for that first social security check.
Bill and Eve Taylor composed special lyrics for her birthday song that started “Nothing could be fina that to have a friend like Ina, she’s enchanting!” That line says it all, and while Jeanne Reynolds and Howard Christ sang the song, to my amazement, my partner got up and demonstrated a one person line dance complete with all the moves. Did I tell you that line dancing is still one of her passions and you better know the steps if you are in her line.
On the bridge side, Ina ran past Gold Life Master like it was standing still and she ain’t done yet. Who knows what she might have achieved if she had not spent most of her competitive life in an earlier ACBL system where if you didn’t finish first you might end up with .04 master points. Since it was a special occasion on Friday, Ina and I engaged in what we called “birthday bids” in which we entirely eliminated the invitational level, so it was either Ina’s birthday or our opponents' birthday when we were in the auction. Ina did not disappoint. I expected a high level of play from her and she delivered every time, bidding, declaring and defending like the champ she is. No pussy cat this one, she put an exclamation point on the day by bidding and playing two small slams and one Grand.
My job was to accurately sort cards and try not to renege. I did not put down one missorted dummy all day; alas, I did have one renege. It was a disappointment, not so much because I reneged, but because I did it at trick 12. One would think it would not be hard to follow suit when you are looking at only two choices. Maybe the bridge Gods just got it right and decided it would be bad form for Ina to finish first on her own birthday. We slipped into second place thanks to Ina.
At 5:00 I was home chewing on the olive at the bottom of my Martini when I got a call from Ina. Ina (no slouch herself when it comes to the cocktail hour) had decided to stay behind and check the results and scores on every board against her personal score and found a critical scoring error that vaulted us up a couple of places. I think that says it all about the intensity of her competitive juices. Sweet old lady? Not quite. In my next bar fight (I actually hope that was my last one) I want Ina on my back.
So just as the song goes “Nothing could be fina than to have a friend like Ina." Happy Birthday Ina!!
Bill and Eve Taylor composed special lyrics for her birthday song that started “Nothing could be fina that to have a friend like Ina, she’s enchanting!” That line says it all, and while Jeanne Reynolds and Howard Christ sang the song, to my amazement, my partner got up and demonstrated a one person line dance complete with all the moves. Did I tell you that line dancing is still one of her passions and you better know the steps if you are in her line.
On the bridge side, Ina ran past Gold Life Master like it was standing still and she ain’t done yet. Who knows what she might have achieved if she had not spent most of her competitive life in an earlier ACBL system where if you didn’t finish first you might end up with .04 master points. Since it was a special occasion on Friday, Ina and I engaged in what we called “birthday bids” in which we entirely eliminated the invitational level, so it was either Ina’s birthday or our opponents' birthday when we were in the auction. Ina did not disappoint. I expected a high level of play from her and she delivered every time, bidding, declaring and defending like the champ she is. No pussy cat this one, she put an exclamation point on the day by bidding and playing two small slams and one Grand.
My job was to accurately sort cards and try not to renege. I did not put down one missorted dummy all day; alas, I did have one renege. It was a disappointment, not so much because I reneged, but because I did it at trick 12. One would think it would not be hard to follow suit when you are looking at only two choices. Maybe the bridge Gods just got it right and decided it would be bad form for Ina to finish first on her own birthday. We slipped into second place thanks to Ina.
At 5:00 I was home chewing on the olive at the bottom of my Martini when I got a call from Ina. Ina (no slouch herself when it comes to the cocktail hour) had decided to stay behind and check the results and scores on every board against her personal score and found a critical scoring error that vaulted us up a couple of places. I think that says it all about the intensity of her competitive juices. Sweet old lady? Not quite. In my next bar fight (I actually hope that was my last one) I want Ina on my back.
So just as the song goes “Nothing could be fina than to have a friend like Ina." Happy Birthday Ina!!
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