I did this 8-4 draft on Sunday as well, immediately after the disaster that was the Ur monstrosity. At Sky's request I doubled the size of all the pictures but they're really not fitting well I don't think. Does anyone know if there's a way to resize the post width on an individual post but not on the entire blog?
Thanks to Matt I can now get around the stupid Magic Online bug which prevented me from replaying some games so I can give more details about all the games even a couple days later. I also commented on my picks themselves.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 69
Board 69 – Dealer North – NS Vul
My hand: ♠ 3 ♥ A Q 6 4 3 ♦ A Q 3 ♣ A K Q 7
Partner opens 3 spades. I have a 21 count so clearly partner has preempted me. Are we more likely to make 3NT or 4 spades? Can we make 6 of either one?
If partner's spades are rock solid then we have 12 tricks with choice of two red finesses for 13 tricks. If partner has either red K or the club J then we have 6 offsuit tricks and make 7 spades if he has a solid suit and 6 spades if he has a mostly solid suit. If he has a lot of spade losers we're sunk though.
Now, I think bidding 5 spades here should ask him for his trump quality and ask him to bid 6 spades with a solid suit. Does Jack think that? What would he take 4 clubs to mean? How about 4 hearts?
I'll replay the hand afterwards to find out, but for now I think 5 spades and hope is the right play. It gets passed out. East leads the 4 of diamonds.
I have 13 tricks but am missing the A of spades so I will only make 6. I might get held to 5 if they get a ruff. 4-A-7-5. I draw trump. 3-5-K-A. East returns another diamond. 9-3-8-J. Spades are not 5-1 so I make 6.
Professor Jack disagrees with my 5 spade bid. He says it's too passive and I should think about slam. Clearly jumping to 5 spades didn't mean what I thought it did. The claim is it shows 3+ spades and 18+ points. What? How can that bid both make sense and not be a slam going move? If he'd thought it was preemptive that would be understandable, but to show a monster and not be a slam try of some kind? Weak. (And did you notice Jack didn't have 7 spades for his 3 spade bid?)
4 clubs would show control in clubs for spades. Doing so gets partner to cuebid hearts. If I then cuebid diamonds he cuebids hearts again. If instead I cuebid clubs again he cuebids hearts again.
If I bid 4NT he would show 1 keycard, and then I can ask for the Q of trump with 5 diamonds. He would bid 5NT showing the Q of trump and one outside K. At this point I'm forced to try 6 spades though without information about the J and T of trump that's very risky. I guess if his preempt has to be solid this is a good play.
On the replay North starts with a mere 2 spades. South bids 2NT asking for a feature. North shows a diamond card. South heads to 3NT where they sit. This seems unconscionably weak. North solidified your diamond suit, so if you can find a trump suit you have slam somewhere. If I had to bid on in my seat I think this South has to as well. They make 6NT.
I decide to fudge the deal and see just how weak partner will go and open 3 spades. He will on KQJ842. He will on KQJ542. He will not on KQ6542. He will not on KQT542. He will not on KQT987, which seems better than KQJ542 in a lot of ways.
If he actually bids what I think he should and start with only 1 spade (10 points, 6-4, void?) we end up in 6NT which makes trivially. (Though only because he follows up my 2H bid with 2S. If he follows up with 3D then we end up in 6 diamonds which also makes trivially.)
Nick: 680
Jack: 690
IMPs: 0 (+18 total)
My hand: ♠ 3 ♥ A Q 6 4 3 ♦ A Q 3 ♣ A K Q 7
Partner opens 3 spades. I have a 21 count so clearly partner has preempted me. Are we more likely to make 3NT or 4 spades? Can we make 6 of either one?
If partner's spades are rock solid then we have 12 tricks with choice of two red finesses for 13 tricks. If partner has either red K or the club J then we have 6 offsuit tricks and make 7 spades if he has a solid suit and 6 spades if he has a mostly solid suit. If he has a lot of spade losers we're sunk though.
Now, I think bidding 5 spades here should ask him for his trump quality and ask him to bid 6 spades with a solid suit. Does Jack think that? What would he take 4 clubs to mean? How about 4 hearts?
I'll replay the hand afterwards to find out, but for now I think 5 spades and hope is the right play. It gets passed out. East leads the 4 of diamonds.
NORTH ♠ K Q J T 8 2 ♥ ♦ K J 6 5 ♣ 8 3 2 | ||
| EAST ♦ 4 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 3 ♥ A Q 6 4 3 ♦ A Q 3 ♣ A K Q 7 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 3♠ | Pass | 5♠ | |
| Pass | Pass | Pass |
I have 13 tricks but am missing the A of spades so I will only make 6. I might get held to 5 if they get a ruff. 4-A-7-5. I draw trump. 3-5-K-A. East returns another diamond. 9-3-8-J. Spades are not 5-1 so I make 6.
| NORTH ♠ K Q J T 8 2 ♥ ♦ K J 6 5 ♣ 8 3 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ 9 5 ♥ K 9 8 5 2 ♦ T 8 7 ♣ J 9 4 | EAST ♠ A 7 6 4 ♥ J T 7 ♦ 9 4 2 ♣ T 6 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 3 ♥ A Q 6 4 3 ♦ A Q 3 ♣ A K Q 7 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my 5 spade bid. He says it's too passive and I should think about slam. Clearly jumping to 5 spades didn't mean what I thought it did. The claim is it shows 3+ spades and 18+ points. What? How can that bid both make sense and not be a slam going move? If he'd thought it was preemptive that would be understandable, but to show a monster and not be a slam try of some kind? Weak. (And did you notice Jack didn't have 7 spades for his 3 spade bid?)
4 clubs would show control in clubs for spades. Doing so gets partner to cuebid hearts. If I then cuebid diamonds he cuebids hearts again. If instead I cuebid clubs again he cuebids hearts again.
If I bid 4NT he would show 1 keycard, and then I can ask for the Q of trump with 5 diamonds. He would bid 5NT showing the Q of trump and one outside K. At this point I'm forced to try 6 spades though without information about the J and T of trump that's very risky. I guess if his preempt has to be solid this is a good play.
On the replay North starts with a mere 2 spades. South bids 2NT asking for a feature. North shows a diamond card. South heads to 3NT where they sit. This seems unconscionably weak. North solidified your diamond suit, so if you can find a trump suit you have slam somewhere. If I had to bid on in my seat I think this South has to as well. They make 6NT.
I decide to fudge the deal and see just how weak partner will go and open 3 spades. He will on KQJ842. He will on KQJ542. He will not on KQ6542. He will not on KQT542. He will not on KQT987, which seems better than KQJ542 in a lot of ways.
If he actually bids what I think he should and start with only 1 spade (10 points, 6-4, void?) we end up in 6NT which makes trivially. (Though only because he follows up my 2H bid with 2S. If he follows up with 3D then we end up in 6 diamonds which also makes trivially.)
Nick: 680
Jack: 690
IMPs: 0 (+18 total)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Scars of Mirrodin Draft 2
There was an online PTQ today which ended up crashing. I wish I wasn't surprised that Wizards still hasn't figured out how to run big tournaments online without crashing. They decided to hand out a lot of free packs to people and hope they wouldn't complain too much, so I went 6-3 and got 9 packs for my efforts. I was unsatisfied and wanted to play more Magic, so I hopped into an 8-4 draft that went a little worse than yesterday's draft...
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Scars of Mirrodin Draft 1
I'm going to give something new a try here. Apparently Magic Online now outputs the details of your draft to a text file and a Starcity Games columnist wrote a converter to add images and such. I don't really like the way it looks here, unfortunately, so I may write my own converter or dig further but I figure I'll at least throw this one up for feedback.
I make no claims of being an expert at Magic anymore having played very sporadically for the last few years but I did a few drafts to prepare for Grand Prix Toronto a couple weekends ago so I'm not totally in the dark here.
The page is insanely long, so I'm using a jump.
I make no claims of being an expert at Magic anymore having played very sporadically for the last few years but I did a few drafts to prepare for Grand Prix Toronto a couple weekends ago so I'm not totally in the dark here.
The page is insanely long, so I'm using a jump.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 68
Board 68 – Dealer West – All Vul
My hand: ♠ K 6 3 ♥ K T 6 ♦ 4 ♣ A Q 8 7 4 3
East opens 1 no trump in third seat. I bid 2 clubs showing a single suited hand. West jumps to 3 no trump. I likely have 2 outside entries and a long suit to set up. I don't think I should double but I bet I can set them if partner has anything of use at all in clubs and maybe even if he doesn't. I lead the 7 of clubs.
7-6-2 of spades-J. So much for partner having any help at all in clubs, eh? Declarer even attacks clubs himself, as he possibly should. 2-3-9-3 of diamonds.
Now declarer shifts to a diamond. J-9-5-4. 6-8-K-6 of hearts. Q-3 of spades-2 of hearts-7. And now a heart. 4-K-5-3.
If declarer just needed 1 club he could have taken it, so I hope it doesn't hurt to give it to him now. I take the A first just in case, though. A-T-7 of spades-5. 4-K-T of diamonds-8 of hearts.
Declarer now pounds out a heart. 7-9-A-T. And now he ducks a diamond. 2-8 of clubs-8 of spades-9 of spades. I guess he isn't so much ducking a diamond as cashing one. And now the A of diamonds. A-Q of clubs-T of spades-5 of spades. And now a spade. Then declarer has to lead to partner's Q of hearts. Up 1.
Nice diamond pitches, partner. I guess it probably doesn't matter, but still.
Professor Jack disagrees with my spade pitch. He thinks I should give up on clubs, I guess.
The auction takes a drastic turn for the worse. My hand also overcalls 2 clubs but it's natural instead of Cappelletti. West hits him with a penalty double which gets passed out. Defense then manages to mangle the contract completely throwing away tricks left and right. They still manage to take it down 2. In retrospect I can't get a better result even seeing all 4 hands, so I guess they didn't actually mangle it. East had pretty much the best hand he could have for his 1NT opener and they still only set it 2, so I question the penalty double, at least...
Nick: -630
Jack: -500
IMPs: -4 (+18 total)
My hand: ♠ K 6 3 ♥ K T 6 ♦ 4 ♣ A Q 8 7 4 3
East opens 1 no trump in third seat. I bid 2 clubs showing a single suited hand. West jumps to 3 no trump. I likely have 2 outside entries and a long suit to set up. I don't think I should double but I bet I can set them if partner has anything of use at all in clubs and maybe even if he doesn't. I lead the 7 of clubs.
WEST ♠ A T 8 ♥ J 7 5 2 ♦ J 6 ♣ K T 9 6 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K 6 3 ♥ K T 6 ♦ 4 ♣ A Q 8 7 4 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | 1NT | 2♣1 |
| 3NT | Pass | Pass | Pass |
| 1Cappelletti | |||
7-6-2 of spades-J. So much for partner having any help at all in clubs, eh? Declarer even attacks clubs himself, as he possibly should. 2-3-9-3 of diamonds.
Now declarer shifts to a diamond. J-9-5-4. 6-8-K-6 of hearts. Q-3 of spades-2 of hearts-7. And now a heart. 4-K-5-3.
If declarer just needed 1 club he could have taken it, so I hope it doesn't hurt to give it to him now. I take the A first just in case, though. A-T-7 of spades-5. 4-K-T of diamonds-8 of hearts.
Declarer now pounds out a heart. 7-9-A-T. And now he ducks a diamond. 2-8 of clubs-8 of spades-9 of spades. I guess he isn't so much ducking a diamond as cashing one. And now the A of diamonds. A-Q of clubs-T of spades-5 of spades. And now a spade. Then declarer has to lead to partner's Q of hearts. Up 1.
| NORTH ♠ J 9 7 5 2 ♥ Q 9 3 ♦ T 9 8 7 3 ♣ | ||
| WEST ♠ A T 8 ♥ J 7 5 2 ♦ J 6 ♣ K T 9 6 | EAST ♠ Q 4 ♥ A 8 4 ♦ A K Q 5 2 ♣ J 5 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K 6 3 ♥ K T 6 ♦ 4 ♣ A Q 8 7 4 3 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my spade pitch. He thinks I should give up on clubs, I guess.
The auction takes a drastic turn for the worse. My hand also overcalls 2 clubs but it's natural instead of Cappelletti. West hits him with a penalty double which gets passed out. Defense then manages to mangle the contract completely throwing away tricks left and right. They still manage to take it down 2. In retrospect I can't get a better result even seeing all 4 hands, so I guess they didn't actually mangle it. East had pretty much the best hand he could have for his 1NT opener and they still only set it 2, so I question the penalty double, at least...
Nick: -630
Jack: -500
IMPs: -4 (+18 total)
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 67
Board 67 – Dealer South – EW Vul
My hand: ♠ A J T 3 2 ♥ K Q ♦ 9 ♣ K Q 8 6 2
I open 1 spade. Partner responds 2 diamonds with the opponents passing. I get my second suit in there with 3 clubs. Partner retreats to 3 spades. I continue on to 3NT in case partner was just giving a preference with 2 spades. He bids 4 spades. West leads the 2 of hearts.
I have 4 spades, 3 hearts, and 3 clubs. I can feasibly gain a spade trick by picking up the Q. I can gain a club trick or two by establishing that suit. I only have 1 or 2 losers, being a diamond and the Q of spades. They didn't lead a diamond so I can pitch it on the hearts. I've got a good feeling about making 6 here, so I wonder how we should have gotten there. At any rate...
2-9-4-K. Assuming I'm trying to make 6 I need to pitch my diamond before I lose a spade. What are the odds that I get ruffed when I try to pitch a heart? They have 8 hearts between them, so they'd need to split 6-2. Since the opponents didn't preempt and he lead the 2 of hearts I'd put the odds of that happening at none. So, lets set up the heart. Q-5-T-7. Now I need to get to board. I'm thinking the safest bet is just to do it in trump, so I go for that. 2-8-K-4.
And now, the heart. A-6-9 of diamonds-3. I now have a play for 13 tricks, by picking up the spade Q and having clubs split 3-2. Or I can cash the A of spades and then run clubs, hopefully making it so if someone ruffs in they do so with the Q. Then I can ruff my 4th club and score my 5th when they split 4-1, letting me score up 6 spades, 3 clubs, and 3 hearts.
Regardless, any play starts with the 9 of spades, so I play it in case East has to play the Q. 9-6-?. They have the Q and 5 left. I wish I knew how they carded in the trump suit. At any rate, if I was in 7 then I'd have to finesse here. Assuming I'm in 6 though, my winning scenarios with each play are:
Hop w/ A - make 6 whenever spades split 3-2 and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever West has Qx and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.
Finesse - make 6 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.
So I always make 6 when clubs split 3-2. Assuming I don't care about the overtrick because we're playing IMPs and not mps so I don't need to care about the odds of making 7 instead of 6. So the difference is when clubs split 4-1. Hopping the A loses to 4-1 spades. Finessing loses to Qx or Qxx in West. 4-1 is 28%, 4-1 East is thus half that, or 14%. 3-2 is 68%. West having the Q happens in 10 of those 20 combinations, but we can exclude one of them since East has played 2 low spades already. So we're at 45% of 68% which is 30.6%.
30% remains bigger than 14%, so we should pop the A. This seems wrong, so I hope someone double checks that for me. West shows in, so I attack clubs. They both show in, so I make 6.
Turns out clubs were 3-2 and East had the Q of spades so I can make 7 on a non-diamond lead.
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. Apparently partner's 3 spade bid guaranteed 3 spades and wasn't just a preference and therefore I should have bid 4 spades. I still like 3NT since I want to get my heart stopper across.
He then disagrees with popping the A of spades. Maybe I made a math error but more likely Jack didn't care about making 6 specifically.
On the replay my hand bids 4 spades over 3 spades which gets passed out. Declarer wins the first trick and immediately finesses spades into East. East wins the Q of spades and returns a diamond. Making 5.
So the question is, can we actually find the slam? I think my 3NT bid should have shown my values were in spades, clubs, and hearts. Partner should be really happy that there's no wastage in diamonds and that we likely have hearts, clubs, and spades locked up. I guess he has no real reason to assume I have a stiff diamond but that's pretty much the only thing between us and 12 tricks I think?
Nick: 480
Jack: 450
IMPs: +1 (+22 total)
My hand: ♠ A J T 3 2 ♥ K Q ♦ 9 ♣ K Q 8 6 2
I open 1 spade. Partner responds 2 diamonds with the opponents passing. I get my second suit in there with 3 clubs. Partner retreats to 3 spades. I continue on to 3NT in case partner was just giving a preference with 2 spades. He bids 4 spades. West leads the 2 of hearts.
NORTH ♠ K 9 7 ♥ A T 9 ♦ J T 7 5 ♣ A 5 3 | ||
| WEST ♥ 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A J T 3 2 ♥ K Q ♦ 9 ♣ K Q 8 6 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♠ | |||
| Pass | 2♦ | Pass | 3♣ |
| Pass | 3♠ | Pass | 3NT |
| Pass | 4♠ | All Pass |
I have 4 spades, 3 hearts, and 3 clubs. I can feasibly gain a spade trick by picking up the Q. I can gain a club trick or two by establishing that suit. I only have 1 or 2 losers, being a diamond and the Q of spades. They didn't lead a diamond so I can pitch it on the hearts. I've got a good feeling about making 6 here, so I wonder how we should have gotten there. At any rate...
2-9-4-K. Assuming I'm trying to make 6 I need to pitch my diamond before I lose a spade. What are the odds that I get ruffed when I try to pitch a heart? They have 8 hearts between them, so they'd need to split 6-2. Since the opponents didn't preempt and he lead the 2 of hearts I'd put the odds of that happening at none. So, lets set up the heart. Q-5-T-7. Now I need to get to board. I'm thinking the safest bet is just to do it in trump, so I go for that. 2-8-K-4.
And now, the heart. A-6-9 of diamonds-3. I now have a play for 13 tricks, by picking up the spade Q and having clubs split 3-2. Or I can cash the A of spades and then run clubs, hopefully making it so if someone ruffs in they do so with the Q. Then I can ruff my 4th club and score my 5th when they split 4-1, letting me score up 6 spades, 3 clubs, and 3 hearts.
Regardless, any play starts with the 9 of spades, so I play it in case East has to play the Q. 9-6-?. They have the Q and 5 left. I wish I knew how they carded in the trump suit. At any rate, if I was in 7 then I'd have to finesse here. Assuming I'm in 6 though, my winning scenarios with each play are:
Hop w/ A - make 6 whenever spades split 3-2 and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever West has Qx and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.
Finesse - make 6 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.
So I always make 6 when clubs split 3-2. Assuming I don't care about the overtrick because we're playing IMPs and not mps so I don't need to care about the odds of making 7 instead of 6. So the difference is when clubs split 4-1. Hopping the A loses to 4-1 spades. Finessing loses to Qx or Qxx in West. 4-1 is 28%, 4-1 East is thus half that, or 14%. 3-2 is 68%. West having the Q happens in 10 of those 20 combinations, but we can exclude one of them since East has played 2 low spades already. So we're at 45% of 68% which is 30.6%.
30% remains bigger than 14%, so we should pop the A. This seems wrong, so I hope someone double checks that for me. West shows in, so I attack clubs. They both show in, so I make 6.
| NORTH ♠ K 9 7 ♥ A T 9 ♦ J T 7 5 ♣ A 5 3 | ||
| WEST ♠ 8 5 ♥ J 5 3 2 ♦ K Q 8 4 ♣ J 9 4 | EAST ♠ Q 6 4 ♥ 8 7 6 4 ♦ A 6 3 2 ♣ T 7 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A J T 3 2 ♥ K Q ♦ 9 ♣ K Q 8 6 2 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. Apparently partner's 3 spade bid guaranteed 3 spades and wasn't just a preference and therefore I should have bid 4 spades. I still like 3NT since I want to get my heart stopper across.
He then disagrees with popping the A of spades. Maybe I made a math error but more likely Jack didn't care about making 6 specifically.
On the replay my hand bids 4 spades over 3 spades which gets passed out. Declarer wins the first trick and immediately finesses spades into East. East wins the Q of spades and returns a diamond. Making 5.
So the question is, can we actually find the slam? I think my 3NT bid should have shown my values were in spades, clubs, and hearts. Partner should be really happy that there's no wastage in diamonds and that we likely have hearts, clubs, and spades locked up. I guess he has no real reason to assume I have a stiff diamond but that's pretty much the only thing between us and 12 tricks I think?
Nick: 480
Jack: 450
IMPs: +1 (+22 total)
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Grand National Teams
The ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) is the overseeing entity for competitive bridge in North America. They make the rules as far as what conventions are legal and not, they track player stats, they run tournaments, they take your membership fees, etc... Each year they run 3 very large tournaments (formerly known as the Nationals) called the NABCs (North American Bridge Championships). Each of the 3 NABCs has a different slate of major events that take place at them. One of the events at the summer NABC is the Grand National Teams event. This is a qualification only IMPs event held at the very start of the NABC before anything else starts up.
How does qualification work? Well, the ACBL divided North America up into 25 different districts. Each district holds a qualification event on their own to determine which team they're going to send. So only one team from all of Florida can participate in the GNT even if a lot of good teams exist in Florida. What district do I live in? Well, that would be good old District 2 which spans all of Ontario, half of Manitoba, and (for some reason) Bermuda.
Why do I care? Well, it turns out the summer NABC for 2011 is being held in downtown Toronto from July 21st to July 31st. A week and a half of highest quality bridge events held in Canada for the first time in 10 years. Sure, I can show up and play in a bunch of random events over that span, but wouldn't playing in the big opening event be cool?
Of course, trouble then becomes actually qualifying. After all, district 2 spans an awful lot of area. I'm not really in the mood to fly to Bermuda to try to qualify for this thing, after all. Where is qualification taking place? Oh, it's on Yonge street, the street on which I live. I go right by the club on my way to work every day. (Well, right under it anyway...) The qualifiers are April 2nd and 3rd, on a weekend.
So the big event is 30 minutes away by subway and the qualifier is 15 minutes away. So it's very feasible to physically get there. The next problem is I'm just not that good. I haven't played a lot of bridge in a long time and I haven't played much competitive bridge. Expecting to beat the best players in Ontario, Manitoba, and Bermuda seems a lot presumptuous.
What's that? There's actually 4 Grand National Teams events? So district 2 gets to send 4 teams, not 1? And those teams are split up by overall experience on the team? And the lowest level event requires everyone on the team to both have less than 500 master points and not be a lifemaster? So pretty much anyone who actually has a lot of experience in big events isn't even allowed to play in the event? And anyone who's had a reasonable amount of success at any level for several years is excluded too? Now you're talking...
Obviously this makes it not nearly as prestigious as making it in the championship class event but it makes it a lot more feasible. I probably wouldn't want to put in a lot of effort to qualify for the C level event in Rhode Island or Kentucky. Vegas... maybe. Downtown Toronto for sure!
The only hitch now is actually getting a team of 4-6 people together. If only I knew some people who played bridge, aren't lifemasters, live in or around Toronto, and want to be the best at something...
How does qualification work? Well, the ACBL divided North America up into 25 different districts. Each district holds a qualification event on their own to determine which team they're going to send. So only one team from all of Florida can participate in the GNT even if a lot of good teams exist in Florida. What district do I live in? Well, that would be good old District 2 which spans all of Ontario, half of Manitoba, and (for some reason) Bermuda.
Why do I care? Well, it turns out the summer NABC for 2011 is being held in downtown Toronto from July 21st to July 31st. A week and a half of highest quality bridge events held in Canada for the first time in 10 years. Sure, I can show up and play in a bunch of random events over that span, but wouldn't playing in the big opening event be cool?
Of course, trouble then becomes actually qualifying. After all, district 2 spans an awful lot of area. I'm not really in the mood to fly to Bermuda to try to qualify for this thing, after all. Where is qualification taking place? Oh, it's on Yonge street, the street on which I live. I go right by the club on my way to work every day. (Well, right under it anyway...) The qualifiers are April 2nd and 3rd, on a weekend.
So the big event is 30 minutes away by subway and the qualifier is 15 minutes away. So it's very feasible to physically get there. The next problem is I'm just not that good. I haven't played a lot of bridge in a long time and I haven't played much competitive bridge. Expecting to beat the best players in Ontario, Manitoba, and Bermuda seems a lot presumptuous.
What's that? There's actually 4 Grand National Teams events? So district 2 gets to send 4 teams, not 1? And those teams are split up by overall experience on the team? And the lowest level event requires everyone on the team to both have less than 500 master points and not be a lifemaster? So pretty much anyone who actually has a lot of experience in big events isn't even allowed to play in the event? And anyone who's had a reasonable amount of success at any level for several years is excluded too? Now you're talking...
Obviously this makes it not nearly as prestigious as making it in the championship class event but it makes it a lot more feasible. I probably wouldn't want to put in a lot of effort to qualify for the C level event in Rhode Island or Kentucky. Vegas... maybe. Downtown Toronto for sure!
The only hitch now is actually getting a team of 4-6 people together. If only I knew some people who played bridge, aren't lifemasters, live in or around Toronto, and want to be the best at something...
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Rusinow Leads
I learned to play bridge in a very organic manner in University. If someone had a new convention they wanted to try out they just had to give a brief explanation of what the bids meant and then we were 'playing' it going forward. It'd come up every now and then and we'd bungle our way through it, but since my days were spent entirely sleeping, eating, playing bridge, and *cough* going to class it would come up often enough that I'd get a rough enough idea of what the convention actually was and maybe even why we were using it. (Yesterday's hand featured Jacoby 2NT where I didn't remember what the responses meant. Likely this is because I didn't actually go over the responses when I learned it in the first place and they just kinda got tacked on at some point in the future.)
That worked fine at the time since I played an awful lot and I played with a very inbred group of people. It didn't matter if we weren't using the 'right' responses to Jacoby 2NT as long as we were using what each other was using. Unfortunately I now play about 4 hands a week, all with Captain Jack. Captain Jack is good at berating me in polite fashion (Jack wonders what you were thinking... Jack didn't consider that bid...) but very bad at explaining why he does things, at explaining why he wants me to do things, and even explaining what he wants me to do. This means I'm not getting enough hands in to learn organically why to do something and not something else, and the lack of real dialog with my partner restricts that even more. I feel like my declarer play is getting a bit of a workout playing with Jack but bidding and defense are falling away.
Now, a couple weekends ago I played a couple hours of bridge with Bungo, Adam, and Aidan. Near the end of the game Aidan mentioned wanting to change our lead system to something called 'Rusinow Leads'. He gave a brief rundown and we decided to play them, but then it never actually came up before we stopped playing. There's no way I can get Jack to teach them to me, and I likely won't play with Aidan again for months, so how am I to learn this awesome way of leading?
I turned to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia. Sadly, the Wikipedia article is about as good at teaching things as Jack is. It defines what the term means, gives a single brief example of one upside to the system, and that's it. No discussion of potential downsides. No explanation of why that one upside matters. No exceptions for when you may not want to use it.
Since I'm not in a position to learn organically (I don't play enough) and if I'm going to use something in events I need to actually know it (playing with/against a larger pool of people than in the Comfy) I decided to dig deeper. I went to the Googler and visited a couple dozen different websites that went into Rusinow Leads in various levels of depth. Many were strict copy/pastes of the Wikipedia article (which itself may well have been a copy/paste of one of those websites in the first place), but I was able to piece together enough from the rest to work out what is going on.
The basic idea is you change your opening leads against suit contracts when you're leading a suit your partner did NOT bid so that instead of leading the highest of touching honours you lead the second highest. Why do you want to do this? The theory behind it is that some contracts require the defense to play optimally right from the get-go. If you want to set them you have to do the exact right thing, so you want to convey the right information to your partner immediately so he doesn't make a 'mistake' and let declarer make. You can't give him perfect information, of course, but the idea behind Rusinow leads is you can give him clearer relevant information immediately than standard leads. Rusinow leads have their own ambiguities, of course, but the idea here is that those ambiguities are less likely to be immediately relevant.
Right now the 'standard' lead is K from KQ, Q from QJ, J from JT, and either A or K from AK. Which one depends on the partnership (I've always led A from AK with Andrew and Sky) but both have their problems. For example, if you lead K from AK and your partner is on lead and leads a K and you hold JT2 in that suit, what do you do? Assuming declarer ducks the trick in any situation, what do you want to have happen?
Well, if partner has KQxx then you want him to continue the suit. Knock out declarer's A and your side gets a second trick the next time you're in. If partner has AKxx then you need him to stop playing the suit, as he will set up declarer's Q if he plays it again. You need to get in with another suit and fire your J through declarer's Q and you'll take 3 tricks in the suit. If he has KQ you want to signal encouragingly. If he has AK you want to signal discouragingly. Short of x-ray vision, however, there's no way to know which way you need to signal. The ambiguity between AK and KQ comes up straight away and if the deal hinges on this one decision you have no way to get it right.
As another example, assume your partner is on lead and leads an A and you lead A from AK. You hold the Q. Do you want partner to keep playing this suit or not? If you need an entry to your hand to lead another suit immediately is the Q an entry? If he actually has AK then it certainly is. If he has Axx then it isn't. Should you encourage with the Q or not? If he actually has AK and you discourage then he'll likely shift to another suit possibly letting declarer deal with the obvious losers in that suit elsewhere. If he has Axx and you encourage, should he continue? You might have the K, after all. But maybe you're encouraging from the Q and he should attack some other suit. It's hard for either partner to know what to do here, and that opens up potential errors.
I actually shy away from leading Axx a lot of the time just because of this issue, and I can definitely remember losing some boards playing with Andrew when I had Axx and he had Kxxx and we just didn't take our two tricks and eventually they pitched their losers away.
What's the solution? Well, with Rusinow leads you always lead the second lowest honour from a sequence of touching honours. So you always lead K from AK, but you also lead Q from KQ, J from QJ, T from JT, and 9 from T9. We're shifting the ambiguity down the line. (Is the 9 from T9x or 9x?) Think about it though, would you rather be unsure about where the T is or where the K or Q is? Especially in a critical situation where you need to know something right now... Is it the T? Really?
How would Rusinow leads help in the previous example? Well, you hold JTx and your partner is on lead. If he leads an A then you know he doesn't have the K and this suit is a wash. Unless he somehow also has the Q I guess, but that's a pretty zany lead and he'll probably continue it anyway. You're going to discourage at any rate, since the card partner cares about has to be the K. If he leads a K then he also has the A and may or may not have the Q. You want to discourage because if declarer has the Q you want to get in with another suit and fire your J through. (As an aside, if partner did have AKQ the right way to lead is to start with the K and then continue the Q since you should play 2nd highest then lowest of your honour sequence.) If partner leads the Q then he has the K and you want to encourage since you have the suit locked up except for the A. Note that you know partner doesn't have the A since he has to have the K and Q and didn't lead the K.
In the case where you have the Q and partner leads the A you have no ambiguity anymore. Discourage since this suit is going nowhere fast.
How could they hurt? Well, you can no longer lead the Q from Qxx without pranking your partner, since you should have the K to make that lead. But why exactly are you leading the Q from Qxx again? Note that the only real time you'd want to make such a lead is when partner bid that suit which is why Rusinow leads are off when you're leading partner's suit. Showing him which specific honour you have and setting up an immediate finesse against dummy are powerful advantages and you don't want to muddy those waters.
They also hurt when you lead a 9. What do you have? T987? T92? 92? I think this is a small price to pay, really, but only trial and error will tell for sure.
The last part of Rusinow leads is they're only on for the opening lead against a suit contract. The reasoning here is pinpointing high cards in the suit led tends to be the critical factor in a suit contract (you don't want to establish a pitch for declarer and your length tricks will just get ruffed) while the critical factor in no trump tends to be establishing the long cards and ensuring an entry to the established cards. What are you leading from KQxx or KQxxx? Not the K or the Q!
Standard leads still have a lot of the same flaws in no trump though, so people who play Rusinow leads in suit contracts often play another system for no trump contracts. One such system is called Journalist leads and I'll detail those at a later date.
And why only on opening lead? Well, for the same reason they're not on when leading your partner's bid suit, really. Mid hand you sometimes want to shift to an honour that isn't part of a sequence and your partner will get hurt more when he expects you to have the higher touching honour then.
That worked fine at the time since I played an awful lot and I played with a very inbred group of people. It didn't matter if we weren't using the 'right' responses to Jacoby 2NT as long as we were using what each other was using. Unfortunately I now play about 4 hands a week, all with Captain Jack. Captain Jack is good at berating me in polite fashion (Jack wonders what you were thinking... Jack didn't consider that bid...) but very bad at explaining why he does things, at explaining why he wants me to do things, and even explaining what he wants me to do. This means I'm not getting enough hands in to learn organically why to do something and not something else, and the lack of real dialog with my partner restricts that even more. I feel like my declarer play is getting a bit of a workout playing with Jack but bidding and defense are falling away.
Now, a couple weekends ago I played a couple hours of bridge with Bungo, Adam, and Aidan. Near the end of the game Aidan mentioned wanting to change our lead system to something called 'Rusinow Leads'. He gave a brief rundown and we decided to play them, but then it never actually came up before we stopped playing. There's no way I can get Jack to teach them to me, and I likely won't play with Aidan again for months, so how am I to learn this awesome way of leading?
I turned to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia. Sadly, the Wikipedia article is about as good at teaching things as Jack is. It defines what the term means, gives a single brief example of one upside to the system, and that's it. No discussion of potential downsides. No explanation of why that one upside matters. No exceptions for when you may not want to use it.
Since I'm not in a position to learn organically (I don't play enough) and if I'm going to use something in events I need to actually know it (playing with/against a larger pool of people than in the Comfy) I decided to dig deeper. I went to the Googler and visited a couple dozen different websites that went into Rusinow Leads in various levels of depth. Many were strict copy/pastes of the Wikipedia article (which itself may well have been a copy/paste of one of those websites in the first place), but I was able to piece together enough from the rest to work out what is going on.
The basic idea is you change your opening leads against suit contracts when you're leading a suit your partner did NOT bid so that instead of leading the highest of touching honours you lead the second highest. Why do you want to do this? The theory behind it is that some contracts require the defense to play optimally right from the get-go. If you want to set them you have to do the exact right thing, so you want to convey the right information to your partner immediately so he doesn't make a 'mistake' and let declarer make. You can't give him perfect information, of course, but the idea behind Rusinow leads is you can give him clearer relevant information immediately than standard leads. Rusinow leads have their own ambiguities, of course, but the idea here is that those ambiguities are less likely to be immediately relevant.
Right now the 'standard' lead is K from KQ, Q from QJ, J from JT, and either A or K from AK. Which one depends on the partnership (I've always led A from AK with Andrew and Sky) but both have their problems. For example, if you lead K from AK and your partner is on lead and leads a K and you hold JT2 in that suit, what do you do? Assuming declarer ducks the trick in any situation, what do you want to have happen?
Well, if partner has KQxx then you want him to continue the suit. Knock out declarer's A and your side gets a second trick the next time you're in. If partner has AKxx then you need him to stop playing the suit, as he will set up declarer's Q if he plays it again. You need to get in with another suit and fire your J through declarer's Q and you'll take 3 tricks in the suit. If he has KQ you want to signal encouragingly. If he has AK you want to signal discouragingly. Short of x-ray vision, however, there's no way to know which way you need to signal. The ambiguity between AK and KQ comes up straight away and if the deal hinges on this one decision you have no way to get it right.
As another example, assume your partner is on lead and leads an A and you lead A from AK. You hold the Q. Do you want partner to keep playing this suit or not? If you need an entry to your hand to lead another suit immediately is the Q an entry? If he actually has AK then it certainly is. If he has Axx then it isn't. Should you encourage with the Q or not? If he actually has AK and you discourage then he'll likely shift to another suit possibly letting declarer deal with the obvious losers in that suit elsewhere. If he has Axx and you encourage, should he continue? You might have the K, after all. But maybe you're encouraging from the Q and he should attack some other suit. It's hard for either partner to know what to do here, and that opens up potential errors.
I actually shy away from leading Axx a lot of the time just because of this issue, and I can definitely remember losing some boards playing with Andrew when I had Axx and he had Kxxx and we just didn't take our two tricks and eventually they pitched their losers away.
What's the solution? Well, with Rusinow leads you always lead the second lowest honour from a sequence of touching honours. So you always lead K from AK, but you also lead Q from KQ, J from QJ, T from JT, and 9 from T9. We're shifting the ambiguity down the line. (Is the 9 from T9x or 9x?) Think about it though, would you rather be unsure about where the T is or where the K or Q is? Especially in a critical situation where you need to know something right now... Is it the T? Really?
How would Rusinow leads help in the previous example? Well, you hold JTx and your partner is on lead. If he leads an A then you know he doesn't have the K and this suit is a wash. Unless he somehow also has the Q I guess, but that's a pretty zany lead and he'll probably continue it anyway. You're going to discourage at any rate, since the card partner cares about has to be the K. If he leads a K then he also has the A and may or may not have the Q. You want to discourage because if declarer has the Q you want to get in with another suit and fire your J through. (As an aside, if partner did have AKQ the right way to lead is to start with the K and then continue the Q since you should play 2nd highest then lowest of your honour sequence.) If partner leads the Q then he has the K and you want to encourage since you have the suit locked up except for the A. Note that you know partner doesn't have the A since he has to have the K and Q and didn't lead the K.
In the case where you have the Q and partner leads the A you have no ambiguity anymore. Discourage since this suit is going nowhere fast.
How could they hurt? Well, you can no longer lead the Q from Qxx without pranking your partner, since you should have the K to make that lead. But why exactly are you leading the Q from Qxx again? Note that the only real time you'd want to make such a lead is when partner bid that suit which is why Rusinow leads are off when you're leading partner's suit. Showing him which specific honour you have and setting up an immediate finesse against dummy are powerful advantages and you don't want to muddy those waters.
They also hurt when you lead a 9. What do you have? T987? T92? 92? I think this is a small price to pay, really, but only trial and error will tell for sure.
The last part of Rusinow leads is they're only on for the opening lead against a suit contract. The reasoning here is pinpointing high cards in the suit led tends to be the critical factor in a suit contract (you don't want to establish a pitch for declarer and your length tricks will just get ruffed) while the critical factor in no trump tends to be establishing the long cards and ensuring an entry to the established cards. What are you leading from KQxx or KQxxx? Not the K or the Q!
Standard leads still have a lot of the same flaws in no trump though, so people who play Rusinow leads in suit contracts often play another system for no trump contracts. One such system is called Journalist leads and I'll detail those at a later date.
And why only on opening lead? Well, for the same reason they're not on when leading your partner's bid suit, really. Mid hand you sometimes want to shift to an honour that isn't part of a sequence and your partner will get hurt more when he expects you to have the higher touching honour then.
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