Korbel Bridge Adventures

Poker in Aruba ??

2008-09-14T12:54:00.004-04:00

(This post has nothing to do with bridge, but rather is about poker, so if that isn't your thing you won't want to continue reading).

Susie and I have a friend, Sean, who "grinds" Pot Limit Omaha 8-or-better on Ultimate Bet (in English, that means he plays a lot of a form of poker known as "PL08" to increase his livelihood). Because he plays so much on UB, they often reward him with frequent player specials. Lately, this has been a free entry into a $109 satellite tournament, where if you finish in the top 160 players, you get an entry into a $530 tournament. If you make the top 50 in this tournament, you get $3000 cash and a seat to the $5500 Aruba Classic main event, which has a first prize of $1 million!

Well, our friend Sean doesn't like long no limit hold em tournaments, and he was out of town besides on the scheduled day, and he likes the way Susie and I play, so he offered us the freeroll for a 50-50 split on any winnings. Well, that seemed like a no-brainer.

I played in the 11:15am $109 feeder. The funny thing about this tournament, is that fewer than half the people registered even bother to show up! One guy who did show up was clearly not taking it seriously, and at one point asked, "What does this get you anyway?"

In short, making it to the final 160 out of maybe 300 people who actually show up is a breeze. So the stage was set for the real tournament, the $530 Aruba 50 Seat Giveaway, at 5:30pm.

Well, I wasn't home that Saturday night, so Susie would have to go it alone. The field started with 766 players, with the top 50 all winning the same first prize.

Despite never playing a tournament with anywhere near this high an entry fee before, Susie proved that she could more than hold her own. She qualified easily, and when the 51st person was eliminated (boy, is that a bad beat or what!), she had coasted her way comfortably into 13th place. Congratulations Susie!

Susie played really excellent poker this whole tournament, never making a costly mistake and using her position intelligently. The bigger buy in tournaments on UB give a deeper starting stack of 3000, and blind levels last 20 minutes instead of the normal 10 minutes, which gives a lot of "play" to a tournament. This is right up Susie's alley, as her biggest forte in these tournaments is her incredible patience. In a fast-paced tournament, this often means she ends up clinging on at some point if she goes card dead, but in a slower structure she was never in any real danger. Every time she was all-in, she was at least an 80% favourite to win the pot -- now that's a figure we would all be thrilled with.

I will give you a few of the key hands she played. I've never formatted poker hands so I hope this works out.

(20/40 Blinds)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Chips: 2430 Villain: 3300

Susie raises to 100, Villain calls.

FLOP:

Susie bets 150, Villain calls.

TURN:

Susie bets 300, Villain raises to 800, Susie reraises all-in, Villain calls.

RIVER:

Susie wins 4920 chips.

(Note Villain's error in not protecting his hand. Had he raised substantially on the flop, Susie would certainly have folded her nice straight draw and he would have gained some chips instead of being crippled).
-------
HAND #2

(Blinds 150/300, 50 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain: ??
Susie's Stack: ~9000 Villain: ~5500

Villain raises to 1000. Susie, on the button, folds 99.

Result: Stack stays at ~9000.

(Note Susie's tight but excellent fold here. Calling off 1000 chips at this point to try to flop a set (12%) against Villain's 4500 remaining chips was out of the question, so by calling 1000 she was essentially committing herself to getting all in on the flop if only one overcard comes to her 99. This is an extremely wild play with her playable 9000 chip stack size, as going down to 3500 would severely cripple her. Note that if the Villain had her out-chipped or was very short, she would have called, as the math would have been far better for calling. Great fold, in my opinion.)

-------
HAND #3

(Blinds 200/400, 25 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Stack: ~8000 Villain: ~19000
Villain limps from mid position. Susie raises to 1200 from the button, Villain calls.

FLOP:

Villain moves all in. Susie calls.

TURN:

RIVER:

Susie wins ~17000 chips.

(She was sure in the right place at the right time for this silly hand! If plays like this guy made are a part of your game, you've got a major leak to fill, and that leak is called patience).
------

HAND #4 (the very next hand against the very same player).

(Blinds 200/400, 25 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain:
Susie's Stack: ~19000 Villain: ~11000

Villain min-raises to 800 from mid-position. Susie calls. Big blind calls.

FLOP:

BB checks. Villain bets 2600. Susie raises to 6000. BB Folds. Villain moves all-in. Susie calls.

TURN:

RIVER:

Susie wins ~23500 chips, putting her up to ~31000 chips, eliminating Villain.

(This hand was a cold deck for the villain. But he put himself into this position by stacking off 8000 chips to Susie the hand before -- or he would still have been in fighting shape, instead of eliminated. Also note that Susie didn't reraise him before the flop even with a hand as strong as JJ, as he had never before raised a pot preflop, and now was min-raising. This smelled funny and sure enough, he did indeed have AA).
--------

HAND #5

(Blinds 500/1000, 100 Ante)

Susie's Hand: Villain: ??
Susie's Stack: ~69000 Villain: ~34000

Villain raises to 2500 from mid position. Susie calls in the Big Blind.

FLOP:

Susie bets 3000. Villain calls.

TURN:

Susie bets 7500. Villain folds.

Susie wins 12500 chips, stacking up to ~74500.

(This is my favourite hand of the whole tournament. The blinds were going up and everyone was feeling the pressure. Susie had stayed in a fairly aggressive mode after winning those two big pots (Hands 3 and 4), and had chipped up to about 70000 in chips. With the blinds increasing and the magic 50th place payout getting ever closer, nobody wanted to step out of line and "donk" their way out of the tournament.

Since Susie had plenty of chips to play with, she decided to use this to her advantage -- after all, she could make a small error and survive, where other people couldn't afford to be wrong! Ordinarily, she would not usually defend her blind with a hand as dangerous as A7, but in this case she decided to call and take a flop. When the flop came JJ5, it was extremely unlikely that her opponent had caught a piece of that. So Susie bet out 3000, expecting to take the pot down right then and there.

Well, her opponent was suspicious too (after all, if Susie had a jack, why wouldn't she check and go for the check raise?), and decided to call. If the blinds were lower and the stacks were deeper, he might have raised here to test her, but he couldn't afford to be wrong so he compromised with a call. Susie was aware that her opponent might be "floating" her here with a hand like AK or 99, waiting to see what she did on the turn, and maybe intending to take the pot from her there. This is why I love her 7500 bet on the turn, basically asking her opponent, "Do you want to dance?" His quick fold said that no, he didn't. What a great hand.)

In any case, the timing for Aruba will not work for us, so we will likely sell our seat on the open market, which is too bad, but that's life I guess.

Atlanta Regional, 2008

2008-09-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

On August 25th, Jonathan and I headed off to the Atlanta regional. We had heard it is a nice tourney with great hospitality and a strong field, so we decided to attend this year. We were not disappointed; the tournament had 3 (!) separate hotel suites dedicated to hospitality, with all the food and alcohol you could want. And probably at least 20 world champion bridge players were in attendance at the tournament.

The tournament is an easy 40 minute MARTA train ride (just $2.00) from the airport. Across the street from the Crowne Plaza hotel is a humongous shopping mall, Perimeter Plaza, with an abundance of restaurants to choose from. The tournament gets about 3500 tables each year, making it one of the largest regionals around.

We ended up playing in team games all week, except for the first day where we placed in two one-session pairs games.

On Wednesday we played with Jerry Helms and Penelope Smith, a wonderful lady who helps produce his materials for teaching bridge. We lost a close match in the afternoon compact KO, but saved a little face by winning the large 1-session swiss in the evening.

We played with Jerry Helms and Bob Bitterman in the Thursday - Friday KO, with somewhat better results. We breezed through the first three matches (winning them by an average of about 45 IMPs!) until we stumbled against the tough Feagin team in the final. Incidentally, this team won two bracket 1 KOs and the final day Swiss (!), quite impressive in a field like this.

Here are a couple of hands:

This hand occurred in the semi-final. I raised Jonathan's vulnerable 3S opening to 4S, and the defense started with sK, sA, heart switch. (Yes, a club switch at any time would have been better). Jonathan made the standard expert play of ducking this trick, winning the next heart, to "tighten the position" if a squeeze existed. He proceeded to run some trumps; watch what happens to East! He must keep a high heart and 4 diamonds, so he can't keep the cK guarded. A triple squeeze! A strong East would stiff the cK early, hoping that declarer would take the finesse, but Jonathan was not tested as this East discarded his diamond stopper and Jonathan was able to set up a long diamond trick for +620 and 12 IMPs. (On the actual deal, Jonathan would have had a strong clue to drop the cK anyway, as East had thought for quite some time over 4S, essentially marking him with the cK given that the rest of the hand counted out, the way the play went).

This hand occurred during the second half of our extremely close match against the Feagin team in the final. We had done well to arrive in this good slam (it's about 50% on a heart lead, and nearly cold on any other lead). My pass of 5D doubled asked Jonathan to clarify his control, and his redouble promised the ace. This was enough to get me to bid the slam.

Sure enough, I got a diamond lead, but ironically it is a diamond lead that requires the most care! On a heart lead, which was found by our teammates, declarer was basically forced to take the spade finesse, using the cA as a reentry to finesse spades again, and eventually ruffing a club once all the trumps are gone with the dA as an entry back to the long club.

On a diamond lead, that late entry is gone, and it's easy to slip just a bit and go down, with the foul breaks. However, I crossed to the cA to finesse the spade, and then ruffed dummy's low club high in my hand after taking another spade finesse -- +1430. Just another push.

Anyway, we came second in this knockout, and the following day (this time playing with Jim Murphy, Warren Roberts, and Bob and Jane Teal), we drew the Feagin team in the first round 3-way match. Well, we beat them by 19, but it didn't matter, because the other team lost both matches.

Once again, we coasted through our 2nd and 3rd round matches, winning them both very comfortably, to face the Feagin team in the final! This match was also desperately close. Jonathan and I could have done very little better at our table, except this board:

We got to 4NT, with 6C playable and, in fact, makeable. (Notice how carefully you need to play the hand on a neutral red suit lead -- trying a spade toward the sJ after drawing one round of trumps and before trying to ruff a heart. Another hand where if you get careless you will cost yourself a bundle of IMPs). As it turns out we did the right thing because had 6C gone down, we would have won the match, whereas had we bid and made the slam we would have lost by 2!

In retrospect, we decided that Jonathan might have bid the slam based on the fourth club and the working doubleton, and I might have accepted based on the good trumps. But it's no crime to stay out of this slam, and if the club finesse is offside it will almost never make.

All in all, a successful tournament. Jonathan and I won 86 masterpoints, a respectable total given that we did not play morning events.

I won't be playing much bridge until mid 2009, as I am going back to school to finish my degree, so the blog won't be updated very often.

Las Vegas NABC 2008, Recap

2008-08-01T17:20:00.003-04:00

The Las Vegas Nationals ended just a few days ago. I played throughout the week with Les Amoils, a South African turned Torontonian:

We had high hopes for the first event, the 3-day Life Masters pairs, but unfortunately we failed to make the cut on even the first day. Our opponents played well against us, and when that happens in bridge in general, the pressure is on. If your opponents play poorly and hand you a "baseline score" (the score you'd get by playing sort of average) of 60% or more, almost anyone in the field could qualify. But when they play well and hand you a "baseline" score of 50% or less, well, the ball is in your court now, and it's easy to have a bad session and not qualify.

But, we hooked up with two good friends of ours for a 2-day KO event, Jordan Cohen and Doug Baxter. This is the first time I have played on a team with Jordan Cohen, but Doug and I have been many-time teammates and occasional partners.

Because a lot of the Spingold teams with gazillions of masterpoints choose to sharpen up in these early KOs rather than enter the LM Pairs, the masterpoint requirements for bracket 1 are higher than any other time of the year. In fact, it took over 10000 masterpoints average per player to qualify for bracket 1! We got stuck in bracket 4 with an average masterpoint total of approximately 3800.

Well, we smoked each of the first three matches, winning by margins of 30 IMPs or higher.

In the final match, our opponents played solidly and we were up by 2 at the half, when they informed us they were withdrawing! I thought it was a joke until they said congratulations, one of our team members is ill, pleasant match! I must confess I've never gotten the WD being up by two IMPs before, but all four of us would rather have played the second half and won or lost legitimately. But hey, a win is a win.

The next day was the Spingold, where we teamed up with Greg Hinze - Nagy Kamel, Dan Morse - Ken Schultze. On the first day we ended up with the #38 seed in a 4-way. Should be easy, right? Well, our team wasn't very good in the first half of the first match and we found ourselves stuck 45 IMPs to a team we figured to beat. In the second half, things went better and we put on a clinic to regain 28 IMPs, but it wasn't enough.

In actual fact, Les and I had a splendid auction to get to a very hard to bid slam that required little more than the Gambling 3NT opener not to have a Qx on the side. He did, however, and we lost 9 IMPs instead of winning 16 -- we would actually have pulled the match out!

On to the evening. We sat out the first half and came in with a +4 IMP lead. You'd think in the 2nd half of a 4-way we'd get an easy draw, right? Not! We had to play a tough team including Ed Davis - John Swanson. Les and I played almost perfectly and we picked up 6 more IMPs in the second half to squeak into the round of 64.

This time we were up against Bruce Ferguson - Bob Hollman, Jerry Clerkin - Dennis Clerkin, and Krzysztof Buras - Grzegorz Narkiewicz from Poland. We came in to the second quarter to find out we were up by 1 IMP, 57-56! Not exactly a low scoring match.

Les and I had basically a spectacular set in the 2nd quarter -- even our one bidding misunderstanding led to +13 IMPs!

Here are three hands where we did great:

This was the first board of the set. Les listened to the auction and found a double dummy lead of a low heart (!), upon which Bruce naturally misguessed and we cashed four tricks. Win 10. (Incidentally, at the other table, one of the players joked about finding a low heart lead at trick one and the other players laughed! Little did they know ...)

I judged with my flat hand and poor suit simply to transfer to hearts and bid 3NT, which worked out well here with hearts this foul. 4H had to fail at the other table for 11 more IMPs.

The following hand may be the best defense I have ever perpetrated, and it came against a lowly 2H contract for a mere 4 IMPs! Les led the dK, and Bruce won in order to lead a heart to the king and another heart. I overtook Les' hT with the hA in order to fire a club through. Bruce misguessed clubs (who wouldn't?), putting up the king. Les won the ace and fired a club back. I switched to a spade, and Les cashed the sA and dK before leading another club for me to ruff with the h9 for a trump promotion, getting back the trump trick we had lost earlier.

In any case, we picked up 34 IMPs this set to lead by 35 IMPs at the half.

Unfortunately the third quarter was a disaster at our table and wasn't much better at the other table. Our team coughed up 47 IMPs to have a twelve IMP deficit going into the fourth quarter. How quickly the tide turns!

Les and I sat out the fourth quarter, but we were rooting for our teammates. The set wasn't any help as we lost another 24 IMPs to get unceremoniously booted from the Spingold. Ah well, on to the Fast Pairs!

We qualified handily for the second day of the Fast Pairs, qualifying in the top 25% of the field. Our final two sessions went very well, and we ended up 5th overall. Although 2nd overall was only half a board away (very achievable, of course), 1st was something like 3 boards ahead and basically uncatchable. Still, a top 5 finish in this event is something that Les and I were both happy with.

Here is a hand from the final day of the Fast pairs:

I guessed to lead a heart rather than a spade, which was already guaranteeing us an above average score. However, Les found a way to garner almost all the matchpoints: when declarer led the c9 from dummy, he covered with the cK! Declarer now crossed back twice to dummy to finesse twice into my cJ and cT, eventually going one down. A farsighted play by Les for a great board. (Les was fairly confident that his play would not crash a doubleton AQ or singleton club honour because I had led a heart from what was obviously a weak four card suit, marking declarer with 4 or 5 spades; thus, having 5 or 6 clubs was practically an impossibility.)

All in all, a successful Nationals. I adore Las Vegas (Susie and I even got married there -- no not in a drive thru chapel and our minister wasn't Elvis!) and had a great time outside of bridge too.

Las Vegas Nationals

2008-07-17T00:21:00.002-04:00

Dan has left for Las Vegas! Wish him luck!

I am not sure if he has internet access while he is there but we'll be posting hands and results from the events as soon as we are able.

Pentiction 2008 Recap

2008-06-22T22:00:00.005-04:00

Jonathan Steinberg and I spent the week of June 9-15 in sunny Penticton, B.C. As luck would have it, we ran into friends and Winnipeg Regional teammates Bob Todd and Mike Yuen at the Safeway before the first session, and we found out they were staying in the same hotel as us -- in the room next door! So we had plenty of company for the week.

The bridge went very well all week. Both Jonathan and I set a new personal regional best with over 111 masterpoints for the week; congratulations go out to our teammates, Gerry Marshall and Bernie Lambert as well (Bernie won the tournament with 117 points as he played on a different morning KO team that outperformed us).

L TO R: Bernie Lambert, Gerry Marshall, Daniel Korbel, Jonathan Steinberg.

There weren't that many hands throughout the week that I found to be spectacular, but here are a couple of slams where Jon and I did well on. Both were large swings in our favour.

I found the South hand awkward to bid and am not really sure what the best course of action is. I really don't like opening these hands 1D and rebidding 2C, so I decided to open 1C, planning to raise 1S to 2S if partner were to bid it, and just bid 1NT over 1H. Jonathan's 3H jump rebid was forcing and slammish, so I upgraded my hand and my hQ and drove to the five level. Jonathan knew that his hand was gold (nice cQ!) and bid the slam. 6H and 6C are both excellent contracts, much better than 6NT, but with both key suits splitting 3-3 any grand slam makes! The other table played 3NT, making only 6, so we won 13 IMPs.

This is another awkward hand, but there was nothing wrong with the final contract. Jonathan received a low spade lead, which he decided to duck around to his ten. Judging the lead to be from length, Jonathan made the great decision not to make the normal club play of leading a low club toward the Jack, as he was afraid of a spade ruff. Instead, he cashed the cA, dropping the cQ, and from there was able to claim his slam in top tricks. +920 was worth 14 IMPs as declarer misguessed 6NT at the other table.

No more bridge until Vegas -- hope to see everyone there! Vegas, baby!

Canadian Bridge Week Wrap Up

2008-06-07T20:29:00.003-04:00

Congrats to these winners of Bridge Week events:

Canadian National Teams Championship

1. Nicolas L'Ecuyer, Marc-André Fourcaudot, Dan Jacob, Kamel Fergani, Robert Lebi,
Vincent Demuy

Canadian Womens' Teams Championship

1. Pamela Nisbet, Karen Cumpstone, Martine Lacroix, Pascale Gaudreault, Kismet Fung, Susan Culham

Canadian Seniors Teams Championship

1. Stephen Brown - Edward Zaluski - Bill Bowman - John Bowman, Ottawa ON; Jurek Czyzowicz, Gatineau QC; Doug Fraser, Victoria BC

Canadian Open Pairs Championship

1. Cameron Doner, Richmond BC; Bradley Bart, Burnaby BC

Full results can be found here.

Jonathan Steinberg and Bert Eccles placed 4th in the COPC event this year. Although they were leading after Day 1, they were unable to resist a strong surge by the eventual winners, Cam Doner and Brad Bart. Here is a hand that Jonathan played on day one:

Jonathan arrived in 3NT (Bert's double of 1S showed 4 hearts) and was greeted by a low club lead from West. He won the cK in the dummy, crossed to hand with a diamond, and led another club up. When West rose with the cA and continued clubs, Jonathan was pretty sure that West was 5=5 in the black suits. It seems that he is simply a trick short, but do you see how he made his contract?

Jonathan won the cQ, and exited a club, allowing West to cash the rest of his club suit. East, feeling the pressure of having to protect both red suits, discarded a spade on the run of the clubs. When West played a spade next, Jonathan ducked! Now he had lost 4 tricks, which rectified the count for a squeeze against East. East played a heart now, but nothing mattered and East had to surrender in one red suit or the other when Jonathan cashed the sA. Well played, and this board was worth 18 / 24 matchpoints en route to a solid 67% game.

It's off to Penticton shortly for the regional there, where "squeeze expert" Jonathan Steinberg and I will be playing all week with Bernie Lambert and Gerry Marshall. Wish us luck!

Montreal CNTC, Semi-Final Results

2008-05-29T23:39:00.003-04:00

Today was the semi-finals of the CNTC-A, as well as the finals of both the CNTC-B and CNTC-Womens'.

In the CNTC A, L'ECUYER defeated KORBEL by 37 IMPs after winning the first set 55-0! In the other match, FRASER came from behind to defeat SINNO by 3 IMPs in a thrilling finale.

So tomorrow and Saturday will be L'ECUYER vs FRASER for the CNTC and the right to represent Canada in the Olympiad later this year in Beijing.

In the women's event, NISBET defeated CIMON to take the title. Congratulations!

Montreal CNTC, Quarterfinal

2008-05-28T22:04:00.003-04:00

We were tied at the half against the ZALUSKI team, 62-62.

The third set went poorly for us; we bid a lot of reasonable but thin games, and they all went down. Then, we bid a 53% slam that also went down. Darren and Jurek had a normalish set, but we ended up losing 18 IMPs on the set.

We sat down for the fourth quarter, and this was the first board:

Our opponents propelled themselves into 3NT, which has far less than a 1% chance of making (it needs hearts blocked, the dA onside, and the sQJ to drop), but as you can see it was all there, and we knew we were in a 28 IMP hole with 15 boards to play.

Fortunately, it went much better from that point on, and we ended up winning the rest of the set 79-27!

Here are a couple slams where David and I did very well on:

I decided to splinter the East cards once partner responded in diamonds, since my trump support was so wonderful. Also, this way he would be able to choose the right strain. David's 4H cuebid did not excite me, but my failure to cuebid 5C led David to believe that I had very good diamond support. He bid 6D, which made with the clubs coming home, and that was +1370, 12 IMPs for us.

David opened the West cards 1D (a little light, don't you think!!) and my 2D was game forcing. David showed his hearts, and I bid a forcing 2NT. His 3D rebid let me know that he had extra distribution. At this point, I was thinking that we could easily have a grand slam. I cuebid 3H, and he bid 3S which was ambiguous as to whether he was just trying for 3NT or if he was actually cuebidding spades. When I cuebid 4C, David redoubled to show a void. At this point I knew my cAQ were wasted, but we could still have a grand slam if he had a similar hand with the Ace of diamonds. When David wouldn't cooperate with my grand slam try of 5H, I gave up. +920 was worth 10 IMPs as the other table played in 4H, making 5.

Here is a board where we manufactured IMPs out of nowhere:

I doubled 3NT for a spade lead, on a wing and a prayer. David led a spade, and I switched to the h5. David won the hJ and played another spade to my sQ. I played another heart, and declarer guessed to win the hA and try cashing clubs from the top, pitching two diamonds from dummy. When the cJ didn't fall that was +800 for us and 12 IMPs, as our teammates went two down in 4NT.

When all was said and done, Darren and Jurek had a very solid set and we won comfortably. Tomorrow we face the tough L'Ecuyer team; may the best team win!

Montreal CNTC, Quarterfinal Results

2008-05-28T21:58:00.003-04:00

The results are in. We survived a 3rd quarter scare to come on strong in the 4th set to make it to the semi-finals.

SINNO...................214
BALLANTYNE......87

KORBEL..................153
ZALUSKI.........129

L'ECUYER........128
WILLIS.............109

FRASER..............102
GARTAGANIS.......96

Tomorrow's matchups:

SINNO
FRASER

KORBEL
L'ECUYER

Stay tuned for hands from our match. It was a wild fourth set!

2008 CNTC Quarterfinal

2008-05-28T14:57:00.002-04:00

The final event standings looked like this:

1. Sinno
2. Korbel
3. L'Ecuyer
4. Fraser
5. Gartaganis
6. Zaluski
7. Willis
8. Ballantyne

Sinno chose to play against Ballantyne, and we chose to play against Zaluski. This left L'Ecuyer to choose Willis, and Fraser got Gartaganis.

At the half, the scores look like this:

SINNO...............51....43......94
BALLANTYNE....2.....18......20

KORBEL.......31.....31.....62
ZALUSKI......25.....37.....62

L'ECUYER.....37.....29.....66
WILLIS.........15.....12.....27

FRASER...........14.....44.....58
GARTAGANIS...38......6......44

As you can see, our match is extremely close. I'll show you a couple interesting hands:

David responded to my 1D opening bid with a game-forcing 2C bid. I was forced systemically to rebid 2D, which promised at least 5 diamonds and said nothing else about my hand. David raised to 3D, and I chose to bid 3S. David tried 4C, and when he cuebid 4H over my 4D bid I knew he had a good hand (he didn't try 3NT even though he had a heart stopper). I bid blackwood, heard about his three aces, and asked for the Queen of diamonds. When he showed it plus the cK, I decided that 7D would probably be laydown or very close to it. The actual layout made it very simple to take all 13 tricks by ruffing two spades high in the dummy. We won 10 IMPs when the other table stopped in 6NT, which could be beaten, but was made on a double squeeze.

I realize I haven't had much opportunity to post hands from the event so far, but rest assured if you want to see them and can wait, you will see plenty here. Here's a hand from the round robin where we won 10 IMPs:

I opened a strong notrump (ok, ok, a little light!) and my left hand opponent doubled, which artificially announced a 1-suited hand. The rest of the auction was standard and we got to 4S. My LHO led the dA and another diamond, and I stopped to think about the hand. The opponents were playing standard carding, and East had played the d9 then d7, so based on the auction, lead, and defense, it looked for all the world that diamonds were 7=2 and West was hoping to give East a diamond ruff.

Well, if West had seven diamonds, and led from a dry ace (an ace with no other help in the suit), he probably didn't have a singleton to lead. Or, at least, he would have thought a lot longer about leading, say, a singleton heart or club. Accordingly, I decided that he was likely to have a singleton spade! The only way he would have more than 1 spade, if my inferences were correct, would be if he was specifically 2=2=7=2.

In any case, I led a spade to the Ace and a spade back down, putting in the s9! This won and with clubs breaking (as expected), I had 10 tricks.

I'll post results as soon as we get them tonight.

2008 CNTC Days 1, 2, and 3

2008-05-27T12:03:00.003-04:00

This week we are in Dorval (the airport suburb of Montreal) for the Canadian Bridge Team Championship event. Our team consists of myself, David Grainger, Arno Hobart, George Mittelman, Darren Wolpert, and Jurek Czyzowicz.

Sorry the blog hasn't been updated, I've had difficulty finding an opportunity to update. The updates will be more frequent from this point on for sure.

The first match of the event we played against a pre-tournament favourite, Nic L'Ecuyer's team, and lost a close match to them. It got better from there, though, as we ended the first day comfortably in the top 8, and by the end of day two we were a comfortable 2nd place.

After 5 of the 6 matches on Day 3, we had snuck into first place, but unfortunately this wouldn't last as we lost in the 6th match to the 2nd place team, who then overtook us for the lead. After 3 of 4 days in the round robin, the top 10 look like this:

1. Sinno............295
2. Korbel...........286
3. L'Ecuyer.........284
4. Fraser...........269
5. Gartaganis.......260
6. Zaluski..........258
7. Willis...........251
8/9. Rayner.........244
8/9. Brough.........244
10/12. Chan.........232
10/12. Ballantyne...232
10/12. Anderson.....232

Full rosters of the event can be found here.

Only 8 teams qualify; it is a dogfight.

Here is a cute hand from the match against Bryan Maksymetz's team:

The auction may look like an error, but it wasn't. Bryan's 1H bid actually showed spades, and Ziggy's 1S bid showed hearts! 3S was invitational, and Ziggy accepted the game try. This left me on lead, and I tried a low club. Declarer won with the cQ and led the dJ, to the 8, 4, and ... Ace! I decided that since the diamond position was basically known (David's 8 showed an odd number), declarer would probably be able to ruff out my diamond ace and throw his heart losers away. I also knew that spades weren't breaking for declarer, so I could hope for partner to have 2 spade tricks in his hand. If declarer thought that David held the dQ, I hoped that he would just go after trumps and go down. This is in fact what happened, and we won 11 IMPs on the hand as we were +50 and our teammates were +420.

I don't have time right now for any more hands but there will be more hands and score updates in a little while. Time for match 18!

Canadian National Team Championships

2008-05-24T13:53:00.002-04:00

Dan is off to Montreal to play in the CNTC starting today. His team is himself, David Grainger, Arno Hobart, George Mittelman, Darren Wolpert, and Jurek Czyzowicz. Wish them luck!

Dan will update as frequently as he can with hands and standings from the matches, so check back often!

Winnipeg Regional 2008 Recap

2008-05-12T21:30:00.003-04:00

Last week Jonathan Steinberg and I traveled to Winnipeg to participate in their regional. Although the tournament was small (especially coming on the heels of Gatlinburg, which gets more tables in one day than Winnipeg does all week!), I found it to be enjoyable and the people were extremely hospitable. I made many new friends this week and am looking forward to heading back to Winnipeg sometime soon for another tournament.

As many of you know, Jonathan keeps a large album of photographs of bridge players and the Winnipeg tournament was no exception. Heck, most tournament players have probably been photographed by him at least once!

The bridge went very well in Winnipeg for us. We ended up playing with a variety of players, coming 1st in all three KO events we entered, and 2nd and 3rd in the two swiss events we entered. This added up to something like 92 points, a spectacular result for such a small regional.

Here is a nice slam that helped us to victory in the first knockout:

Jonathan, as North, made the key decision to bid 4C, bypassing 3NT, and now getting to 6D was easy. The player on my left found the best lead of a club, but it didn't matter with hearts 3-3. This slam was missed at the other table, and we won 10 IMPs.

Here is an interesting situation that our teammates encountered while we were sitting out (on a 6-person squad):

At one table, with North / South vulnerable, the bidding went:

And our teammates went -300, an excellent result with the opponents cold for 5C and with 6C makeable.

At the other table, the bidding was more ambitious:

North's double of 5D should not be played as penalty in my opinion, but rather as responsive, showing some working values. Some people might describe this double as scraping the bottom of the barrel, but on this deal it worked beautifully when South correctly took a shot at 6C.

On the opening lead of a diamond, East put in the queen as South, Ken Sired, ruffed. After messing around a bit, Ken discovered that East's distribution was 1=4=6=2, and that West therefore had a doubleton heart. Because of East's dQ at trick 1, Ken decided that East had all of the top diamond honours and dropped the hK offside instead of taking the finesse. Well played, but as I'm sure all of you agree with, East should have just played the dA at trick 1 to conceal his strength in that suit.

I find this hand interesting, because against a top-class defender who plays the dQ, you have a very interesting situation as declarer. A great defender in the East seat would virtually never reveal the dAKQ at trick 1 unless he had a reason to; it follows that if a very strong East plays the dQ, he may actually hold:

However, if East knows that you know that he is a super defender, he may put in the dQ after all from the layout that really existed, playing for a grosvenor gambit! A classic case of the "spy vs. spy" tactics that can exist at the higher levels of bridge.

Here's a declarer play problem to test your mettle. I will only show the North South hands so you can try your hand at it.

You have reached an aggressive 6H contract through optimistic bidding. The opening lead is a small diamond; how do you play? (Answer at the bottom of the post.)

Here's another nice slam we reached, even though this one was a push board.

I opened 1H, and Jonathan bid 2S, which in our system is the same as most people's Jacoby 2NT (a game-forcing heart raise). My RHO bid 3D, and I bid 3S, which conventionally showed at most 1 spade. Jonathan cuebid 4C, and I passed 4D around to Jonathan to see what he would do. When he signed off in 4H, I felt I was still worth more so I tried again with 4S. Jonathan showed he had clubs well under control, and that was enough to get me to bid the slam.

It looks like you have a heart loser and a diamond loser when trumps unluckily break 3-0, but with the cQ falling there is a parking place for dummy's diamond and 6H cruises home. (For any declarer play mavens out there, you could actually make 6H even if the cJ were a small club by forcing West to ruff East's winning diamond at trick 13, which is pretty cool in and of itself).

This is a bit of a sidenote, but I wanted to write about it anyway. Gim Ong was telling me about a mentoring program that is run in the Winnipeg area. I thought it was really worthwhile so I wanted to share it here. The way it works is that any level of player short of newcomer can sign up to be a mentor for a 6-game block at the local club. These 6 games are free for the mentor, with the club paying half and the unit subsidizing the other half of the entry fee.

The mentor gets matched up with a player of lower ability (an A player would be matched with a B player, and a C player would be matched up with a newcomer) and is expected to spend 15-20 minutes before and after the session discussing whatever he feels is an area he can help the "mentee" with, or answering questions the newer player has. Alternatively, some partnerships receive coaching from a more experienced player rather than individual attention.

Gim says that this has helped the players in the area tremendously; in fact, in the IMP Pairs, he played against a pair that he coaches, and they bid accurately to two superb slams against him! There are over 85 matchups made in Winnipeg with another 20+ players waiting to be paired up with a mentor. This program sounds like a smashing success in Winnipeg and can only improve the caliber and enthusiasm of players. Needless to say, this idea might not be as workable in a larger metropolis, at least where expert players are concerned, but certainly the lure of free sessions would be enough to attract some mentors.

Anyway, another successful regional tournament gone by; next stop, the Canadian National Team Championships (May 24-31), where David and I, along with Darren Wolpert, Jurek Czycowicz, George Mittelman, and Arno Hobart, hope to earn the right to represent Canada in Beijing in the fall!

ANSWER TO PLAY PROBLEM: I hope you discarded at trick 1. No line will work unless you can pick up hearts 3-2 onside. If you ruffed trick 1, intending to lead a spade to the queen, you will realize after some more thought that this line is essentially the same as discarding at trick 1 and setting up the dK for a trick, except that you also need the sK onside, which it wasn't.

On the actual hand, both declarers went down by ruffing the diamond at trick 1 instead of discarding, which would have worked (clubs broke and Qxx of hearts was in the slot).

Some hands from tonight

2008-05-04T23:59:00.002-04:00

Tonight, David Grainger and I played a pleasant match against Jason Chiu and Harmon Edgar.

The match went well, with both sides playing very well. We ended up getting slightly the better of it, largely on the back of these three slam deals:

I was kind of stuck for a bid over 3H, so I decided to compromise with a 3S bid, which at least gave David space to describe what his hand was all about. Thinking we probably had no heart stopper, David told me about the club fit with his 4C bid. 4D was a cuebid, and 4S was passable, but also sort of a cuebid, since he had to have good spades. My 4NT bid was a bit of an oddity: in our system, when the auction gets very crowded, 4NT is not blackwood. It was intended merely as forward-going with clubs, promising a heart control and David took it as such. He bid 5H on the way to 6C just in case we had a grand slam (he knew that I couldn't misconstrue his 5H bid).

With everything breaking, there was nothing to the play and we chalked up +920 for +10.7 IMPs.

Then:

My double of 1H showed 4 or 5 spades in our system, and Jason's leap to 4H really put the wood to David. He thought for a while and eventually decided to take a shot at 6C. He knew that I would know he couldn't have a heart loser, and this sort of sequence (opening at the 1 level, then blasting to the moon opposite a simple 1-level response) usually shows a good fit for partner's suit. Therefore, had I held the sAQ and the cA I would have been able to find the good raise to 7C based on this logic. In any case, he bought very well from me and we played in 6C making, for +8.5 IMPs. Note that the 4-4 spade fit goes down if the defense finds its club ruff, which it should probably find because declarer can't just pull trump and knock out the cA on the bad spade break.

I saved the best for last. This is the kind of result you dream about having when an important match is on the line; too bad it came up in an online fun match.

We play a 4C response to any preempt as a keycard asking bid. I decided to trot it out on the theory that a 2NT inquiry didn't rate to help me much, and if we had enough trump solidity we might be cold for 6S even if there was work to do elsewhere. David's unusual 4D response promised 1 keycard but also a diamond void. I asked for the sQ with 5H, and he denied it with his 5S bid.

At this point it would be easy to give up, figuring on a trump loser (or two!) and maybe even another loser in the wash, but I tried to picture his hand. He was vulnerable, so he wouldn't have garbage, and he should probably not have a 4-card heart suit on the side. Therefore, he was very likely to be 6=3=0=4 (6=2=0=5 is possible also, but I would not complain if he had that either!!), and we probably had a 4-4 club fit that may play a lot better than spades.

So I bid 6C, which David worked out was an offer to play (based on the fact that we both knew we were off the sQ, I was not trying for a grand slam).

I got the s4 lead to the s2, s5, and sK. Based on the lead, it seemed very likely that spades were 5-1 one way or the other. I thought for a long time and eventually decided I was probably just dead in the water if Jason was leading a singleton spade. I played the hand on a crossruff, eventually coming to 12 tricks easily when the cK was onside. True, a trump lead might set 6C based on the vicious spade split, but Jason understandably thought his partner was probably ruffing the first spade (a trump lead doesn't look very dynamic in any case). Well, this was +1370 and +14.7 IMPs, as nobody else who attempted a slam made it (nobody was in clubs, as a matter of fact).

In my opinion, slams are the hardest part of bridge and it's always nice to get some of the harder ones right and know what you are doing.

Gatlinburg 2008 Recap

2008-05-01T22:30:00.005-04:00

This year, in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I played on a team with David Grainger, Mike and Jon Rice, and Joyce Hampton and Lucas Lebioda. As it turned out, our masterpoints averaged out to about 3200 per person, so we ended up in bracket 4 every event. Gatlinburg is really a huge tournament; every knockout had about 30 (!) brackets (that means that close to 480 teams were entering each knockout every day!). Bracket 1 is filled with household name players and is very tough, and even down in bracket 4 where we were, your average opponent is comfortably a Gold Life Master.

Here is a picture of our team:

STANDING: David Grainger, Mike Rice, Daniel Korbel, Jon Rice.
SEATED: Lucas Lebioda, Joyce Hampton.

The Rice brothers are twins, but they are not identical twins, believe it or not. (If you have trouble telling them apart, Jon always wears a hat).
We started out with a bang, winning the first match on Monday evening handily, then cruising to victory to win the first event. Here is a slam from the final where we won a swing:

I had a problem how to treat my hand, since it didn't fall neatly into any particular category. Probably the right sequence is 2C then 3C, but because my hand was so great for either major I decided to treat it as a game-forcing balanced hand (2H forced 2S, then 2NT showed that hand type). In any case, David knew his hand was enough to drive to slam, and he was probably disappointed that we were off a keycard. The hK was onside, though, and we were a little worried about losing 11 IMPs, since this occurred in the second half and we were substantially ahead in the first half, so our opponents might be swinging. However, they failed to reach even the small slam at the other table and we chalked up 11 IMPs instead.

Unfortunately, the next morning was a bit of a hiccup as we lost in the morning KO to some members of the same team that we had dismantled the night before in the final.

In the second primetime KO, we won our first match handily, then came back from a 16 IMP deficit to win by 7 against a strong team of both local and South American players. Here was a board where everyone did well:

David Grainger, as West, did very well not to bid 4H, a contract that many pairs might get to. The defense against 3S doubled was tricky, however; David found the best lead of his doubleton diamond, and I won trick 1 to try to cash the hA at trick 2. When this got ruffed, we both knew declarer was 7=0=2=4 and that beating this contract would be difficult. Declarer led a spade toward dummy's jack, and David found his first excellent play of rising with the sA. He then returned his other diamond to me, and I played a third diamond, which declarer ruffed. David continued his excellent defense by overruffing, and exiting in trumps, leaving declarer to open up the club suit. We collected a nervous +100 for down 1.

At the other table, Joyce Hampton played 3S nicely, and when the defense didn't find one of the necessary sequences of plays to set the contract, she took full advantage. +530 and +100 added up to 12 IMPs for the good guys.

Our team was in good form in the 3rd match of this KO. Here is a hand from that match where David and I did remarkably well:

This slam is neither easy to get to nor laydown, and as it turns out a lot of IMPs were riding on whether I could guess the queen of trumps after a heart lead to RHO's hA. It is at times like these that I am grateful for my hours at the poker table, as I just got the vibe that my LHO had the sQ. Accordingly, I ran the s8 on the first round, and when the rest of the hand was friendly, quickly claimed +1430 for a 13 IMP gain.

In the final match of this KO, we played against a tough team that did almost everything right against us in the first half of the match. David and I had one soft board and we found ourselves stuck 31 IMPs at the half. The second set of boards were pretty flat, although we had nothing bad and a few good boards, but we were still all surprised to pick up 33 IMPs and win the match by 2! Needless to say, our opponents were not exactly happy after this match.

I will show you the fateful final board on which we won 15 IMPs:

At our table, I led a club from the West hand based on the opponents' informative auction. Declarer ducked the first round, won the second in dummy with the Ace, and unblocked the hQ. He then crossed to hand with a third round of clubs, tried to drop the hJ, then finessed the sQ. When that lost, we had the rest of the tricks for +400.

Did you spot the 100% line? Our teammate Jon Rice did, after a few moments' thought: winning the first (or second) club in dummy, unblocking the hQ, and leading a low spade toward the sT. This preserves all the needed communication (if the sT holds, you can power out the hJ for a ninth trick).

We were all thrilled to have won this match after being down 31, but the rest of the tournament wasn't as sweet.

We lost in the 1st round the next day after being up 25 at the half! (Ouch.) That was not one of our better sets. In the evening, we played in the huge 1-session swiss and ended up winning X. Actually, nobody on the team made a mistake in the entire event, but we were cursed with flat boards in our final two matches (we won them both by ONE imp against strong expert teams) so we never had a shot at winning the event. Here is a hilarious story from the Swiss:

The auction at our table ended with us defending 3Dx. We took six tricks for a 2-trick set, +300. This was a strong result but it didn't seem all that remarkable at the time -- until we got back to compare with Joyce and Lucas. "Plus 300," read Joyce. Plus 300? We took a peek at her scorecard: 3D -3. We asked, "You mean minus 300?" "No," she repeated, "Plus 300." So we scored it up as win 12 IMPs.

I have a hard and fast rule during comparisons never to discuss a board until all the boards have been compared and the result of the match is known, but this time I could barely restrain myself. Finally the comparison was done, and David and I simultaneously asked, "What happened on this hand??" Well, the opponents had a major mixup, ending up in their 4-0 fit, and Joyce was right on the money not doubling, knowing that she had them right where she wanted them!

It's not very often at all that both tables play the same contract in each direction for the same result!

Joyce and the Rices left the tournament a day early so that was that, but winning 2 Regional events can never be considered bad! I really had a great time (Tennessee is a beautiful place full of friendly people) and look forward to more tournaments with this bunch.

My next tournament is the Winnipeg regional, starting on May 6, where I will be playing with Jonathan Steinberg. I'll post an update most likely after the tournament (not owning a laptop makes it very difficult to do on the spot updates, unfortunately).

GNT Qualifier

2008-03-29T15:10:00.005-04:00

Last night myself, Robert Lebi, Darren Wolpert, and Nader Hanna arrived at Hazel's bridge club at 7:00pm sharp in order to qualify for the Grand National Teams event (held in Las Vegas at the start of the Nationals in the summer). To be honest, we weren't even sure any other team was going to show up -- up to the night before, we were the only registered team in the Championship Flight!

It turns out that there was another team, consisting of Paul Janicki - Ian Findlay, Barry Senesky - Richard Chan, so we ended up playing against them for 28 boards to determine the District 2 representative.

Our team played extremely well and we won the match 86-12.

Here is a hand that is a good defensive problem:

Firstly, Robert Lebi (as West) had a difficult lead problem and it took him quite some time to settle on the d8. This card told me that declarer had the whole diamond suit between him and dummy (we lead 2nd-highest from bad holdings).

What is the best line of play? The three contenders are, a) go after hearts, b) go after spades, c) go after clubs. Going after clubs will usually need a 3-3 break there, and going after hearts will usually need the hT to fall in three rounds if the defenders aren't asleep. Running the sT at trick 2 seems like as good a shot as any, making the contract whenever 2 honours are on your left, or one honour is tripleton or shorter on your left.

In any case, the declarer at the table won the diamond in hand to lead the hQ at trick 2. I stared at this (as East) a long time before winning the hK. Declarer was marked with the hAQJ, dAJ for the play up until now (there was no way he's going after hearts without the hA when I was looking at the hT). Therefore, I thought it reasonable to place partner with the sK and cQ to give us a chance of setting this contract.

I switched to the cK (in case declarer had a singleton Q), and when that held the trick, shifted to the sQ. Declarer could have gotten home by ducking that trick, but he did not, so we were able to untangle our black suit tricks for one down. As it turns out, to beat the contract legitimately at that point I have to switch to the sQ immediately, and if that is ducked, switch to a low club (to put partner in for another spade play, after which I have to switch back to clubs!). Not an easy hand. If you spotted the optimal sequence of plays, well done. In practice, the cK was good enough for 12 IMPs.

Toronto Regional Recap

2008-03-25T16:54:00.004-04:00

After Detroit, it was one day's rest and then back to the bridge scene. This week was the Toronto Regional, where I had games lined up with four different players.

On Wednesday I played half of the Swiss, as a replacement player (Andy Stark needed some time off to do work). I played two matches with Andy, and then two matches with John Carruthers. Mike Roche and John Rayner were at the other table.

After four matches, we had the incredible score of 119/120 VPs! Everything was going our way, and in fact we won the fourth match 28-1 (if we had scored one more IMP we would have been at a perfect 120).

On a high note, we had dinner and then I went home. I found out the next day that the team had won easily with a score of 195 (things didn't go as well in the evening, but it didn't matter to our chances of winning!).

Thursday through Saturday was the Regional's premier event, the Sheardown Knockouts. Unlike most KOs, this event is seeded by masterpoints and is a 3-day event. We drew the #2 seed. I played with David Grainger, and our teammates were Boris Baran - Robert Lebi, George Mittelman - Arno Hobart. We managed to make it through the 3-way in the first match and then decimated our 3-way in the second match.

Our quarterfinal match was against a local Toronto team. David and I sat out the first half and found our team tied at 23. In the second half, both we and Robert/Boris had killer sets and we won the second half 89-2!

The semi-final match was against Joan Eaton - Barb Clinton, Don Kersey - Mickie Chambers. This was one of the all-around most solid matches I have played in quite a while. Nobody was giving anything away and it turned out to be a very low-scoring affair. We won both halves by a few IMPs, which meant we would play in the final against Joey Silver - John Carruthers, John Gowdy - Eric Murray, Larry Mori - Jim Green.

You may recall that Joey and JC were members of the Seniors team I captained in Shanghai. So it was fun to play against them in the final.

On another note, win or lose this match, Eric Murray went over 10000 masterpoints by coming in at least 2nd in this event, making him a grand life master. He is without any doubt one of the very best Canadian players ever to play the game and a legend. He truly deserved this honour and it's high time he got it. I think it's disgraceful for the ACBL to have such rigid masterpoint requirements to bestow its highest rank; surely if someone has won, say 3 National Championships or, say, 1 or 2 World Championships they deserve the Grand LM title. And they'll deserve it a lot more than some longtime bridge enthusiast with 13000 masterpoints who won a random Mixed title at some point and never again.

Anyway, the final match was painfully close. Eric Murray played great (to play as well and be as hilariously sharp as he is for someone his age is remarkable) and left his team up 18 at the half. We clawed back 9 IMPs in the second half but it wasn't enough. Anyway, congrats to the winners, they played 9 IMPs better than us and deserved the win.

Here's a hand from the first round robin that I thought was super:

Despite playing a 15-17 notrump, I decided to open 1C since my hand was so good for either major (I was afraid of playing in 1NT when 4M was a good contract).

This time, it allowed West to bid 2H, which actually simplified our auction and gave me clues in the play.

West led the hK which I ducked, but I won the second round in order to avoid making more than one discard from dummy. What do you discard from dummy?

The answer is: a spade! Don't throw a diamond, the natural play. I'll show you why:

You lead cK and another club, ducking to East's cJ when your LHO shows out, throwing a discouraging diamond. When East returns a low spade and your sQ holds, you know a lot about the hand: East has the dK for sure, and West is probably either 3=6=3=1 or 2=6=4=1. Either way, you now have a 100% solution to this hand:

Just run dummy's clubs, throwing two hearts from your hand. On the final club, East, Andy Altay (an expert) throws the sK on this layout, trying to create an entry to his partner's sJ. But you have a counter, because you saved dummy's fourth diamond.

Cash the sA, and play dA, and another diamond, ducking to East. He will be forced to let dummy score a diamond trick at the end.

Observe there is nothing the defense can do on this layout to set you. If East doesn't discard the sK, you simply lead toward the sA, ducking if the sK appears and winning otherwise. This ensures that only East can ever win a spade trick, and lets you make the contract regardless of the breaks assuming East has the dK. Try it for yourself!

I really like that hand.

The final day I played with Darren Wolpert on a team with David Grainger - Arno Hobart. We were steaming along until we played against Joe Grue's team (Melanie Tucker, John Hurt - Vince Demuy). Joe Grue "got" us on one board (opening 2NT with 15 points and seven diamonds), and our teammates got too high on one board and we got blitzed in match 4.

We could never really recover and finished 4th overall. All in all, a good week, but congratulations to Joe Grue's team who won the tournament, also winning a couple other events throughout the week!

Detroit NABC, Days Ten and Eleven

2008-03-16T23:09:00.002-04:00

Saturday March 15th marked the qualifying day of the 2-day swiss teams event. There were 114 teams entered into the event, with 58 qualifying through to the next day (50% + 1 to even out the field and avoid 3-way matches).

Jonathan and I played with Doug Baxter and respected bridge author Andy Stark. Doug was one of our teammates in San Francisco when we finished 9th in the 3-day North American Swiss event.

We started out well, garnering 69 VPs in our first 6 matches. It looked like 81 VPs would be a shoo-in to qualify with 80 very likely, so all we needed was 11 or 12 more VPs in our final two matches to get in. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

We lost a low-scoring match 11-7 in the 7th match to get 8 VPs and sit at 77. All we needed was to avoid getting crushed in the last match to guarantee we'd be playing the next day.

Well, we got crushed. We lost 22-0 against a strong team (Grant Baze - Gary Cohler were at our table). This left us despondent at 79 VPs, unlikely to qualify. We made a date with Doug and Andy to play in the Regional Swiss event the next day.

But wait! Jonathan returned to the playing site an hour later and found we had actually won a tiebreaker and were the 58th team still in the event! There were 3 teams tied at 79 VPS, and 2 of them got in. We would start against the other team the next day with 0.00 carryover IMPs.

(Coincidentally, our teammates for the Vanderbilt, John Stiefel - Rich DeMartino, Betty Bloom - Steve Bloom, were leading the event after day 1. They would have 30 VPs carryover on us, making it almost impossible for us to catch them).

Well, on Sunday we started against the other 58th place team, which included the IMP Pairs winners Doug Doub and Adam Wildavsky. We played against Steve Beatty and Bill Pollack at our table.

This match was a great success for our team, and after the match the other team was still sitting at 0.00 VPs. Here are two hands from the match (back to back, in fact) where Jonathan made better decisions than his counterpart.

Jonathan started the North hand with a Michaels cuebid, and followed it up with another cuebid and then a 5-level bid. Knowing my sKx and dJx were golden, I had no difficulty bidding a slam. As it turns out, 6S, 6D, and even 7D (with spades 3-3) are laydown on this deal. At the other table, the auction went:

+190 was not a spectacular result and we gained a bushel of IMPs.

The hand immediately after, Jonathan used a Michaels cuebid again, but then wisely kept silent at adverse vulnerability when I couldn't make a noise. The opponents bid up to the 5-level on power and quickly went two down. At the other table, the North player, perhaps suffering the after effects of writing down +190 on the previous deal, not only used Michaels but then bid again at the 5-level! This was a quick +500 for our teammates and 12 more IMPs.

In the second match we played Ron Smith - Billy Cohen at our table, and Gavin Wolpert - Warren Spector at the other table.

We beat them 18-0 to take another 17 VPs -- suddenly we were sitting at 37 VPs, among the top 15 teams!

The third match didn't go so well, but in the fourth match we played against David Grainger's team (at our table we had a rematch against Bryan Maksymetz and Ziggy Marcinski from our Vanderbilt encounter). We managed to beat them 23-2 to take another 18 VPs.

Here was a big swing deal:

The 1D opening could be short, and 2H showed spades. Ziggy had a short mental lapse and splintered into 4C, "setting" spades as trumps, instead of flexing with 3D to allow for a high diamond contract. The damage was done and it was too difficult now to back into 7D.

At the other table, our teammates' auction was simpler:

That was 12 IMPs to us.

We were top 15 at the dinner break and felt good about our chances for a strong finish. Unfortunately, the evening session was not one of the team's stronger ones and we eventually dropped off the board. In any case, it was a successful and fun NABC, and thanks to Jonathan Steinberg as well as all our excellent and very pleasant teammates for making that experience so enjoyable.

Now it's off to Toronto where I get one day's rest, then another tournament!

Detroit NABC, Days Eight and Nine

2008-03-14T12:20:00.001-04:00

The second last event on the schedule was the National IMP Pairs. I'm usually a bit ambivalent about playing in an IMP pairs, and here's why: more than any other event, luck plays a large factor in IMP pairs. Here's an example:

Let's say you are sitting North South, and there are 6 medium-difficulty slams dealt E/W. Let's further say the other 20 boards are fairly flat. It doesn't take a genius to work out that your score is going to be based in large part on how the East-West pairs do against you on their 6 slam hands, with the other 20 boards taking a back seat. Now, out of all the N/S pairs in the room, there are going to be some that get very lucky in that their particular E/W pairs on those slam deals miss all (or all but one) of the slams. So, their score is going to far higher than a N/S pair whose E/W pairs bid 4, or even 5 or all 6 of those slams. Unlike matchpoints, where if the opponents do well against you you can get it back on other boards, even partscores, or a team game, where presumably if your opponents are playing that well against you they deserve to win unless your teammates are playing just as well and also bid the slams, in IMP Pairs there is an enormous luck factor.

Well, we couldn't complain about the luck factor on the first day. Jonathan and I played very well in the afternoon session, although we did lose 12 IMPs on a board where we bid a difficult board to a slam that was exactly 50%. Had it made, we would have won 12 IMPs (presumably almost nobody was in it).

Other than that, our card was excellent. Our biggest swing, at +13 IMPs, was this board:

Both sides were vulnerable, and Jonathan got to open the East hand 1C (could be a doubleton) in fourth seat. After South's 1H overcall, I put in a 3D fit-showing jump (invitational values with diamonds and clubs). I did this mainly to preempt the auction and to show three of the key features of my hand (invitational hand, diamonds , clubs). The North hand, under pressure, cannot really be faulted for his 3H bid. Jonathan passed this around to me, and when I doubled again, showing some defense, he made the excellent decision to leave in the double. (He said later that at Matchpoints he would have doubled himself in a heartbeat, but at IMPs he didn't want me to leave in his double if I had a heart void -- which I might have done on another deal). I think Jonathan handled this situation just right.

Tipped off by the auction, I led my trump. Declarer won in dummy, and instead of ensuring a diamond ruff, next led a spade. Jonathan was able to win this and play another trump, and when the smoke cleared, declarer was 4 down for +1100 and 13 IMPs for us. Note that even had declarer ruffed a diamond it would have been +800 which would still have been worth a lot of IMPs to us, as the majority of the field was not bidding and making a game.

We finished +40.31 IMPs on the session, 6th in our direction.

In the evening we were +16.51 to finish at +56.59 IMPs for the day, which was good for 21st overall and a nice carryover (carryover can be very important in these events).

The second day of the IMP pairs we had a mediocre afternoon session where we basically wiped out our carryover. The evening, however, was another story. In the evening we had a very good session, finishing at +37 IMPs for a final tally of +34.25
and 36th overall.

Remember what I said earlier about IMP pairs not always being pretty? I'm going to show you our biggest two boards of the evening now, and I guarantee your reaction will be, "those lucky $@#%#$%!" This just goes to show you the random nature of IMP pairs. Also, I guarantee you that every pair finishing in the plus column had a few results like these on their scorecard.

Our second biggest score:

A top pair had this abortion of an auction against us. Actually, North thought 3S was Stayman with no spade stopper, whereas South thought 3S was simply a spade stop ask with a decent hand. Thus, South took North's 4H bid to show extra length there and passed. So, N/S played in 4H, down 2 for -200, cold for 3NT or 6C. (In truth, 4H can be made double dummy -- do you see how?) True to form, the strong North player declared his silly contract well and gave himself an excellent chance to make 4H -- but the cards lay foul for his line of play. This board was worth 12 IMPs to us.

Our biggest score:

I have no idea what possessed North to lead a low heart from that hand. In any case, when he did, I could afford to cash the sK to safety-play the trumps, and was rewarded on the actual layout. I led a spade toward the East hand, intending to insert the s8, but North split with the s9. At this board I ruffed a club with the sJ in my hand as North discarded a diamond, and led a trump toward the dummy. North rose with the sQ and played the hK to my ace, but I was able to cross to dummy with a diamond and claim.

A low heart (or a ridiculous trump) is the only lead to allow this slam to make. We won 14 IMPs for this result as the most common score around the room was -100, with some -200s and a very rare +650. The slam is not particularly hard to bid with East opening the bidding, but only ONE other pair was +1430.

You can see why IMP Pairs is not my favourite event.

In any case, we played okay and finished in the overalls. Tomorrow is the 2-day North American Swiss Teams which is always a fun event.

Detroit NABC, Day Seven

2008-03-13T12:44:00.002-04:00

Today we played in a compact (1-day) KO with Jeff Smith and David Sabourin. We breezed through the first 12 board match, then played a reasonably tough team in the second round matchup. Our opponents bid two slams against us so we were a little nervous, but Jeff and Scooter came through in a big way. They duplicated one slam, and we actually WON 13 IMPs on the other slam! Here is the deal:

Their system worked wonders here as they were able to bounce into 7S without breathing hard. At our table, we got in the auction all the way up to 5H and all the opponents could do was bid the small slam. Let me explain their auction for you.

The 2S opening bid in their style showed at least 6 spades and 10-14 HCP. 2NT was asking, and the 4D response showed a singleton diamond, a minimum hand, and a seventh spade. 5H asked for keycards outside of hearts, and North showed 2 without the sQ. South then made a general 7-try with his 6D bid which North happily accepted, knowing the cQJ were fantastic cards.

Scary, isn't it?

Unfortunately, we lost a squeaker to the Bulgarians (a.k.a. team Maidman), but demolished our final match to finish 3rd in the compact. A fun day all in all.

Detroit NABC, Day Six

2008-03-11T23:52:00.002-04:00

Today we came up against the mighty Meltzer squad in the Vanderbilt. Needless to say, we were not exactly the favourites to win this match!

Jonathan and I were slated to play 3 out of 4 sets today, including the whole afternoon. We would end up playing the first 32 boards against Kyle Larsen and Rose Meltzer. Rose Meltzer may in fact be the nicest person in the bridge world, and it was a pleasure to play against the two of them.

We were very solid in the first 16 boards and found ourselves up by 6 IMPs , 33 - 27. The second set went well for us and we thought we might actually have increased our lead, but our opponents played well also and we lost the set by 12 to fall behind 53 - 47 at the half.

Here is a board where Jonathan really shone:

I had the first decision to make, and true to my habits rejected using Stayman with secondary honours everywhere and a terrible heart suit. As you can see, 4H has no play and went down two at the other table.

On to 3NT. On a spade lead, Jonathan won the sQ in dummy to lead a heart to the 7, J, and Q. He won the spade continuation with the sA in hand and led the hK to the ace as West discarded a diamond. Well, that was good news and bad news: the good news was that 4H would go down at least two tricks, possibly doubled; the bad news was that 3NT was going to have difficulty making now!

In any case, Kyle Larsen cleared spades as Jonathan won in hand. Jonathan was up to 8 tricks now and had some hope for a ninth. Jonathan cashed four rounds of diamonds. Actually, it took him a while to cash them because he was thinking about the end position, and everyone could tell that Kyle Larsen was getting a bit impatient and wanted to claim one down, -100 (at this point Jonathan has only 8 tricks and if he leads a club up the defense can cash 3 more winners).

However, look what happened as Jonathan was about to lead the final diamond:

What can East discard? a heart gives up the heart suit, and a low club allows Jonathan to exit in clubs and await the 9th trick in the heart suit on the inevitable endplay. A high club discard allows Jonathan to establish his 9th trick in the club suit.

So Larsen discarded a spade, and now Jonathan led a club toward dummy. It didn't matter what the defense did at this point -- either Jonathan was going to score a club trick and a heart trick, or two heart tricks, depending on who won the second round of clubs.

Well-judged and well-played for a 13 IMP pickup. Don Kersey, noted squeeze expert, called this a "three-loser winkle squeeze."

The 3rd set was not pretty. We came back from dinner and were greeted thusly by our teammates: "We lost, do you want to concede?" I don't know any details but our team lost the third set by 60, 72-12, and we could no longer realistically win the match. We decided to continue on the theory that it's not every day you get to play against a team of this calibre (I was in the middle of "Unnecessary Roughness" on TV and would have been happy conceding though!)

Happily we were decent in the final set (no one, us included, was trying all that hard) and lost it 37-34. In the three sets Jonathan and I were in, we stayed within 9 IMPs of our world-class opponents, and had a decent card every time. In the end that counts for not much but it's something to feel good about.

Here's a board we picked up 10 IMPs on in the final segment:

Because in our style we respond 2NT with 12-15 balanced (yes, even in response to 1H or 1S), Jonathan's 2C response to my 1S opening guaranteed either a real suit or extra values. Therefore, I knew we were immediately in the slam zone. I bid 3C along the way to Blackwood just to let Jonathan know about the cQ later in the auction. After he showed 1 keycard, then the sQ and cK, I made a general grand slam try with the 6D bid. Because of the earlier 3C bid, Jonathan decided I simply had to have the cQ, and he could count 13 tricks. He chose to play in clubs in case spades didn't break and there was some other play for a 13th trick (perhaps a diamond finesse or simply ruffing out spades if I had a side king). On this deal, 7NT is best since there are no extra chances, but we were not really in a position to work that out.

In actuality, spades split 3-2 so 7C was cold and won 10 IMPs against 6S+1 at the other table.

Tomorrow we are playing in a compact KO with Jeff Smith and David "Scooter" Sabourin both from the Ottawa area. They may be Canada's hottest new partnership and are both great guys.

Detroit NABC, Days Four and Five

2008-03-10T23:48:00.004-04:00

Today was the start of the Vanderbilt. Jonathan and I were on a team with Rich Demartino - John Stiefel, and Steve and Betty Bloom. DeMartino and Stiefel have won numerous NABC+ events in the past few years. As the 39 seed, we were situated in a 4-way beginning with us playing against the 68 seed.

Things did not go wonderfully in the first set and we found ourselves down by 5 IMPs with 16 boards to play, largely on the back of a slam that the pair at our table just blasted whereas our teammates stopped short (a reasonable decision to be sure). Happily, in the second set we demolished the other team by a score of 64-14 and had the evening off.

We worked out that our draw for the round of 64 was the #26 seed, a team captained by John Fout (Jeff Roman, Bryan Maksymetz - Ziggy Marcinski, Jacob Morgan - Michael Polowan). Although this team has 6 solid experts on it, nobody on our side was unhappy with our draw. There are many brutal draws in the Vanderbilt (for example, check out teams #22 and #32 for draws I would never want in an early round regardless of my team's strength), and although we were playing a strong team, we had a team we felt could win the match on any given day.

-----

Today in the round of 64 Jonathan and I were given the first sitout. When we showed up at the playing site, we found that our teammates won the first set 25-11 to give us a 14 IMP lead. It's always nice to come in with a lead.

Unfortunately, this set didn't go as well as we had hoped. We only gained on two hands: one 10 IMP gain when we missed an impossible slam to score +680 -- but our counterparts had a major accident to end in a partscore!

The other hand we gained 12 IMPs on was when I got a friendly defense against a 4H contract and went +620 (3H went down at the other table). Polowan and Morgan pointed out to me later that I had misplayed the hand, and they were right, so these 12 IMPs were very fortunate.

However, in the minus column we had 56 IMPs scored against us, including a number of boards that were lost at the other table (we went +130 but our teammates were -800, for example), so we ended up losing this set by 34 IMPs to fall behind in the match by 20 IMPs.

We sat out the third set as the Blooms did not want to play the final set for worry of playing poorly due to tiredness. Our team was solid, especially Demartino - Stiefel, and we won the set 43-28. We were now down by only 5 IMPs with 16 boards to go, and we were in.

I'm happy to report that Jonathan and I had a rockcrusher set. We set a game on good defense that could have made, we bid a remarkably thin NV game (on 20 HCP) that made, we bid a thin Vul game that was *just* friendly enough and made, we bid two slams that both made (one of them on the lead), we set a 3NT two tricks on a good defense, and did nothing significantly wrong the entire set. Our teammates were worried about the match as there were a few soft spots on their card but we had it all covered with our card to win the set 62-33 and a win by 24. I'll show you some of the hands that we did so well on:

My 3H was a fit-showing jump (ok, ok, it's a little light!) which propelled us to game. I found the cQ while reversing the dummy and we scored up +420 for 6 IMPs.

Although it looks like the defense has 4 tricks, they can't quite take them (if they get a diamond trick their heart trick disappears and vice versa). Bryan and Ziggy stayed out of this game so we won 10 IMPs for +620.

This slam was just laydown. Jonathan's system over 2C openings worked great here as my 2H response showed specifically one ace and no kings. We won 11 IMPs when they missed it at the other table.

Here is another great slam we bid with what I think was a good auction. The biggest question mark in the auction is what to rebid with my cards. I think the vote would be split pretty fairly between 2D, and 3D. I chose 3D as my hand was pretty good and the honor cards all meshed well, but the suit quality was a concern. On this hand, it led Jonathan to evaluate his hand as a slam-force, a good decision by him. He started a cuebidding sequence just to make sure I had spades controlled (picture Qxx K AKJTxx Kxx or so) and leapt to 6D.

There's more to this hand. As you can see, all three finesses fail and 6D is slated to go down! But look at the hand from poor Jacob Morgan's point of view. He doesn't know that the hand is so unfriendly, and in fact our sequence makes it very likely that Jonathan has no spade card (else, why did he choose this sequence). He very reasonably led a spade based on the auction (I would have led a spade as well) and got burned by the actual layout. Had he led anything else, we would have gone down in the good slam and lost 13 IMPs instead of winning 12, and lost the match by 1!! There's a lot of skill in bridge, but there is certainly plenty of luck too. Actually, it keeps the game interesting.

Anyway, Jonathan and I played as well as we know how this set and were happy. Tomorrow we draw Rose Meltzer (Kyle Larsen, Geir Helgemo, Tor Helness, Alan Sontag, Roger Bates), all world champions. It doesn't get easier in this event!

Detroit NABC, Days Two and Three

2008-03-09T12:32:00.002-04:00

On Friday and Saturday we played in a National Open Pairs. We had a dismal first session (44%!) but righted the ship in the evening with a 59% game (actually it was over 63% with two rounds to go but I guess we didn't do well on the last four boards). Oh well, at least we qualified comfortably for the second day. Jonathan and I have qualified for the final day of every event we have entered since 2001, where we lost in the first day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs in Las Vegas.

Anyway, in the evening we just played a nice steady game, so there aren't really too many spectacular hands from that session. However, here is one:

6C by North is actually a makeable contract because the fall of the hT9 doubleton lets West take a ruffing finesse against the hQ to get rid of five (!) low diamonds. In practice, West missed this line (he should have made it, in my opinion) and simply took a diamond finesse. +200 was worth 67% of the matchpoints.

The next day was the final session of the Open Pairs. Unfortunately we finished out of the overalls on the strength of another poor afternoon session. On Sunday is the start of the Vanderbilt. 75 teams registered, which means the first day the 44 lowest seeds (32-75) play 4-ways with 3 survivors to trim the field down to a nice, round, 64.