dburn

Article discovered in the Toulouse Daily Bulletin circa 1640: I have discovered a truly marvellous stepping-stone squeeze operated by my partner, but unfortunately the margin of this bulletin is not large enough to report it.

Would pass on the first almost without thinking (maybe we'll get 800 from nowhere). Would bid 3♣ on the second after a great deal of thinking, but I would try to do that thinking quickly so that partner would not know I had a problem. If he bids 3NT in rage, maybe he'll make it.

Double. 1♠ is truly horrible: imagine that the auction proceeds 2♥-pass-pass. Am I supposed to bid 3♦ now, and watch partner return me to 3♠ with three spades and three diamonds? Am I supposed to pass now and concede a double part-score swing? It's not as if double will prevent us from playing in spades if that's what we should be doing, but 1♠ will often have us playing in spades when that is certainly not what we should be doing. Of course, I play equal-level conversion, but I would not overcall 1♠ even if I did not. Nor would I overcall 2♦, although I regard that as preferable to 1♠ (but I regard a sinus wash as preferable to 1♠).

I am not quite sure what is meant by "showing a competitive hand (denying reasonable values)". Is the notion that with: ♠xx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣QJxxxx one bids 2NT, hoping to pass partner's (presumably almost forced) 3♣? If so, I don't see why partner's 3♥ instead of 3♣ should create a force. Of course, with three small hearts and ♣AQxxx I would have raised it to four and gone minus, but I would have attributed this to bad luck. I should say, however, that I am not the right person to answer questions on methods such as these. I would not bid 2NT with the hand above (nor would I bid 3♣ with it). Instead, I would bid 2NT - as I did today at TGRs - with: ♠AQxx ♥Jxx ♦Qxx ♣xxx. Partner, who would not have acted again over 2♠, was pleased to see me take eight tricks; he would have been less pleased to see me get a minus score (which would have happened one way or the other had I not been able to bid a natural 2NT). Since it has always seemed to me that playing 2NT as lebensohl in this kind of position is a bad idea, but since my partners (from beginner to expert) think it a good one, I have been keeping track for a couple of years now of the gains and losses from auctions in my partnerships where lebensohl has been a factor. So far, over an admittedly modest sample of 14 deals, lebensohl is averaging 30.34% at matchpoints and minus 0.3 IMPs per deal at IMP scoring. In this respect, it is not the worst convention I have played (that distinction belongs to five-card Stayman over 2NT), but it is far from the best (splinters, as one might expect, are loyal servants).

LOL :o Tell me, do you ever play high stakes rubber? If so, where and can I join the game please? My second line (♥K, ♠A, diamonds, spade) goes down when K fourth spades are offside. (11.3%). When spades are 5-0 offside, we misguess the ♣J say half the time (call that another 1%). In all other cases 3NT is cold, ie 87.7% of the time this line works. Playing a club to the King makes when the club wins (50%). When the Ace takes the King and hearts are cleared, you try to drop the ♣J, and make when it falls - call this 19% - which brings you up to 58.5%. If the ♣J hasn't fallen, you need the spade finesse - 50% of the time it works, bringing you up to a grand total of just around 80%. Relying solely on the spade finesse is 84%. So a club to the king is the worst of the 3 possible lines. What leading methods do East-West play? If ♥2 is fourth highest, then spades will effectively never be 5-0 offside, because the opening lead would have been a spade from ♠K10973 rather than a heart from four (unless East is Paul Marston). If East has four spades to the king, he might have led a spade rather than a heart. If ♥2 is fifth highest, then spades might be 5-0 offside (although this is not very likely). But if West does show out on the first spade, then unless East shows out on the first diamond you should play a club to the queen, intending later to play West for ♣J.

Having served for many years on the English Laws and Ethics Committee, one of whose duties is to formulate regulations for what systems may be played in what events, I would make these points: Our motives are as Fred suggested: to make English bridge tournaments as enjoyable as possible for all who play in them. Some who play in them want to be able to use everything from Fantunes to Suspensor to EHAA to... well, complete the list on your own. Others think it would be a good idea if no one was allowed to play anything more complicated than Stayman and Blackwood. For as long as I have been a member of the Committee, our task has always been to achieve the best compromise we can given these extremes. The task is not easy. One of the more serious anomalies with which we have had to deal over the years has to do with the Multi. In general terms, no ambiguous opening was permitted at other than the highest levels of competition - apart from the Multi. It was charged that this was because all the members of the L&E wanted to play the Multi whenever they could, so we allowed it in every tournament. Nothing could in fact have been further from the truth. We kept suggesting that the Multi should be subject to the same restrictions as, say, Wilkosz two-level openings (where 2H showed reds or blacks), and we kept being told by the membership that they did not want us to do this because they were quite happy that the Multi should be allowed everywhere. But this did not prevent accusations that the Committee consisted entirely of people abusing their position of power in their own self-interest. Not that this compared even remotely to the extent to which the Selection Committee was accused (equally without foundation) of the same crime, but I am afraid that comes with the territory. Whatever regulations we come up with in this area, there will be people who think they are over-permissive, and an equal number of people who think they are over-restrictive. There will be people who think that we attend unutterably tedious meetings half a dozen times a year just so that we can play the Lucas Two Spades Opening (whatever that is) while people outside the corridors of power can't play Modified Wenble Overcalls (whatever they are). There will be people who, as soon as they get the latest set of regulations, will go through them for the express purpose of inventing some daft convention which has just become permissible. What there won't be are people who write to us and say "I think you got it about right" - but again, that comes with the territory. After all, newspapers do not publish headlines saying "Sixty Million People In Britain Not Murdered Yesterday". Having said that, my personal view is that regulations at the highest levels of the game are far too restrictive. In the Bermuda Bowl and the Venice Cup, you should be allowed to play anything you like, subject of course to full disclosure well in advance. The mindset that says you aren't is, in my view, an unfortunate one, and is in my view driven to some extent by people whose motives are impure. But that is, perhaps, another matter.

It seems to me that you ought to discard a diamond, then another diamond if declarer plays another club. You can ruff the third round of clubs and play a heart, when declarer must lose another ruff to you. Mind you, that second round of trumps by declarer may have been a mistake which Deep Finesse would not have made, although one can understand why a human being at the table would play that way.

Are you not, perhaps, concerned that you may have to wait some time for a diamond return?

I don't know. Interesting idea, though, and had the auction not started with two passes, it could well be right (as long as you did it quickly).

[hv=d=n&v=n&w=skq10632hkj763djc3&s=sa95ha82dq42caq52]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] You, South, open a 15-17 no trump after two passes. West bids 2♣ (hearts and another, if the other is spades, they will be at least as long as the hearts). North passes, East bids 4♥ and all pass. You lead ♥2. Declarer runs it to partner's ♥5 and his ♥9, and leads ♣7. Plan the defence.

There have been "wide open trials" in the EBU before now. Indeed, one pair a few years ago rang Aylesbury to ask if the Scarborough Congress was full. On being told that it was, they said "Oh well, we might as well enter the English trials then." They did not finish bottom. Since the chairman of the EBU called me yesterday to ask whether I would be prepared to serve on the Selection Committee again, I had better not say too much at this point. But the questions of professionalism and of "conflict of interest" among Committee members have long been considered difficult by the administrators of the English game (and the British game before that). For the last few years, the process of selecting the English team has been more than somewhat shambolic, and the situation of which Frances (rightly) complains is an example of that. For myself, I am a firm believer in not moving goalposts. Whether the team that plays for England in European and (maybe) World Championships should be the team that does best over a long trial or the team that does best during the year in our major tournaments is open to question. But one thing to me is clear: the team should be selected entirely on the basis of recent results, and the criteria for selection should be known to all concerned as far in advance as possible. No one (including me) has much of a clue what the best team in England is at the moment; at least if we adopt a results-based policy, we'll send a team playing in form and in luck. Since 1991, when Britain won the European Championships, our best result has been fourth in the 2000 Olympiad with a team of hopeless unknowns. Maybe if we send out some more of those, we'll do better.

Indeed he is. Maybe, then, you should play a club from dummy at trick two (after all, how much earlier can you get?). That was what I did, and the great man played low. Winning with the ace, I played queen of spades, spade to the king (Zia turning up with ♠10x), diamond ruff, spade to the nine and a club, Zia playing the queen. Et maintenant?

The lead of ♦Q denies the king (and promises the jack).

Replies to those who have contributed so far are in what I hope is hidden text.

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=sak94hk82da3c9876&s=sq6532h1064d7cak102]133|200|Scoring: Chicago[/hv] You are South. There are three passes to North, who opens 1♣ (don't ask me why; the system was four-card majors, strong no trump). RHO bids 2♦ (he could not open a weak 2♦ at rubber bridge, but he could and would open 3♦ on a six-card suit if he felt that he had no good reason not to). You bid 2♠ (fit-showing jumps are not allowed, even if you would make one). LHO bids 3♦, North bids 4♠, RHO and you pass in tempo, LHO passes slowly. The lead is ♦Q. RHO is Zia, LHO is Artur Malinowski. The stakes are £30 a hundred. Now that you're not feeling any undue pressure, plan the play. Advanced and expert players quite welcome to join in - hide your answers or not as you please. If you want to know what happens at various stages in your plan, I will tell you.

For many system shoppers it's a good-for-nothing system that classifies as opposites stupidity and wisdom, because by logic-choppers it's accepted with avidity: stupidity's true opposite's the opposite stupidity. Piet Hein

Part of the right line may consist in finding out what West systemically opens with 4=4=1=4 shape. 1♥ would be slightly unusual in that it might leave an awkward rebid over a 2♦ response.

Funny you should mention that. Only today I was commentating on an international match, and East-West solemnly bid: 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-2NT-3♣-3♦-3♥-3♠-3NT. Down one, with 4♠ cold. It seems that whatever bids may mean, sometimes they don't mean enough.

Ignore the foregoing - it was complete rubbish. The Fibonacci numbers have only to do with how many relay sequences you can have given that you start somewhere and responder to the relays isn't allowed to bid beyond somewhere else, while the relayer always makes the cheapest available bid. The word "relay" should therefore have appeared between "uncontested" and "sequences" in the original post; that it didn't is what I believe mathematicians call a "function" of the number of glasses of wine I'd drunk before posting.

Over how many? Mathematically speaking, the number of uncontested sequences starting with bid 1 and ending with bid n (bids from 1♣ to 7NT are numbered from 1 to 35) is [Fibonacci number n+1] (the Fibonacci series, for non-mathematicians such as myself, is 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21... where each term is formed by adding together the two preceding terms). For example, there are eight auctions starting with 1♣ and ending in 1NT ("bid 5", and the sixth Fibonacci number is 8): 1♣-1♦-1♥-1♠-1NT 1♣-1♦-1♥-1NT 1♣-1♦-1♠-1NT 1♣-1♦-1NT 1♣-1♥-1♠-1NT 1♣-1♥-1NT 1♣-1♠-1NT 1♣-1NT The number of sequences starting with 2NT ("bid 1" when the last bid was 2♠) and ending in 4♠ is thus the same as the number of sequences starting with 1♣ and ending in 2NT ("bid 10"). The 11th Fibonacci number is 89, which is the number of sequences available between 2♠ and 4♠. I have a truly marvellous proof that 89 < 1000, which unfortunately this text box is too small to contain. Besides, a couple of pages ago I showed all of you how you could play both cue-bidding and pattern-showing in these auctions, and you didn't take any notice. Obviously you are all ignoring my views because I am not a talented player and I don't live in Washington. It's an outrage.

In the days when I used to worry about what to lead, I played that you led your lowest card from a suit you wanted partner to return, and your highest affordable card otherwise. But over the years, my success rate on opening lead is such that I am thinking of adopting suit preference leads. Thus, the two of hearts means "I probably ought to have led a club" while the eight of hearts means "I probably ought to have led a spade". Partner already knows that I ought not to have led a heart.

Why not play pattern-showing and cue-bidding and keep 3NT in the picture? You have lots of space, after all. Off the top of my head after about three minutes' thought: After 1♠-2♦-2♥-2♠ 2NT "Please start cue-bidding; we are not going to play 3NT" 3♣ 5=4=1=3 or 5=4=2=2 with no club guard; or 5=4=1=3 with a club guard and extra values 3♦ 5=4=3=1 3♥ Five hearts or six spades or both 3♠ 5=4=2=2 with a club guard 3NT 5=4=1=3 with a club guard and a minimum 4 any Anything you like After 3♣, 3♦ asks and 3♥ shows 5=4=1=3 with no club guard, 3♠ shows 5=4=2=2, 3NT shows 5=4=1=3 with a club guard and a maximum. After 3♥, 3♠ asks and the responses are whatever you like. This takes an effort of memory, of course. But once learned, the scheme can be adapted to all three auctions in this family, e.g. After 1♠-2♣-2♦-2♠ 2NT "Please start cue-bidding; we are not going to play 3NT" 3♣ 5=3=4=1 or 5=2=4=2 with no heart guard; or 5=3=4=1 with a heart guard and extra values 3♦ 5=1=4=3 3♥ Five diamonds or six spades or both 3♠ 5=2=4=2 with a heart guard 3NT 5=3=4=1 with a heart guard and a minimum 4 any Anything you like Of course, if you have a hand strong enough that it wants to start cue-bidding even though it has one of the shapes that could be shown otherwise, you can bid 2NT. The inference when you do show your shape is that you don't have enough to want to start cue-bidding. Also, responder does not have to continue to ask you for your shape if he doesn't want to; he can start cue-bidding himself if that's what he feels like doing. Details left as an exercise for the reader - I'm not going to spend another whole three minutes on this.

Life Imitating Art Department: yesterday at TGR's I had this auction with The Great Malinowski: [hv=d=e&v=e&w=sk9765h75d4cq8743&e=sa1043hk864daq3ckj]266|100|Scoring: Chicago[/hv] East (TGM) 1NT (15-17). West (yours truly) 2♠ (to play). East 4♠ (also to play). Of course, I would have bid game anyway over 3♠, but Artur is not a believer in sending a boy to do a man's job. North leads ♣10 to dummy's jack (beginners and intermediate players should consider why it is wrong to play the king) and South's ace. South returns ♣5 on which North follows with the two. Plan the play, and don't go down when you could have made it or you will never hear the last of it.

I'm pretty sure I've seen it in international play, and that Eric Rodwell or Jeff Meckstroth was the perpetrator (but fourth hand had intervened over the transfer). Still, if they can do it, I guess it must exist. I'll look it up when I get home.