Um, okay, that was fun - - ?

Starman and I played a solo Swiss teams event last week.

On one particular board, Starman opened 2 ♣ (showing 22+ high card points) and I bid 2 ♦, which is the standard "tell me more" bid. He then bid 2NT, signifying a balanced hand and 22-24 points. I was holding the following cards:

♠ Jxxxx
♥ J10xxxx
♦
♣ xx

Clearly, I wanted to Starman to play a game in a major (the void counts as 5 distribution points if my hand is the dummy in a suit contract), so I want to transfer. I bid 3 ♦. Starman considered this, and passed! I literally played the contact with no trumps in my hand, and only three in his hand. Mind you, they were the AKQ, but still. At the end of the hand, I said to our teammates that it's the only time I can imagine saying, truthfully, that I was relieved the trumps split 5-5!

Not to worry -- I was right: we do play transfers in that situation. Starman looked into it later, and we agree we won't miss that again. And I wasn't upset -- shocked, but not upset -- as I can well imagine making that mistake myself in that situation. And also, I kind of knew that we'd not discussed transfers in that situation. I had contemplated bidding 3 so that he'd either let me play in hearts, or he'd transfer and play in spades. But 3 was the right bid.

Hey, stuff like this happens.

That's a table I'd like to kibbitz

I noticed the following foursome at a virtual table on Bridge Base Online the other day:

1star1
civilwolf
neverknow
seabiscut (sic)

More on that bidding question

So Starman looked at the substance (as opposed to the style) of the preceding post. He said, happily, "I don't see what the problem is -- that's Michaels, showing spades and a minor, so you bid two no trump showing that you have minors."

That's the titular unusual two no trump, in fact. Which is cool, but not applicable, as I don't have both minors. Go back and check. I'll wait.

Okay, got it?

I went through all this with Starman (who would only make a Michaels cue bid when I actually HAD spades; he's that kind of partner) (although, now that I think about it, he bid three no trump the other night after a Jacoby transfer, and he had a singleton in a side suit -- I was not amused! -- so maybe he very rarely is that kind of partner), who finally said that he guessed you had to bid two spades and just take your medicine.

Not an entirely satisfactory answer. Anything better out there?

So what do you bid?

My hand:

♠ Ax
♥ Jxxx
♦ Qxxxx
♣ xx

I'm sitting South. The bidding goes:

West	North	East	South
1♥	2 ♥	Pass	?

My partner's 2♥ bid is a cue bid to show spade support, but allow me to bid them. Only trouble is, I don't want to bid spades, let alone play in spades. I don't want to pass (with a human partner, it would serve him/her right, but I was playing against a computer partner, and strangely they never seem to care that I'm tearing my hair out), and I don't want to bid 3♦. I actually have a crappy hand.

I'm embarrassed to say, I don't know if we were vulnerable. I also don't know how this hand played out, or if I just took it as a sign that it was time to stop playing bridge online and go do something useful. But I did take the time to write it out, so that I could mull over it.

I still don't know what you do. I'll have to ask someone smart.

Incidentally, and on a meta-note, this post was really hard to do. I had to crib a version of an HTML table. I'm a lawyer, people, not computer savvy at all. Starman (who *is* computer savvy) was disinclined to help, but did make the crucial suggestion at the crucial time: Google the terms "Blogspot Table FAQ" and see what you get. It worked! Well, the bidding table here needs a lot of tweaking, but I think I can make something sensible the next time. This is good enough for now.

Finally . . . a win!

Starman and I went to our third night of the club's round robin event. This has -- more by accident than design -- been the only in-person bridge we've played. The event is every month; we missed January, but have played the other three months. And finally, on Wednesday, we (and our teammates, Scott & Sharon) won! That puts us in fifth place, out of six teams total.

Now, I know that looks bad, but it's a real mix of 199'ers and life masters. (Guess which group we're in. Yup. And guess which group our opponents on Wednesday night were in. Two-for-two. You're good at this guessing thing. Now guess which group our opponents in February and March are in. Wow! A hat trick. The might Kreskin has nothing on your mental abilities!) We're just pleased to have played better.

There are any number of explanations for how & why the cards and scores went the way they did, but the one I like is this: we've been practicing playing online for IMPs (international match points) and not the usual match points. It makes a difference. I think I have a rough idea of why it matters -- something to do with the cost of riskier sacrifices and so forth -- but it's been a revelation.

We started out playing online for IMPs, and I remember being thoroughly demoralized. Well, when you lose by 81 IMPs in the round robin tournament, against real people in real time, the computer debacles don't hurt so much. We re-read the instructions in our EasyBridge books about swiss teams play, and practiced.

Now, let's not overstate this. The nice peeps we played against on Wednesday (Ed referred to his team as "the good guys") aren't wildly amazing, but they're not bad. We could easily have lost, or it could have been a lot closer. Like if they'd bid a weird spades slam that relied on the following set up: I opened a spade, and partner had 6 spades, 6 diamonds, and a singleton ace in a side suit. Obviously we should be in game, but how to bid the slam if it's there? Well, we didn't (the hand makes 7 if you play the trumps right) and the other side didn't, so that was close to a wash. (I misplayed it on my side and "only" made 6, so a single IMP to their side for the additional overtrick.) But if they'd bid the slam...

Still, it was nice to win, and nice for Scott & Sharon, who must have wondered by people at the club said nice things about us when we really can't play for beans...

One other nice moment of the evening: on the drive home, Starman and I had a great conversation about ourselves as a partnership. I think it was the first healthy and calm meta-conversation we've had in a long time. All preceding arguments were, by definition, my fault!

Welcome Back!

Starman and I played Wednesday night in a Round Robin event at our home bridge club. Very interesting, and actually a lot of fun. We hadn't been able to make it for January, and our team mates (Sharon and Scott -- lovely, friendly people who immediately made us feel completely comfortable despite the fact that we're relative newcomers) had played with some subs.

This, then, was our first time in this particular format: first time as Swiss Teams, first time in the Round Robin, etc. Someone said that there were two really good teams, and then everyone else. Well, I'm not sure if we were playing against one of the really good teams, but the score might suggest that. We were ahead in the first half, but way down at the end of the night. No worries. We had fun, got some of the rust off our playing, and met some more of the club regulars.

One funny thing: Sharon and Scott hadn't known who we were (well -- c'mon, that makes sense: we were mostly playing in class for much of 2007) when it was suggested they partner us. So they asked around. "New but not bad," was the gist of what they were told. Then they remembered us from that end-of-year tournament in December. (The one where I got really sick, right?) It seems we had done well against them that day, despite not doing that well overall. So, okay, they decided we were worthy partners.

We were thrilled with them as well, mostly because they had a happy, lighthearted approach to the entire process. I really don't care if we come in dead last (obviously I hope not) because I know it's all good: good teammates, good experience, my lovely partner -- and it's bridge. How bad can that be?

Getting Back to Bridge

Sorry for the gap in posting. Starman (my partner in bridge, as in life) and I haven't played "real" bridge -- meaning bridge with people -- for two months. The last time we were out in public was also the last time I got really really sick with some gallbladder-related problem. I've been fine for two months, though, so I really can't be phobic about it.

Bridge doesn't actually make me ill. Just cranky!

Over the holidays, I didn't play a lot online. Recently we've gotten back to partnership practice. This entails Starman and me in the same room (more on that in a bit), each with our own computers, playing the same hand as partners. We play against robot opponents, and our scores are assessed against other players. Most of those people are humans playing with a robot partner and against robot opponents, so it's pretty fair. I assume it's also a reasonable assessment of our abilities. We're still not strong players, and the gap in our making bridge a regular part of our lives hasn't helped.

In particular, I've been having trouble with frustration. When I play by myself (with three robots at my online table), it's hard to live with my own mistakes. (There's a way on BBO to see what other people did -- their bidding and the play of the hand -- so you can see how they did better than you did. Sometimes it's better defense by the robot opponents, and I have to shrug that off. Sometimes, it's not them, it's me.) I get angry at myself, and that opens some old wounds.

I made a resolve not to yell at Starman when it's just the two of us together in the room. (We don't cheat {much} and I wouldn't mind playing in different rooms but it's good to be able to discuss bidding and play of the hand.) I know it doesn't help anyone. So far, the only method I've found that is foolproof for not yelling is not caring. Hmmm... Not perhaps the best way to maximize my bridge results. So my challenge is to care, to work hard, to keep learning, and to be completely Zen and at peace with my partner.

I'm glad I'm not being scored on that Zen thing!

Limits

Starman and I were playing online last night and we found ourselves defending a game contract by the robots (3NT, I think). We were setting them, but there was a trick where Starman led a small diamond, declarer played the ♦10 and I covered with the jack. I then led the ♦9 back. Dummy had nothing interesting, but Starman was sitting on ♦Q7. He played the ♦Q. I pointed out to him after the hand was over that the ♦9 was equal to the ♦Q, so he could have played low, got declarer's ace out of the way (the ♦K had been played previously) and then the ♦Q takes another trick.

Starman thought about all this before saying, "I know I should be aware of honors down to the eight, but I'm no there yet." I see his point.

It's good to know your own limits.

I Dream of Bridge . . .

. . . And it turns out to be a nightmare!

I don't do things quite the way other people do, and that includes my dreams. I don't dream that I have to give a speech and realize I'm naked or just in my undies. I don't dream I'm being chased by a monster, or that I'm falling. I don't have recurring dreams.

But last night, all that changed. I had my first anxiety dream ever. Classic set up: I'm in the wrong room, taking an exam I didn't know about and didn't study for -- only, it was bridge. A bridge exam. A weird bridge exam!

The room was a cross between those large lecture halls with banked seating and a movie theater. I was seated on the aisle. There was a box of supplies at my feet but I ignored it because what could it be? Nothing too important, right? I have no idea what I must have thought I was there for (a movie??) but when it became clear I was supposed to be doing something with the box of supplies, I scrabbled around to get stuff working. I think I was supposed to have arrived early to set up the bidding box and the pack of cards. As it is, I think the cards are playing cards not bidding cards, so I just open the plastic wrapping enough to take out a card (2♣ ?) with no real idea what I was supposed to be doing.

At some point it occurs to me that there's someone sitting below me, and a couple people behind me and we're not just fooling around, we're bidding. For some reason. That's when I panicked. Wasn't I supposed to have a partner? Who was my partner? The person two seats behind me? What did that person bid?!? And aren't I supposed to have 13 cards in my hand? Is this thing being GRADED?!?

I woke myself up at this point -- it was too scary. Now, if I can just figure out how to do that at a bridge tournament . . .

Samples

We're trying to introduce the purty elements for this blog -- the suits, in suitable (heh heh) colors:

♠
♥
♦
♣

Thanks, Starman -- you're the best!

Partnership Practice

I've finished McPherson's book. It was okay -- and that's my final answer. But one thing I read in there stuck with me.

McP was interviewing Jeff Meckstroth, one of the top players in the world. Meckstroth and his partner, Eric Rodwell, are famous for their complicated bidding conventions. The yin/yang of bidding conventions goes (briefly) like this: given that there are a gazillion possible deals, and nearly as many possible legal bidding sequences, how do you and your partner use bids to communicate to each other what's in your hands so that you maximize your chance to make the best score? Some people favor natural bidding -- if you have hearts, you bid hearts; if you have a balanced hand and the right number of points, you bid no trump. Some people favor artificial bids that the partnership understands. The more complicated the series of artificial bids, the more unnatural the convention. More precise bidding can mean better results, but it makes bridge dangerously complicated.

So Meckstroth made the point that the conventions don't matter as much as the partnership does: the partners have to be on the same page. They each have to understand what the other means by each bid.

And Starman -- my husband & partner -- and I aren't there yet.

[Non bridge players can stop reading here and continue below.]

This became apparent this week when we did the "Bidding Box" problems in this months "Bridge Bulletin," the magazine from the ACBL. In one problem, Starman bid a no trump. In response, I had to decide between asking for major suits (Stayman) and telling him that I had five hearts (a Jacoby Transfer). My problem was that I had four spades as well as five hearts, so I really could have been happy in either major. I ended up bidding 2 clubs for Stayman. My reasoning was that Stayman says also "I have 8+ points" which is strongly suggestive of game. It does deny a five card suit in the majors, though.

The other reason I didn't want to do a Jacoby transfer to hearts was that it's a bid designed to get the no trump hand as declarer. This makes sense in general terms because the no trump hand usually has got more points -- 15-17 in our partnership -- and therefore is stronger. But my hand had 14 points, so it was barely weaker and didn't need the transfer for that reason.

So I bid 2 clubs (Stayman), and Starman bids 2 diamonds, which means he doesn't have a four-card major at all. I then bid 3 hearts, and he passes! Aggghhhhhhh! With our point count, we should be in game. If he has three hearts in his hand, we should play 4 hearts. If he has two hearts, we should play in 3 no trump. But he can't pass!

Incidentally, I probably have the edge, logically, on this one because there's an over-arching principle in our bidding: a new suit bid is forcing. I hadn't bid hearts before so he can't pass it. He might want to ("That'll show her!") but he really shouldn't.

[Non bridge players should start reading again.]

The point was, I deviated from the script, and that left Starman uncertain what to do. It turns out there's a convention for precisely my hand. We didn't know it, we certainly don't play it, and anyway the last thing we need is another artificial bid to learn. What we need is to understand each other better. I need to know that he is thinking entirely inside the box -- if I deviate from the script, he's likely not to follow me. He needs to know that not all hands fit inside the box, so if I've deviated from the script there's a reason.

On balance, I was "right" in some respects, but I had the larger lesson to learn. Starman didn't play cards as a child, and he certainly didn't learn bridge as a ten-year-old, as I did. He's learning the game from a very sterile place -- no particular card sense to link onto, and a lot of uncertainty. There is no "playing from the seat of the pants" in his bridge world -- even if I made that more British and replaced "trousers" for "pants" (the latter being underwear in the UK). He has a slender booklet, called a flipper, to help him with bidding, and it's positively dog-eared and falling apart, like a well-loved cuddly toy. I need to hew close to the flipper's logic for our best result as a partnership.

And that's what partnership practice is about.

This is what I'm talking about

One of the reasons for a separate bridge blog is that I want to muse on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong in bridge. I just defended a 4 diamonds contract. (I'll see if I can import lovely red diamonds and heart icons to make this blog look purty.) I was playing with a robot partner, against two robot opponents. (I play on bridgebase online. You can play for free, but the robots cost a whopping $3/month. Human players are nice, but they like to chat, and I treat bridge as a bit of a upmarket solitaire -- play a few hands and then get out.)

Okay, so I have four diamonds headed by the queen. I should take a trump trick, right? Only when my partner plays a heart and I'm void, I don't realize that declarer (my left hand opponent) is out and will uber-trump me. And of course, by playing a little trump, I've now made it possible for declarer to finesse my queen. All because I hadn't been counting the hearts. That'll learn me!

My Bridge Blog

Okay, so no one is ever going to read this, and that's just fine. I have something I need to say out loud, even in a forest where all the trees have silently fallen down.

I got a book on bridge as a Christmas present: Backwash Squeeze by Edward McPherson. I think his publisher/agent/wife must have sold him the idea by saying, "It'll be huge -- like Word Freak [by Stefan Fatsis; an awesome book about competitive Scrabble -- well worth reading] only with bridge!" As his one other book is a biography on Buster Keaton, Tempest in a Flat Hat, which even he admits few other than his mother have read, the idea must have seemed a good one.

The problem is, Stefan Fatsis really likes Scrabble, and had genuine affection for the crazies who memorize bingos (7- and 8-letter words suitable for earning the 50-point bonus in Scrabble) and other odd words. He even got to be a bit compulsive himself about learning how to compete. McPherson seems to hate bridge, the game, and bridge, the culture.

In the book, McPherson starts to learn bridge, although much of the year seems to be conventional efforts to interview people who talk about bridge. If he'd liked the game at all, he might have cared a bit more about the people and events he was writing about, but there's no love there. He gets on better with the twentysomethings who work as caddies (shuttling duplicate boards around the huge tournaments), possibly because the caddies are scathing about bridge players.

And, to top it off, there's no bridge in the book. McPherson sits behind the very top echelon players at one tournament, and can tell us nothing about what they bid, what cards they played, or anything. Hell, I'm not that smart about the game, but I think I could have reported a couple interesting items for the bridge-playing reader to chew on. Bridge is hard, we know that! But it's not so completely opaque that you can't explain some of it for your readers, buddy. And anyway, who did you think would read your book -- people who share your disdain for the game? Why would they?

I'll finish it, and then I'll pass it along to Starman to see what he thinks. Then we'll pass it along to Dino Burger because there's a lot (relatively speaking) about poker in the book. And Dino is one of these guys who gets it that bridge is smart. He's a reliable player when the family gets together; I like that (and many other things) about him!

What I won't do is donate the book to the library at our local bridge studio. I don't know which would make me feel worse: if someone hated it as I'm increasingly hating it (I'd feel guilty), or if someone loved it.

Addendum #1: Okay, so it got better all of a sudden, perhaps because McPherson went across the Atlantic (where his name might be pronounced MockFairson) and interviewed some colorful -- excuse me, colourful Britons playing bridge in what sound like way nicer surrounds than we Americans are used to. Best joke of the book (so far): In a bridge club that has a bar serving wine and which boasts at least three marriages among players who met at the club, McPherson plays with his usual hunched-over, New York City intensity. Suddenly it occurs to him that the drink of choice in his Manhattan club is coffee, while in London it's wine. "Which explains why we're jittery and they're getting married."

Addendum #2: If the kind soul(s) who gave me this book are reading this, please don't think any of the above detracts from the perfection of your present. I'd have bought this book for myself if I'd even known of its existence, so to be given it was a lovely surprise. Like it says in the best forewords: All faults are the author's!