Detailed Tanking Stats

Once upon a time the only tanking stat that really matter was maximum health. Sure, armor was good and you wouldn't say no to avoidance and threat stats but when given a choice it was all stamina all the time. If you had a socket to stick a gem into you put stamina in there, no questions asked. Imagine my surprise then when I wanted to get a stamina gem cut yesterday and nobody had the pattern. Apparently the 'mana matters' world of Cataclysm has changed things enough that everyone wants other stats instead. I got someone to buy the pattern for me and cut my stamina gem regardless because I'm still a fan. But the question is, should I be a fan? My mastery scales with stamina and mastery is my favourite rating so it seems like if any tank wants stamina it should be me. But, should I like stamina?

Also, I recently put on the Darkmoon Faire tanking trinket, replacing my old normal Putricide armour trinket. Now, that trinket has more armour than the new round of armour trinkets does, so it's entirely possible it's just better than current trinkets. The question here then is how good is armour relative to stamina and dodge?

Well, as a tank, what am I trying to accomplish with my gear? There are 3 different things I could be trying to accomplish:

• Inflict more damage to the enemies, increasing my threat and killing them faster.
• Save healer mana.
• Stay alive in dangerous situation.

The first option has generally been ignored in all my time tanking. I've never really had a problem holding aggro assuming the DPS let the mobs get to me (and if they don't then no amount of strength on my gear will matter) and that has held true so far in Cataclysm. If I get to stick a Rune Strike into a mob I get to keep it. If I don't then I have troubles. The solution here isn't to gear more threat stats, it's to just hit Rune Strike. As far as damaging the boss goes I do what I can for sure (I specced unholy with gargoyle and all the pet talents last expansion to do more damage) but it hasn't seemed critical to sac other stats for damage at this point.

The second option was relevant WAY back in the MC days (I geared avoid back then and stacked defense to try to get uncrittable back before anyone else did and I remember some healers were able to keep me up by changing how they healed and others just threw all their mana away) but hasn't been relevant since. The claim now is it's relevant again. I'm honestly not convinced. Healers certainly complain about mana more now than they used to and in early heroics I spent most of my time at medium to low health. But now, in raids? I'm full most of the time and if I'm not full I feel like I'm in real danger of dying. In heroics I used to hit cooldowns to try to save healer mana because I didn't feel like I was going to get spiked out. In raids I definitely feel like there are lots of spots where I could die and that I need to save my cooldowns just to live. Healer mana may matter a lot more in terms of how they handle raid damage and such but it feels like as a tank I just get spammed up reasonably often.

The third option I like to quantify in terms of what happens on the way from full to dead. Last expansion in particular I likened my health to a trinary system. Either I was at full life, or I was almost dead, or I was dead. Some people took this to the extreme and cared solely about "Effective Health" which took armor and health into account and completely ignored avoidance entirely. I've been a bigger proponent of "Tank Points" which take a long term look at how much damage you expect to have to take in order to be killed. A dodged attack absorbs the full amount with TP and is worthless in EH. The reality is probably somewhere between the two extremes and I tried to account for that in TBC with my own TPish program by adding in a parameter for spell damage that couldn't be avoided with dodge or armour and just cared about health. (Resists too, if the fight had enough magic damage.)


Finding the balance between those three things is non-trivial. I've tended towards just caring about the third weighting and assuming everything will work out fine with the other two. I think that model was clearly right in the last expansion and that Blizzard is claiming to be trying to change things this time. I'm not convinced they've succeeded but I can certainly find a value for every stat according to each of the three valuation systems to assign a relative ordering based on what I seem to be falling behind on.

The incremental value of each stat depends on my current stats. This is true because some stats interact well with each other and because some stats provide diminishing returns. Some stats have caps; getting more hit than the cap is useless for any of the three options. I will be comparing the value of stats according to how much a rare gem of that type would grant. For armour I will work out the equivalent amount based on the 346 trinkets.

Stamina

Increases my maximum health which increases my time to live between full and dead. Increases the amount healed by my base Death Strike which generates threat from healing, which puts up a shield which keeps me alive longer, and which saves healer mana by healing myself and preventing damage with the shield. It also increases the amount I get healed by Rune Tap which has similar implications for threat, mana, and survivability. I believe it also increases the base health of my blood worms which increases the amount they heal which could save the healers some mana. Increasing maximum health also increases attack power from Vengeance which increases threat. 

60 stamina is worth 756 health. Assume half of my Death Strikes would benefit from a bigger base and that I use Death Strike every 12 seconds. Then every 24 seconds I gain 53 health and a shield for 59, which is about 4.667 healing per second and 2.208 threat per second. Say I Rune Tap once a minute, then it also adds an extra 7.56 healing and threat per second. Blood worms seem to get about 25% of my extra hp as hp themselves and heal for 5% of their hp per stack. They explode at around 7.25 stacks every 15 seconds, so this adds an AE heal of 4.568 healing per second per target. Vengeance caps at 10% of my max health, so assuming I maintain a full Vengeance stack (requires taking 18k/s incoming damage which is not a given) I'd also gain 75 AP. Working out what that is worth is more effort than I want to put in, so I turned to BloodSim and ran a sim with about my stats and then again with some extra AP. It claims 1 AP is 3 TPS for me, so the extra 75 AP would be 225 threat per second.

1. 235 TPS, ~100 DPS
2. Assuming worms hits 2 people and none of the healing I gain is ever wasted, 21 HPS.
3. 12 ADPS, 756 max hp.

Armour

Flat reduction of all incoming physical damage that isn't avoided in some other way. By comparing ilvl 346 trinkets it looks like you now get 2.664 armour per stamina in stat points on an item. So, to fit my comparison, I need to account for 213 armour. My runeforge weapon enchant boosts this armour, so 222 is the real compare number. Compared to my current armour this will reduce all incoming physical damage by 0.333%. Assume I'm getting punched for 34k every 2 seconds and I'm flat out avoiding 31% of incoming attacks. As such, it would prevent 39 damage per second. Armour also adds attack power for DKs, so I'd gain 7.1 AP from the armour for about 21 TPS.

1. 21 TPS, ~10 DPS
2. 39 HPS
3. 39 ADPS

Dodge Rating

Spiky reduction of incoming physical damage. With my current dodge rating and agility levels I'd gain .1813% dodge from 40 dodge rating. Again assuming an incoming swing of 34k every 2 seconds this would prevent 31 damage per second. 

1. No effect
2. 31 HPS
3. 31 ADPS

Parry Rating

Spiky reduction of incoming physical damage. With my current parry rating I'd gain .1742% parry from 40 parry rating. Again assuming an incoming swing of 34k every 2 seconds this would prevent 30 damage per second. 

1. No effect
2. 30 HPS
3. 30 ADPS

Mastery Rating

Makes my Blood Shield better. 40 mastery rating is .2231 mastery, which adds 1.7849% of my Death Strike heal into the Blood Shield. Assume I land a Death Strike every 12 seconds and that half of them are for base (same assumption as for Stamina above) and we'll give twice base for the other half. I believe I'm around 180k buffed hp right now, so the base Death Strike is 12600 and double is 25200. So 40 mastery gives me a shield of 337 every 12 seconds or 28 damage prevented per second. 

1. No effect
2. 28 HPS
3. 28 ADPS

Haste Rating

Improves rune regen rate which increases amount healed by Death Strike. It also increases my threat in pretty much all ways since it increases my melee swing timer and lets me pump through the same proportion of extra everything. I guess it doesn't improve my dots or reduce the cooldown on rune tap so it's not quite a straight proportional improvement but it should be close enough. 40 haste rating would add on an extra .3124% haste to my existing 20.39% haste. This would bring my rune cooldown from every 8.3063 seconds to every 8.2848 seconds. This is a .2595% increase to everything. A quick look at the Omnotron encounter shows I have about 7k DPS right now, so a .2595% increase to that is an extra 18DPS and around 36 TPS. As well that would increase my Death Strike healing/shield from the current 3323 HPS by the same ratio, or a gain of 8.6 HPS. This would help the threat as well by just the heal, or an extra 4 TPS.

1. 40 TPS, 18 DPS
2. 8.6 HPS
3. 8.6 ADPS

Hit Rating

Makes my interrupting and debuffing more consistent on top of increasing threat. Since runes aren't spent if the ability misses and I'm not GCD capped it's hard to work out the actual gain from hit rating. Currently on a boss I miss 4.98% of the time with melee attacks and 13.46% of the time with spells. 40 hit rating improves the melee hit chance by .33% and the spell hit by .39%. These are bigger numbers than the haste ones so theoretically if my resources were spent hit would be better than haste for everything. But they aren't. Missing a death strike is bad if I get pushed from a big death strike to a base death strike from the delay (or if I die from the delay) but really hit just isn't great. I do want to cap it out if possible to make sure my interrupts hit, though.

1. Unclear
2. Unclear
3. Unclear

Expertise Rating

Right now I'm exactly at the point where dodges are gone. 40 expertise rating would decrease dodge/parry each by .33% (same as melee hit) and doesn't help spells at all. So up to the dodge cap it's twice as good on melee and worthless on spells as hit it. After the dodge cap it's just worse than hit. And it isn't needed for interrupting spells or applying debuffs, so it's not very good at all. I wanted to get up to the cap to help  Death Strikes be more consistent, and I'm there, so I really don't think I want to work on removing more parries.

1. Unclear
2. Unclear
3. Unclear

Crit Rating

Increases threat and has no impact on surviving at all. (Death Strike heals can't crit.) I appear to crit right now on 2% of my abilities (7% on some of the abilities that are glyphed to crit more). 40 crit rating would give me an extra .2231% crit. Averaging things out a bit and assuming about 4% of my stuff crits now I'd be going from 1.04 to 1.042231 or an increase of .2145%. This would be about 15 DPS and 30 TPS.

1. 30 TPS, 15 DPS
2. No effect
3. No effect

Agility

Part dodge rating, part crit rating. 40 agility gets improved by mark, so it's really 42 agility. 1 agility is worth .4103 dodge rating (.4308 post mark) and .7357 crit rating (.7724 post mark). 

1. 23 TPS, 12 DPS
2. 13 HPS
3. 13 ADPS

Strength

25% of strength goes to parry rating. Also, strength is worth 2 AP each. Strength gets buffed by mark and Abomination's Might so 40 strength is really 42.84.

1. 257 TPS, 129 DPS
2. 8 HPS
3. 8 ADPS

Every fight is different, of course, and the relative ranking of mastery to dodge depends a lot on the fight. One with spiky spell damage and reasonable melee damage favours mastery heavily. One with brutal melee swings (like Chimaeron) favours dodge rating with mastery being completely useless. I can also get better with my Death Strike timings which makes mastery, stamina, and haste better compared to armour and dodge. Stamina is oddly my second best threat stat (makes me wonder about the Vengeance capping assumption) and is a pretty good avoid stat too, plus it adds to max hp. I definitely feel like at the present time I should keep stacking stamina.

But what about Unidentified Organ? How good is 1890 armour and 240 stamina compared to 193 dodge, 128 mastery, and a cooldown use or 482 stamina and a cooldown use?

Organ - 1126 TPS, 489 DPS, 430 HPS, 394 ADPS, 3024 max hp

Darkmoon - 239 HPS, 239 ADPS, last stand use

Vial - 1887 TPS, 803 DPS, 169 HPS, 96 ADPS, 6073 max hp, dodge use

It feels like I should probably use Vial and Organ, sadly. If I had a heroic Organ it would be even better. 

Bridge Match 1 - Board 100

Board 100 – Dealer West – All Vul

My hand: ♠ A Q T 9 8 6 ♥ T 4 ♦ K 5 2 ♣ A 8

West opens 1 heart and East raises to 2. I bid 2 spades. West bids 3 hearts and East goes to 4 with partner staying silent the whole time. I'm probably down 3 doubled if I bid again which is worse than their game, so I pass. Partner leads the 5 of spades.

	NORTH ♠ 5
		EAST ♠ 7 4 3 2 ♥ Q 7 6 3 ♦ A 9 7 6 ♣ 4
	SOUTH ♠ A Q T 9 8 6 ♥ T 4 ♦ K 5 2 ♣ A 8

West	North	East	South
1♥	Pass	2♥	2♠
3♥	Pass	4♥	All Pass

5-2-A-J. Declarer likely has the K of spades so I can give partner a ruff. 6-K-5 of hearts-3. I hope partner realizes my lowest spade means I have a club entry. Instead he cashes the A of hearts. A-3-4-2. Now partner shifts to a club. 3-4-A-7. Is there any reason to not play a spade here? Maybe I should draw trump instead. But that doesn't seem great. I play a spade. Q-J of hearts-3 of diamonds-4. Declarer draws my trump. K-6 of clubs-6-T. He ruffs a club away. 2-5-7 of hearts-8. He ruffs a spade back to hand. 7-8-8 of hearts-4 of diamonds. Another club ruff. T-9-Q of hearts-2 of diamonds. Then it turns out declarers clubs are set up so he's up. Down 1. Partner pitched a club or they'd be down 2. (Though declarer can take a ruffing finesse if he has to.)

	NORTH ♠ 5 ♥ A 5 ♦ Q T 8 4 3 ♣ Q 9 6 5 3
WEST ♠ K J ♥ K J 9 8 2 ♦ J ♣ K J T 7 2		EAST ♠ 7 4 3 2 ♥ Q 7 6 3 ♦ A 9 7 6 ♣ 4
	SOUTH ♠ A Q T 9 8 6 ♥ T 4 ♦ K 5 2 ♣ A 8

Professor Jack agrees with me all the way! With both opponents bidding crazily with minimums I'm not the one he should be criticizing here anyway.


The auction is the same at the other table and they take the same tricks for down 1.

Nick: 100
Jack: 100
IMPs: 0 (+3 total)

Cylon Leaders

The second Battlestar Galactica board game expansion came out last week and it just happened to be New Year's Eve so of course it got picked up and played at Andrew's place. There are a lot of new mechanics so we wanted to minimize the impact of the first expansion but we ended up with 7 players and hence had to use a cylon leader. I rolled relatively high and got to pick second and decided if one of us had to be a cylon leader it might as well be me.

For those who may not know the game it's a team game where you don't know who's on your team at the start of the game. You get dealt secret cards indicating which team you're on both at the start of the game and halfway through the game. Everyone starts out as a human but some people are actually cylons in disguise. The humans are just trying to survive to game end; the cylons are trying to commit genocide in any of a variety of ways. You take a lot of hidden actions so people try to use logic to deduce who is actually evil based on imperfect information. It's pretty interesting but hard to balance with 7 people. 4 humans against 3 cylons is pretty much a slaughter for the cylons. 5 humans against 2 cylons is pretty much a guaranteed win for the humans. So what they did was they made the "cylon leader" who doesn't take part in the hidden team part of the game the way the other players do. They act as a cylon most of the time but can also turn into a human and help them if they want. Their motivation is derived from a secret agenda card which tells them what their win conditions are. They either need the humans to win while having done things to hurt them or they need the cylons to win with a lot of complications tacked on. In theory it makes the balance more like 4.5 vs 2.5 but in practice it doesn't always work out that way. I think it warps games but it's a reasonable solution to the problem of the game only being balanced with 5 players by default.

At any rate, an interesting situation arose in the game we played. It became pretty clear that I was a cylon-wins cylon leader since every overt action I took for the first 2 hours of the game was attacking the humans. It also became pretty clear that the humans were dead. They were in danger of losing on 5 of the 6 losing conditions and were a long way from the end. But I hadn't completed my special objectives yet, so we were basically just playing it out to see if I could win or not. Assuming I actually am a cylon-wins character there are 4 possible options for what I could need to accomplish. The question then is, how should the other players act?

The 4 humans should hope for a miracle and keep trying to survive as long as possible. I'd actually started helping them near the end and a couple lucky draws and maybe they could have pulled it off. Alternatively, if they've really given up they could try to work out my win condition and fight to keep me from getting it. The cylons win, no need to have the cylon leader win.

What should the 2 cylons do? If they get me working with them again they definitely win. Ignore me and they almost certainly win. If they work at it they might be able to screw me out of my goal, but should they even worry about it? There is certainly some risk involved, since the further they take me from my goal the more I need to prolong the game in order to win.

For me the answer is clear. I need to achieve my goal and then blow the humans up. If I'm not going to win I have to keep them alive, if I am I want them dead. I'm not spite playing here, if that matters, but maximizing my own winningness. This sort of thing came up in Republic of Rome too. Is it 'better' for the humans to have me lose too? Is it 'worse' if I win? Or once they've lost should it be irrelevant to them?

As it turned out I had to help the humans survive one card that was guaranteed to kill them if I hadn't helped. My criteria was met shortly thereafter and then we blew them up. No one even put any thought into what I could be trying to accomplish or tried to help/hinder me in any way. The game was a little long and I think most people just wanted it over, but I'm not sure they could have colluded to keep me from winning even if they knew my goal. (Not without just throwing in the towel long before they were practically guaranteed death.) I'm pretty sure I had the hardest secret objective (cylons win, 3 or less morale, 4 or more Galactica locations damaged) and it was pretty tricky trying to pull both of the requirements off. But I was essentially a better cylon from the start of the game to the end and only helped the humans once, so they didn't have a lot of hope of winning, sadly. Which is the problem with the cylon leaders in general. I had a great game but the humans (Andrew, Byung, Dee, and Heather) had a lot of trouble and the two cylons (Adam and Duncan) had an easier time than they should have. This isn't to say they didn't play well (Adam managed to take some bad actions as a hidden cylon without being ousted and I didn't think Duncan was a cylon either until he revealed) but the game balance was skewed in their favour because of the cylon leader. It's always great to be the cylon leader, so if I played a lot of games and everyone rotated being the cylon leader I think it would be a reasonable mechanic. But I don't play enough and some people refuse to be a cylon leader so I'm not much of a fan. Even if you can call me Al.

Yahtzee Jr.

I played a kid's game this weekend and thought I was quite clever in figuring out a way to get a slight edge. I ended up beating Andrew and his two children twice (probably mostly through luck) but I wanted to see how slight that edge was.

The game is a very simplified version of Yahtzee in that you have 5 dice and 3 rolls to make your best 'hand' which you put on the scoring chart. All you're collecting is sets. There are no straights or full houses or anything like that. (In fact the dice all had pictures on them so the concept of a straight is right out.) There are two twists compared to normal Yahtzee. First, the dice each have the 5 main characters on them that you're collecting and 1 wild value. Second, one of the wilds is actually an anti-wild. It counts as nothing and can't be rerolled at all.

My 'trick' was to find the die with the anti-wild on it and keep it if I had a choice. To make things clearer, assume I'm using standard D6s and the 1s are wild. One of the dice has the 1 scratched off and replaced by something else to represent the anti-wild. I make my first roll and it comes out 1-2-2-3-3. Should I collect 2s or 3s? Normally in Yahtzee the answer to that question depends on what you've filled in on your scorecard but it often doesn't really matter. You have the same odds of getting 5-of-a-kind with either 2s or 3s. In this variant, however, I should find the die with the anti-wild on it. If it's on one of the dice current showing a 2 I should keep the 2s. If it's on a die currently showing a 3 I should keep it. I'm always keeping the wild as well. What sort of edge am I getting by choosing this way as opposed to always rerolling the anti-wild?

Well, I get to reroll each of the dice twice. The first die is 1/3 to give me what I want on the first roll and 2/3*1/3=2/9 to give me what I want on the second roll for a total of 5/9 to turn out good. The odds are the same for the second die. So, my overall odds are 16/81 - 3-of-a-kind. 40/81 - 4-of-a-kind. 25/81 - 5-of-a-kind.

What if I keep the anti-wild in play? The first die has the same odds as above but the second one is 1/6 to give me what I want on the first roll and 4/6*1/6=1/9 to give me what I want on the second roll. Overall that's 5/18 to give me what I want as opposed to 5/9 with the normal die. My overall odds here are 52/162 - 3-of-a-kind. 85/162 - 4-of-a-kind. 25/162 - 5-of-a-kind.

My expected value score in the first case is 4.1111. My expected value in the second case is 3.8333.

How about if my first roll is worse? (Simplify things a little and assume you can't switch horses in mid stream, so even if you roll 3-3-3-3 on your second roll it doesn't help if you kept a 2 to start.) 2-3-4-5-6, say? Pick out the bad die and keep it and you end up with 256/6561 - 1-of-a-kind. 1280/6561 - 2-of-a-kind. 2400/6561 - 3-of-a-kind. 2000/6561 - 4-of-a-kind. 625/6561 - 5-of-a-kind. Run with something else and you end up with 832/13122 - 1-of-a-kind. 3440/13122 - 2-of-a-kind. 5100/13122 - 3-of-a-kind. 3125/13122 - 4-of-a-kind. 625/13122 - 5-of-a-kind.

My expected value in the first case is 3.2222. My expected value in the second case is 2.9444. I am happy but not too surprised to see the difference is the same. A gain a little more than a quarter of a point by making this choice over making the wrong choice. Someone who isn't aware of this is going to pick right half the time, so my edge is .1389 points. This is, of course, assuming that I didn't roll the anti-wild in my first roll and that the die it's on is one of my potential best picks.

Or does it? What if I roll 2-2-3-4-5? Should I keep the 3 if it's the anti-wild? I already know my expected value in that case, so I need to work out the results when I keep the 2-2. Well, my odds are 208/1458 - 2-of-a-kind. 600/1458 - 3-of-a-kind. 525/1458 - 4-of-a-kind. 125/1458 - 5-of-a-kind. Or an expected value of 3.3889. This is bigger than the 3.2222 where I keep just the anti-wild die, so no unexpected diversions in strategy here. Keep the bigger raw number, only use the location of the anti-wild to break ties. This was my gut feeling at the time, so I'm glad it pans out in reality.

Now the real question is should I really be looking for edges in order to beat 6 and 7 year old kids at board games? Now that I have the edge, should I use it? Should I try to explain it to them? Should I only use it if Andrew is also playing?

Bridge Match 1 - Board 99

Board 99 – Dealer South – NS Vul

My hand: ♠ 9 6 ♥ A T 8 7 ♦ 8 6 2 ♣ K 9 5 4

West opens 1 diamond in 2nd seat. Partner bids 1 heart and East bids 1 spade. I abide by the law so I bid 3 hearts. West bids 4 diamonds and East goes to 5. Partner leads the 4 of hearts.

	NORTH ♥ 4
		EAST ♠ A Q 8 7 5 ♥ Q J 6 ♦ 7 5 3 ♣ 7 3
	SOUTH ♠ 9 6 ♥ A T 8 7 ♦ 8 6 2 ♣ K 9 5 4

West	North	East	South
			Pass
1♦	1♥	1♠1	3♥
4♦	Pass	5♦	All Pass
1At least 5 spades

4-J-A-2. Declarer should be out of hearts now, so I could go for a tap. He could pitch and float around to dummy's Q if he needs 2 pitches, though. Alternatively I can play a club in the hopes that partner has the A, or the Q, or the J and declarer misguesses. That seems like a better plan. I play the 9 of clubs. 9-J-Q-3.

Partner foolishly cashes the K of hearts, establishing the Q on board. K-6-7-9 of diamonds. Declarer draws trump. T-4-3-2. J-3 of hearts-5-6. Then declarer switches to a spade. J-K-A-6. Declarer is up because he gets to pitch his 4th club on the Q of hearts. Making 5.

	NORTH ♠ K T 4 3 ♥ K 9 5 4 3 ♦ 4 ♣ Q T 2
WEST ♠ J 2 ♥ 2 ♦ A K Q J T 9 ♣ A J 8 6		EAST ♠ A Q 8 7 5 ♥ Q J 6 ♦ 7 5 3 ♣ 7 3
	SOUTH ♠ 9 6 ♥ A T 8 7 ♦ 8 6 2 ♣ K 9 5 4

Professor Jack disagrees with my club play. He wants me to lead low. He then disagrees with my spade play and wants me to play high to show 2. I thought that would help declarer more than partner is why I didn't.


The bidding is the same on the replay. My hand returns a low club and North again cashes the K of hearts like a moron. Also making 5. I go back and make partner return a club but he ends up getting squeezed. I go back and force my hand to return a heart instead of a club at trick 2. Declarer ruffs but still gets the squeeze off because my hand fires back a club and not a heart when declarer ducks a club. I go back and make him play another heart to eliminate that threat. My hand then pitches a club letting declarer establish that suit. I make him keep his clubs but then declarer just crossruffs the hand. I guess there's actually nothing to do to set them.

Nick: -600
Jack: -600
IMPs: +0 (+3 total)

Bridge Match 1 - Board 98

Board 98 – Dealer East – NS Vul

My hand: ♠ T 8 ♥ 6 5 3 ♦ Q 8 7 6 ♣ J 9 7 3

East opens 1 club and I pass. West responds 1 diamond, partner jumps in with 1 heart, and East retreats to 1NT. I bid 2 hearts. West doubles (competitive) and East jumps to 3NT. West bids 4NT which is somehow asking for aces. East shows 1 and West bids 6 diamonds. Partner doubles for penalty and I see no reason to run with 4 trump. Partner leads the Q of hearts.

	NORTH ♥ Q
		EAST ♠ J 4 2 ♥ A K T 4 ♦ K 5 4 ♣ Q 8 4
	SOUTH ♠ T 8 ♥ 6 5 3 ♦ Q 8 7 6 ♣ J 9 7 3

West	North	East	South
		1♣	Pass
1♦	1♥	1NT	2♥1
Double2	Pass	3NT	Pass
4NT3	Pass	5♦4	Pass
6♦	Double5	All Pass
1Preemptive
2Competitive
3Ace Asking for No Trump
4One Ace
5Penalty

I guess partner was counting on me to have one of those for my 2 heart bid. Oh well. Q-K-3-7. Declarer draws trump. 4-6-A-6 of clubs. Interesting. Partner doubled with a void. The 6 looks low, so I'm not sure what he's doubling on. More trump from declarer. 2-2 of hearts-K-7. 5-Q-3-8 of hearts.

I know declarer started with 6 diamonds and 1 heart. So he has 6 black suit cards. Partner hasn't pitched any spades yet so I'm hoping that's our best bet for tricks. T-A-9-2. Declarer draws my last trump. 9-9 of hearts-4 of clubs-8.

Now declarer plays a spade. 3-K-4-8. Partner switches to a low club. 2-8-J-A. Declarer cashes dummy's J of spades and is up. Down 1, doubled.

	NORTH ♠ K 9 7 ♥ Q J 9 8 2 ♦ ♣ K T 6 5 2
WEST ♠ A Q 6 5 3 ♥ 7 ♦ A J T 9 3 2 ♣ A		EAST ♠ J 4 2 ♥ A K T 4 ♦ K 5 4 ♣ Q 8 4
	SOUTH ♠ T 8 ♥ 6 5 3 ♦ Q 8 7 6 ♣ J 9 7 3

What a stupid double. No aces and no trumps? No honour sequences in anything but the suit he's practically guaranteed to be ruffing?

Professor Jack disagrees with my overcall. Even though he believes it to be preemptive I don't have enough points. I'm just making that bid to show my 3 hearts, nothing more. Jack would have passed. He then disagrees with my spade shift when I got in with my diamond Q. He would have led a club up to dummy's Qxx after partner pitched a low one. Seems sketchy to me.


On the replay my hand passes and West cuebids 2 hearts instead of doubling my 2 hearts. The auction is then the same up to 6 diamonds which North passes instead of doubling. I guess my 'preemptive' bid was what caused the double. Declarer then almost makes it. He found the winning play in diamonds but didn't have enough board entries to finesse twice. He didn't have enough entries because he attacked spades first instead of trump. He ends up down 1.

Nick: 100
Jack: 50
IMPs: 2 (+3 total)

Bridge Match 1 - Board 97

Board 97 – Dealer North – No Vul

My hand: ♠ K Q J 8 5 2 ♥ Q 8 7 6 ♦ J 5 ♣ K

I open 2 spades in 3rd chair. West overcalls 3 diamond and partner supports with 3 spades which gets passed out. West leads the T of hearts.

	NORTH ♠ T 7 4 ♥ J 4 2 ♦ A Q 6 3 ♣ Q 8 3
		EAST ♥ T
	SOUTH ♠ K Q J 8 5 2 ♥ Q 8 7 6 ♦ J 5 ♣ K

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	2♠1
3♦	3♠2	All Pass
1Weak Two
2Preemptive

I have 5 spades and 1 diamond. I may get a heart and a club and it's pretty likely I can finesse for a diamond trick. Loser-wise I will lose a spade, 2 hearts, and a club for sure. I think my plan is to brute force a club and finesse a diamond and hope they set up a heart for me which they don't ruff.

T-2-K-6. East shifts to a diamond. 9-5-K-A. I now have 3 diamond tricks, assuming proper entries to board which could be a little tricky. I need to draw trump before I play around with hearts though. 4-3-K-A. West returns a diamond. T-3-9 of spades-J. So much for the 3 diamond tricks. East cashes the A of hearts, so I have 2 heart tricks now. East runs out a club, so I have a club set up too. West returns another club which doesn't get ruffed so I'm up. Down 1.

	NORTH ♠ T 7 4 ♥ J 4 2 ♦ A Q 6 3 ♣ Q 8 3
WEST ♠ A ♥ T 9 ♦ K T 8 7 4 2 ♣ A J T 4		EAST ♠ 9 6 3 ♥ A K 5 3 ♦ 9 ♣ 9 7 6 5 2
	SOUTH ♠ K Q J 8 5 2 ♥ Q 8 7 6 ♦ J 5 ♣ K

Professor Jack disagrees with my opening bid. He thinks a stiff K is worth 3 points and therefore I should have opened 1 spade instead of 2. If partner wasn't a passed hand I would have considered it, but with partner having passed already I'm definitely preempting here. club shift and would have just cashed out hearts. Not sure what difference it makes.


On the replay my hand opens 1 spade and they end up in 4 spades. Unfortunately for me my teammates manage to find the only defense to let them make. West starts by leading a diamond which gives declarer a trick with the J. Then when he gets in with the A of spades he doesn't play a second diamond for his partner to ruff. He plays a heart over to West who then cashes the K, establishing both the Q and J for declarer. He then plays a third heart instead of a club so the defense loses their club A when declarer finesses diamonds.

Nick: -50
Jack: 420
IMPs: -10 (+4 total)

Bridge Match 1 - Board 96

Board 96 – Dealer West – EW Vul

My hand: ♠ Q 6 2 ♥ A Q T 7 5 3 ♦ A ♣ J 6 5

Partner opens 1 spade in second seat. I start with 2 hearts. He retreats to 2 spades so we probably don't have a slam. I settle for 4 spades which gets passed out.

I check afterwards and partner's 2 spades bid was alerted as forcing with 5+ spades, fewer than 4 hearts, and 10-14 points. Why is this forcing? Shouldn't I be able to pass with a 2-4-4-3 10-count?

East leads the K of clubs.

	NORTH ♠ A K T 7 4 ♥ 2 ♦ K T 8 4 ♣ A 9 4
		EAST ♣ K
	SOUTH ♠ A K T 7 4 ♥ A Q T 7 5 3 ♦ A ♣ J 6 5

West	North	East	South
Pass	1♠	Pass	2♥
Pass	2♠1	Pass	4♠
Pass	Pass	Pass
1Forcing Minimum

I have 5 spade tricks, 1 heart, 1 club, and 2 diamonds. I can get a tenth trick easily by ruffing a diamond on board. I could also try to set up hearts with ruffs to go for over tricks. If spades split 4-1 or 5-0 I may need that. Or I could just ruff 2 diamonds. I only have 3 potential losers so there's no real risk in starting with a small cross-ruff and see where we end up.

K-5-2-A. I play a heart. 2-9-A-J. 3-K-4 of spades-6. Well, hearts are set up now. I can now play on diamonds to unblock my diamond K or I can save the A of diamonds as an entry to the hearts. That's only necessary if spades break badly and even then I can pitch a club when West ruffs and still make 5. So I play a diamond. 4-3-A-2.

Now I draw a round of trump. 2-5-A-3. I cash the K of diamonds to pitch a club. K-9-6 of clubs-7. I draw more trump. K-9-6-3 of clubs. Spades did split 4-1 but East has the J so my 2 hearts should cash. I play a spade to board and win my 2 high hearts and the remaining trump in hand. Making 5.

	NORTH ♠ A K T 7 4 ♥ 2 ♦ K T 8 4 ♣ A 9 4
WEST ♠ 5 ♥ K J ♦ Q 7 6 5 2 ♣ T 8 7 3 2		EAST ♠ J 9 8 3 ♥ 9 8 6 4 ♦ J 9 3 ♣ K Q
	SOUTH ♠ Q 6 2 ♥ A Q T 7 5 3 ♦ A ♣ J 6 5

Professor Jack disagrees with my 2 heart bid and wants me to bid Jacoby 2NT. I still think that should show 4 spades so I disagree with Jack. Jack also disagrees with drawing the second round of trump and just wants me to crossruff.


The auction is the same at the other table (they aren't playing any form of Jacoby 2NT) but East leads a low diamond. Since the club A isn't knocked out declarer tries to establish hearts by finessing the Q. It loses to West who returns a club, ducked to East. East eventually gets a trump trick to hold them to just in.

Nick: 450
Jack: 420
IMPs: +1 (+14 total)