Is the best form of offence simply poor defence?

[Thymallus]

I have been wanting to contribute something to the forum that has been so helpful to me in learning to play the game. I find it helpful to look at my mistakes and try to eliminate them yet there is relatively little discussion of errors here; most posts are looking for the right way to do things rather than analysing how and why we get stuff wrong.

 

I wondered about writing a pastiche, a "Muck these hands up with me" sort of blog.

 

Playing in a robot express duplicate I finally found a hand that annoyed me so much I offer it up here.

 

Sitting west in the following hand

 

[hv=pc=n&s=sqt85h4dt65ckq963&w=sak4hkq872d72ca74&n=s963hjtdakq9ct852&e=s972ha9653dj843cj&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=ppp1np2dp3hp4hppp]399|300[/hv]

 

The A♦ was led from north and I duly lost 1 ♠ and 2 ♦ tricks. There didn't seem much that I could have done differently so I settled back to wait for an average-ish score. What I actually got was 20%. There were 8/10 pairs playing in 4♥ and 5 of these had made an overtrick. From a defensive point of view I have found it very helpful to see how this happened.

 

2 pairs played AKQ♦ and promoted the J♦ in dummy

1 defensive pair doubled a contract of 3♥ then did the above

 

the next north played 2 rounds of diamonds and then 3♠ so south went up with the Q♠ to promote the J♠

 

2 norths played 2 rounds of ♦ and then declarer cross ruffed and cashed his winners coming down to an ending with just AK4♠ in his hand but south discarded down to Q 10♠ and K♣ so dummy's J♠ came good.

 

 

Sad to say that I became so obsessed with not promoting cards in dummy that later on I failed to cash a defensive winner twice in order not to promote a card in dummy and let a contract make that should have gone down 2 .. a hand so shameful I cannot bring myself to post it.

 

The messages though are

1) that one needs to beware of gratuitously promoting / unguarding potential winners in dummy.

 

2) it is astonishing how easy it is to make such mistakes. When declaring just running the winners out allows the defence the chance to mess things up. Here 2 souths kept a redundant K♣ to defend against a squeeze that didn't exist.

[Zelandakh]

And this is probably the level of hand that should be written up in the B/I series if wanting to attract genuine beginners. First stop the hand after cashing DAK, partner playing 5 then 6 Standard carding. Then run the play on to where declarer is cashing and decide what to pitch. This is a little awkward here as you have to switch hats but I am sure Ben can find better hands.

 

In general, I think such a 2-stage process would be helpful in these problems. Start with a very simple problem on an early trick. Leave it a couple of days and ask only beginners to post their answers. Then move forward to a later point which is more aimed at intermediates. If any beginners have posted to part 1 they will be more likely to be interested in part 2 and subsequently to improve. If no beginners post then you know that continuing to aim problems at intermediates is probably best.

 

Remember that in BBO terms a beginner has played less than a year - even simple hold-up plays and things such as the above are still problematic for most at this stage. In any B/I problem (as opposed to I/A) then I think such a basic technique should be included, if for no other reason than to give the genuine beginner a chance to get involved.

[ggwhiz]

I often play in individuals for amusement and the standard of play can be frightening in the extreme.

 

Until you find out differently I recommend treating unknown players as if they are really good.

 

That and a grain of salt can preserve the entertainment factor and most importantly stop you from developing bad habits.

 

Would you rather be a fish-killer or a good player?

[billw55]

2 pairs played AKQ♦ and promoted the J♦ in dummy

1 defensive pair doubled a contract of 3♥ then did the above

This is a significant error.

 

the next north played 2 rounds of diamonds and then 3♠ so south went up with the Q♠ to promote the J♠

Really? South played the ♠Q with the jack in dummy? That is really bad.

 

2 norths played 2 rounds of ♦ and then declarer cross ruffed and cashed his winners coming down to an ending with just AK4♠ in his hand but south discarded down to Q 10♠ and K♣ so dummy's J♠ came good.

An experienced south will realize that declarer would not cash the last trump if he had another club to ruff. Admittedly many novices will not figure this out. Declarer can perhaps make a better ruse by drawing three rounds of trump, before crossruffing his losers. Even a good defender might be tempted to view this as a common nervous mistake by a novice declarer - drawing more rounds of trumps than needed "just in case."

 

The messages though are

1) that one needs to beware of gratuitously promoting / unguarding potential winners in dummy.

 

2) it is astonishing how easy it is to make such mistakes. When declaring just running the winners out allows the defence the chance to mess things up. Here 2 souths kept a redundant K♣ to defend against a squeeze that didn't exist.

3) Don't pay too much attention to results when playing pairs in a weak field (whether online or over the table). Analyze each hand on its merits.

[the_dude]

There didn't seem much that I could have done differently so I settled back to wait for an average-ish score. What I actually got was 20%.

 

One thing I have found in these tournaments. When you open 1NT with a 5 card major, whether it's 'correct' or not, you open yourself up to really random 80%s and 20%s.

 

Basically, you are going against the field, either playing 3NT when everyone else is playing 4H, or having the opposite person on lead as everyone else. At that point things are somewhat out of your hands, you will get very different results from everyone else and will have close to zero control over it.

 

I realize that isn't what happened here .. but just be warned, you need to resign yourself to the fact that you are going to get alot of really high and really low results that you can't do much about after the opening bid.