Bridge of AngST

Moved to….

From this blog, but not from bridge!

December saw the National Handicap Teams Championship and the Youth Teams Championship. Reasonably successful in both, though I played very vastly different roles. Finished 3rd in the consols while captaining for the Handicap Teams, and finished 4th playing as the 5th player in the Youth Teams. 4th was a prize finish, though there were only 4 trophies so I was more than happy to let my teammates keep them.

My last game at SCBA was nearly a month ago. Since then, I haven’t played much at all. Why? I have still yet to finish 3 books (okay, one of them is a website) which I feel is essential for improving my level. Besides, there’s more to life than just bridge haha….

Well, I can say it was a good break. Shall resume bridge-playing soon, though I still have yet to finish 10% of the 3 books.

I started a thread on BBO forums a month ago, asking people why do they play bridge. The responses I received have mainly strengthened my own beliefs.

So why do I play? Firstly, Bridge took over the place of chess in my life, which used to be the choice of intellectual entertainment. Bridge has the added advantage of a more social element, and a quicker pace of play. And why did bridge take over chess in my life? I was improving faster, and learning better bridge, whereas I was always struggling in chess.

So what are my aims? To improve continuously and become a better player and partner. Simple as that. So, I should never consider myself as the finished product.

And of course, most importantly, to have fun. What’s the joy of playing if one doesn’t have fun? I’ve experienced it that at certain times with chess. I do not wish for it to happen with bridge.

Amazingly someone actually bugged me to update on BBO.

Actually due to some stuff happening lately, I am currently stuck in a state of ennui. (Not just restricted to bridge, I had totally no attention span to do anything today at all, even eating. Those who know me better might find more details on my LJ.) Hopefully this will pass soon.

Dealer N Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead	♠ J ♥ QJ532 ♦ Q4 ♣ 76532
♠ 8 ♥ T763 ♦ A952 ♣ 6543		♠ J2 ♥ Q92 ♦ T876 ♣ KQ72
	♠ AKQ73 ♥ KJ54 ♦ K3 ♣ AT

This happened on 7 Sep, a Friday night game which Andre and I won with 57.08%. This will be the last Friday night game of the year I am playing with Andre, as he is leaving this coming Saturday morning.

At our table, I sat North and wondered for a moment if I should open 2H. The factor that dissuaded me from doing so was the fact that EW were two U-21 team members who would be able to deal with the loss of space, and might even find a making slam. I thus passed and 3NT was declared by East, making 12 tricks.

After the session, my two opps and I were looking at the hand records with Poon Hua, when he told us he actually opened 2H on the North hand! Apparently he was allowed to play in 3H which gave a good score compared to all the 3NT contracts making.

A further interesting point is the hand plays better from East regardless of the denomination of the contract.

JP and Jychee have been joining Andre and I on Friday Nights at SCBA.

On the 10th I partnered Danen instead as Andre was not in town. We got a score of 49% and 6th out of 11 pairs.

On the 17th Andre and I had some bad luck and bad judgement and we got a bad score of 40% and 15th out of 17 pairs.

Yesterday we had a good game and we got 56% and 2nd out of 8 pairs. Only 2 outright bottoms: A misdefend by me on 6NT and Andre going down 1 in 4H.

The misdefend was a stupid mistake: I held up my Ace for one round too many. This is one of my common mistakes. Andre’s mis-declaring play was not entirely his fault as I placed the contract wrongly. The other 3 tables were in 3NT making 10 or 11 tricks. So even if we had just made 10 tricks, +620 would still give us a bottom compared to +630 or +660.

Interestingly on the previous hand, we made a top because opps pushed us out of 3NT into 4S. My hand was:

AT
AQTxxx
KQx
Q9

The bidding went something like (Andre opened): 1S(2C)2H-2S-3C*-3NT then 4C by my LHO. This was passed round to me. My choices were X and 4S. I was wondering if X would give us enough penalty as we were vul vs non-vul so 4CX would need to be down by 4 if our game as on. The AT suggested 4S to me and I bid it. 4S made with 1 overtrick and the best score among the other tables was 3NT+1.

Andre actually had Kxxx in clubs! LHO had raised to 4C with only 2 small clubs, much to the shock and amazement of her partner.

Matchpoint Bridge by Kelsey is a good read. My approach towards playing pairs has changed somewhat after reading it.

Andre and I won Friday Night Pairs with 66.18%.

Maybe this is what it means to be in “the zone”. I actually made quite a few bad mistakes, so if everything was perfect the score should perhaps been better.

This was our only bottom of the night:

Dealer S Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♣5	♠ T3 ♥ JT62 ♦ AT842 ♣ J9
♠ KQ82 ♥ Q3 ♦ J653 ♣ 876		♠ J976 ♥ AK95 ♦ K9 ♣ A32
	♠ A54 ♥ 874 ♦ Q7 ♣ KQT54

The bidding went:

West	North	East	South
			p
p	p	1♥	2♣
X	p	2NT	p
3NT	p	p	p
Dealer W Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♥Q	♠ ♥ QJ9842 ♦ Q54 ♣ JT62
♠ KT9764 ♥ 73 ♦ K763 ♣ 7		♠ QJ8532 ♥ ♦ J82 ♣ AKQ4
	♠ A ♥ AKT65 ♦ AT9 ♣ 9853

I opened 2S and eventually ended up in 5SX. On the trump trick, Poon Hua (North) signalled for a diamond. Declarer cashed the Ace of Diamonds and I claimed 11 tricks.

An underlead of the diamond would have put me to the guess and probably down me by 1. In any case, imagine my amazement when Andre produced 6 spades in dummy for me!

Dealer N Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♥Q	♠ 3 ♥ K ♦ K2 ♣ AKQJ8543
♠ Q864 ♥ AT97 ♦ AJ54 ♣ 2		♠ KJT ♥ A42 ♦ A8763 ♣ T7
	♠ A9752 ♥ J8653 ♦ T9 ♣ 5

5C shouldn’t have made but I allowed it to. In any case we still got 4.5 MPs out of 5 possible.

Dealer E
NS Vul
MPs

West North East South
2H   X
3H(1)  3S     4H   4S
5H AP

(1): 3H was explained as 11+ HCP with support

South asked East a what 3H was and received the explanation above. The director was called to the table as soon as dummy was on the table. The players were advised to play on.

5H went down 2. South called the director and argued that she would have doubled if not for the given explanation of the 3H bid. The director ruled that no damage was done and hence, no adjustment.  He also informed NS of their right of appeal.

NS were considering appealing, but they had an argument as well. South argued that if North had bid 4S, she would have doubled 5H.  Even with the bidding, South’s line of argument was that “the double had already showed the hand” and North had the onus to double. Is this correct? I disagree on the following points:

1) This was MPs, so South should have doubled anyway if she thought 5H was going down. (And she should have done so in my opinion)

2) The double did NOT show the hand. South could easily have a rotten 12 count.

Perhaps a different TD would have allowed an adjustment (but difficult for a full adjustment to 5HX-2 I think), but I think NS would have stood a stronger case if North had bid 4S instead of 3S. Now South would be able to gauge more accurately that West did not have what he promised and doubled instead. Even if West had the correct points, South would be able to gauge that North had a unbalanced weak hand and  double 4S as well.

Any ideas on how to prove any damage if present?

In the end, I told our opps for BBO ITL last week that we couldn’t make it on saturday. Received no response by email and the weekend passed by.

Friday night: Went to SCBA thinking there was Good Food Good Bridge. However, the food part was cancelled. Eric wasn’t free, neither was Danen, and the J1s were happily paired up so Lilio asked me to partner this Brazilian guy called Caio Feilhaber. Mr Feilhaber’s roots are Austrian, as I found out, and his nephew plays soccer professionally for Hamburg SV. Wow.

We agreed on a simple 2/1 system and actually finished 6th out of 19 pairs, with 56.93%. Rather good result.

Saturday I was busy with my National Day Parade Marshalling duties. I was asked by Marco to go down to SCBA for Open Teams on Sunday as they did not even have 4 people. I agreed.

Imagine my shock when Sunday morning 0930 Emmaline called me to ask where I was! Marco had told me the wrong time, 1000. Thankfully I managed to grab a taxi. 15 minutes late and 1 VP deducted, but better than a walkover I guess.

First match was the second 8 boards against Mr Lai’s team, which we won overall 22-8. The rest were 14-16, 14-16, 13-17, giving us a 6th place in the qualifiers after garnering only 20 VPs in the first 3 matches against the top 3 teams in the section.

Will write up more in individual posts.

Ok, now this is screwed up. I only have 1 pair down at the moment: Me-Andre.

Eric is free to play but I have no idea who else can play. Everyone else doesn’t seem to be free.

Argh!

I have decided to use LJ instead of blogspot hahaha.

Now to start chronicling various nonsense.