AL78

Here is another tale of woe which was my fault, and illustrates the category of hands where I really struggle in defence. ♠75 ♥K9842 ♦AJ6 ♣J86 2♠ opened on my left, passed out. Partner led the ♦5 to my jack which held. I wanted to get partner in to put another diamond through if she had the QT but couldn't find an obvious way to get partner in, so I led back a spade. Partner won with the ace and leads the ♦Q K A. It turns out I have blown the defence. I should have led a heart back at trick two. The full deal: [hv=pc=n&s=skqt932h653d72ca7&w=sa86hqjdqt854cq43&n=sj4hat7dk93ckt952&e=s75hk9842daj6cj86&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=pp2sppp&p=d5d3djd2s5stsas4dqdkda]399|300[/hv] I tried a third diamond, ruffed, then declarer draws trumps and sets up the clubs with a ruff. 2♠+2 and 4% for us. All but one in 2♠ was held to 8 or 9 tricks. My spade return assisted declarer in a big way. I have to lead a heart back at trick 2 to set up at least one heart before declarer can draw trumps and get the clubs set up. My problem is, I can see that play at imps where the club suit is potentially dangerous if declarer has certain holdings, and if he doesn't, the overtricks don't matter, but at matchpoint pairs, it is less obvious. How do I know declarer doesn't have both rounded queens instead of the club ace, the club suit can't be used for discards, and a heart return will be leading a frozen suit? The pairs holding it to 8 or 9 tricks led the ♥Q which takes all the guesswork away, we can set up a couple of hearts, knock the ace out killing the club suit, and partner can fire the ♦Q through when in with the trump ace. Held to eight tricks then.

My guess is everyone did open 2♥. Weak twos in the majors are almost universally played at my club. The reason for the poor score is that six pairs found a spade contract, 2, 3 or 4♠, two pairs found 3♦, and one pair found 2NT, all making, so some (at least five out of 12) EW pairs didn't get a 3♥ raise from South, and it looks like no-one else got a 4♥ raise. I have no idea whether those in a spade contract found an overcall on the East hand or introduced their suit after West entered the auction. I could find out assuming it is possible to look at the boards and the auction/play at individual tables for sessions you haven't played in.

Sorry yes, I see what you mean now. West cannot guard the clubs and keep spade length to put East in with a spade and be able to take four spade tricks when East returns an honor. Hence West has to fly up with the heart ace on the first round of the suit before leading a spade to avoid coming under pressure later. Is there any way of being able to work that out at trick two?

I'm not seeing the squeeze here, I'm seeing South has seven tricks on the diamond lead and two more when West ducks twice. On the second round of hearts, is is not clear to put the ace up and try a spade, if that fails it was always making. I also don't see any problem with South's weak NT opening.

Same as everything, there is no perfect bidding system, no perfect convention. If there was, everyone would be playing it. I have always liked revolving discards on account that there are two ways to make the same signal, so less likely to have the issue of wanting to signal but doing so would involve potentially signalling with a card you can't afford to throw. That is one advantage reverse attitude has over standard attitude, you are more likely to be able to afford a high discard from a poor holding, than a holding you want partner to lead.

If East opens a strong NT, I would probably just punt 6NT as West 32-34 HCP combined, it is surely odds on. I'm not sure I'd be bothered to try and investigate the remote possibility of a major suit grand slam, even if it is good on these cards.

It should be noted that streakiness is a property of randomness. I have streaks of getting poor hands and lower than average declarer play frequency, but when I have tested a sample distribution of the mean HCP I get dealt over several months, it comes out very close to the 10 HCP you would expect. If you ask someone to roll a dice and someone else to write down a sequence of random numbers from 1 to 6, it is possible to tell which sequence has come from rolling the dice, because what people think a random sequence should look like is different to how most random sequences really behave.

Yuo almost made it. Instead of playing the ♥9, play a diamond to the ace followed by ace and another club. East has only two hearts left and is endplayed into giving you two heart tricks. Doesn't deserve to make after that overcall.

As long as they are made aware beforehand the hands are not random I don't think they have cause for complaint. My suggestion would be if you are constructing or pre-selecting past hands, try to make sure the cards go both ways at roughly equal frequency (i.e. both sides have a roughly equal amount of time defending or declaring assuming reasonable bidding). If I entered an "interesting hands" tournament and it went pass pass pass defend defend defend for three quarters of the session I would be a bit miffed (I get enough of that with the normal BBO sessions). I would also think about what what you mean by "interesing". To me, it means hands where some pretty (and/or non-obvious) technical play or partnership co-operation in the bidding/play is needed to get the optimal score. Goulash deals whith extreme double fitting two suiters where it is a complete crap shoot whether to bid six over six or double are not interesting to me. The hands in these books are what I would class as interesting: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/reviews/StTitus.shtml If they are complaining merely because you bid and made a grand slam, they need to get a grip. Grand slams are very rare, but very rare doesn't mean never. Maybe if you got five in one session I would be suspicious you had biased the hands in your direction. Goulash is bridge, it is not standard bridge but it is still bridge. You have a partner, you have to bid for the contract, you have to make the contract if you win the auction or try to take all your tricks in defence if you lose the auction, and the result is scored, so it's bridge.

I consider whether I would make a non-jump overcall at the two level over a 1 level opening bid. If so, the hand is good enough to overcall a weak two. This is consistent with guidance I have heard that says act over a weak two as you would over a 1-level opening. Overcalling a weak two is therefore equivalent to a dirt minimum opening bid at worst with a decent suit. Of course overcalling a the three level demands a full opening hand with a good suit, and I use the suit quality test for guidance on suit quality.

Thanks very much for the analysis, very helpful.

I have just found this out. [hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=2hd4hppp]133|100[/hv] I have told her her hand was not suitable for a double, and that if she was going to bid anything, it should be 2♠ but the hand is not good enough. South made an aggressive 4♥ raise (maybe they used the knowledge they were playing against a weak pair in their decision) which should go for -500, and West fell asleep by the look of it. She is enthusiastic and I am trying to help her improve, but I feel she is not going to playing with this partner. This wasn't the only board of the evening her partner made a very poor bid and it cost them then as well.

This hand came up with a novice friend of mine (I wasn't playing) where she did badly but I'm struggling to see how EW can easily get to a spade contract. [hv=pc=n&s=s87ha86dkj73cjt73&w=sjt4hk7dat865cak9&n=sq63hqj9532dq2c86&e=sak952ht4d94cq542&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=2h]399|300[/hv] EW have 3NT and 4♠ on (the former being thin), but the only way I can see them getting to the spade game is if East overcalls. I don't think the East hand is good enough, what do you think? Evidently some in the field did overcall because six Easts played in spades, four of them in the game making 10 or 11 tricks. If East passes, South raises to 3♥ and then West has a problem. What do they do, gamble 3NT and hope partner has values but couldn't come in over 2♥, or make an off-shape TOX? My friend and her partner ended up defending 4♥ undoubled three down for a 36% score. I don't yet know how the auction went at their table. It is very undesirable to defend an undoubled sacrifice when you have game on your way (although my partner and I managed to defend a cold game when we had slam on last Friday, so who am I to criticise?), but if EW are bidding solidly (i.e. not gambling), it is difficult to see how they can get a decent score, especially in a club with plenty of wild bidders. Your thoughts?

If the lead is from Jx declarer has to go up with the king to have any chance. If West has the ace on that spade layout, the contract is doomed as declarer cannot stop West gaining the lead. The problem for declarer is gussing what holding the lead is from. If declarer thinks the spades are 4-3, playing low or going up with the king could be right, but if the lead is from a doubleton, only the king is right, so that means the odds favour playing the king at trick 2?

Thank you for those subscription suggestions. I will look into them and probably subscribe to at least one of them. The EBU magazine is the only one I get currently.

Ok, replace "him" with "her" in my original reply. I've never heard of them, but I'm guessing they are high up in the bridge world.

I'm guessing the West player deduced that in the absence of Stayman, there is a fair chance partner has long spades along with some values, so I will play him for a 5 card suit and hope we can establish and run it before declarer can make nine tricks. I feel sorry for declarer, it looks like a complete guess whether to rise or let it run. Great defence, going for the only chance and giving declarer an opportunity to fail.

I'm trying not to get focused on individual bad results. I'm aware that some outcomes I can't do anything about, and it is often fairly clear if is was wrong opponents at the wrong time, fixed by the field, or me having an apparently tough decision and getting it wrong (which is sometimes because I failed to assimilate all the information available). I'm not bothered about missing a spade game that has poor odds but happens to make, but I think we should have been in 3S, as people in this thread (and now my partner) have said, my partner should have bid 3S over 3H. I started posting hands on rec.games.bridge and then here when I discovered this forum because from about 2017 I began to experience bridge regression, the running mean of my MP sessions began trending downward, and in 2019 it had dropped 5%. That is pretty significant and I don't know why it happened. It was happening over too long and too sustained a period to be brushed off as randomness, so I decided to try and look for possible causes. Putting hands up where expert players give feedback will hopefully bring up any common factors in my worst boards which I can then try and address. As of now I am struggling to find anything I can nail down, aside from occasional lapses of concentration and getting it wrong when I am faced with two or three feasible lines of play. The only other thing I have noticed during the regression is I am defending far more than average, up to 72% of the time over one year, that was a mystery as well as I am not consciously passive in the bidding. Hence why I tend to post a fair few tales of woe on here.

Thanks, that was the double squeeze position that popped into my mind when I first saw the deal, but it doesn't work after the heart lead because you need the ace as an entry.

Going off in 5 when 4♠ is going off.

I'm not an authority on squeezes but to perform one, you do want key cards to be positioned in specific hands for it to work. You need one or both opponents to be overloaded guarding two or three suits, and at the point you run your winners, you want the overloaded opponent to unguard one suit before you have to decide which menace card to throw. The hand you give looks like an automatic or double squeeze situation. Win the lead, cash the ♣A (Vienna Coup), then run the spades discarding losers from the South hand. If East has long diamonds and West has the ♣K, on the last spade, one will have to lose their minor guard, either setting up a diamond or the ♣Q, or they will have to throw all their hearts, promoting your ♥2. On the last spade, you have to guess whether East has come down to a singleton heart or three diamonds before deciding which red menace to discard, but I think it should be possible to work it out if you count the discards carefully. If East or West have long diamonds and the ♣K, they are subjected to an automatic squeeze, and when you run the spades, the overloaded defender will have to unguard a minor. This type squeeze is easy to perform since when running the spades, if you don't see the club king discarded, try cashing the diamonds from the top. The double squeeze operates as a simultaneous positional squeeze against LHO, and an automatic squeeze against RHO. I'm sure someone will correct me if I have said something wrong in the above.

The slam is good, but it has to be the diamond slam. In the heart or club slam it goes diamond, diamond ruff. It is funny that the two slams with nine card fits go off, but the slam in the eight card fit is cold on the layout. There is a risk of a singleton club lead and a club ruff when in with the ace even in 6♦, but not on this deal. It reminds me of a hand I played in a mixed pairs competition where we had two eight card fits in the majors, we were in a slam which looked great when dummy came down, and we were missing the ace in one of the majors. We were in the slam strain with the ace, the defence led the other major to the ace and got a ruff thanks to the 4-1 break, that was a near or complete bottom. The slam in the other major was cold.

South bidding on to 3♥.

My club has some very aggressive players. Unfortunately I often seem to come out worse against them, it is as if they are excellent at judging when an aggressive action has a good chance of stuffing their opponents or inducing a mistake.

Random teams, a slip-up resulting in a 45 minute sitout because the movement had four teams playing and one sitting out, for a six board round, and a hand directional bias which had partner and I defending 13 out of the remaining 18 boards, all conspired to produce a -77 imps performance, a whopping 70 imps behind the next team, and a hideous embarassment as far as I was concerned. There were two hands I, or we could have done better on in the bidding, and I'd be interested in your thoughts. Hand 1: [hv=pc=n&s=sa83haqt93dk3ct92&w=sk52h85daq62cqj87&n=st7hj762d8754ck65&e=sqj964hk4djt9ca43&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=1hd2h2s3hppp]399|300[/hv] We took it one off for an 11 imp loss. Opponents bid and made 4♠ at the other table. Partner claims I should have bid 3♠, and her 2♠ promises a five card suit. I thought I was minimum for the double and could not justify bidding again, and thought 2♠ could have been bid on a four card suit (otherwise how do you compete with a 4-4 fit). What do you think? Hand 2: [hv=pc=n&s=skqt976543h94d7c4&w=shaqj6dkq95ck8762&n=saj82h52da632cjt9&e=shkt873djt84caq53&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=pp3sd4sppp]399|300[/hv] 4♠ is cold for 14 imps out. Teammates were pushed up to 6♠X-2 so it looks like their EW bid to a slam. I thought for a bit in the passout seat and nearly doubled again, but I chickened out on the basis of a passed hand opposite and no action over 4♠. My gut feeling said pushing on was asking to turn a plus score into a minus score, shows how crap my gut feeling is, I should stop listening to it.