To Lead the Heart King or Not?

June 4th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  10 Comments 

Plays that require underleading an honor or unblocking a high honor in hopes that partner has the missing honor to get him on lead are kind of cool. Today I’m writing about 2 hands, which require the same kind of thinking. This one is from last Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis and you’re looking at my hand on defense.

Dealer: S Vul: none		North
		♠
		♥
		♦
		♣
West				East
♠	A8765			♠
♥	KJT8			♥
♦	J			♦
♣	T95			♣
		South
		♠	KQJT3
		♥	542
		♦	T54
		♣	82

My dad led the 8 of diamonds and declarer won with the K. Would you duck in declarer next played a spade to dummy’s K? Partner’s card, whether you play standard or upside down signals will be ambiguous as to whether he has the singleton or not so there isn’t really much of a clue. North may be more likely to be short in spades since he balanced with a double and then corrected to 3NT, which would suggest 4 hearts, solid clubs, and a diamond stopper. That makes a singleton spade more likely.

Anyway, I wasn’t faced with that desicion as the first thing declarer did is run 6 club tricks. So after the run of the clubs, he cashed the ace of hearts and then led a spade. By now it’s clear to win this trick and lead a heart. Which heart? It can be kind of tempting to cash out in this situation, but playing the K would be wrong here. Wherever the Q is, it can’t be right to play the K. The Q isn’t dropping from declarer because we know he has 3 more hearts in his hand and even if it does drop, we’ll have to lead a spade at trick 13. And it matters not whether we let declarer score his Q now or after we cash the K – he’s getting a heart trick and dummy is getting a spade trick at the end. But what if partner has the Q? If it falls under our K, we’ll score our 3 heart tricks but then have to lead a spade at the end. What do we think the diamonds are like here? Partner’s opening lead couldn’t have been 2nd from a bad suit or else declarer would have cashed another diamond or two before letting us in, so partner’s lead was 4th best, meaning his diamonds are all good. That would explain why declarer didn’t try to sneak a spade through earlier – for fear of going down a bunch when east has the spade ace or I have another diamond. So, if we lead a lower heart to partner’s Q, he can take the rest of the tricks.

That was no problem for me. It was a rather obvious play to me. Bridge is an easier game when at the table without distractions like tv and telephone and internet and music and food and beer that is inevitable when playing online. This second hand comes from BBO a couple of days ago. For some reason I was playing at 12:30am after having already played at the bridge club that evening and I’ll show all 4 hands. Sorry all the spots aren’t there. This hand never appeared in the BBO hand records for some reason.

Dealer: Vul:		North
		♠	T9xx
		♥	xxx
		♦	KQxx
		♣	xx
West				East
♠	Q8xx			♠	Jxx
♥	KQx			♥	Jxx
♦	xxx			♦	ATx
♣	AQT			♣	Jxxx
		South
		♠	AK
		♥	AT9x
		♦	Jxx
		♣	K9xx

I led a low spade to the J and K. After partner ducked diamonds twice, declarer led a heart to the 10 and my Q. I returned another spade. Declarer won and led a 3rd round of diamonds. Obviously partner can make things easy for me by playing the J of clubs at the point but led another spade instead. I’m in with the SQ with declarer discarding a club. Now what? Leading a spade is out. Declarer almost certainly has 3 hearts left including the A and 3 clubs left including the K and he could have the J of either or both or neither suit. Is it possible to maximize the defensive tricks regardless of who has the missing jacks or do I at some point have to guess which, if any, partner has? I led the club queen, which turns out to be a very nice play, but it holds the trick. If he takes this trick, there is no need for any sort of fancy play in hearts because I’ll have a 3rd club to lead to partner’s jack and now good small club. So ducking kind of marks partner with the jack of clubs. So now I can lead a heart and help set up his heart suit. Or lead another club, giving him another chance to score that K. Leading another club isn’t right because then I’m at a guess when he plays the heart ace next – if I unblock then and declarer has the J, he will make 2, but if I unblock and partner has the J, he is down 1, and if I play low, he makes 1 because i still have that pesky spade.

Can leading a heart ever cost a trick? Leading a low one certainly can because he can put my right back in with a heart and he’s score the long heart and the king of clubs. Leading the K can’t cost anything. Leading the heart may not cost anything when partner has the J, but even when declarer started with AJTx, we’re okay because that just means he’ll have to lead a club from his hand at trick 12 and make his 1NT. On the actual hand, he probably would duck the heart king as well, and by the same logic, just lead another heart and wait on 2 more club tricks at the end for -1. Now, if only partner had played low at trick 1, we might have been able to beat it 2 tricks. As it happened, I didn’t take time to think through the possbilities after the club queen held and just led another club and let them make 1. This wouldn’t have been such a hard hand at imps because there would actually be less to think about – treating making 1 and making 2 as essentially equal scores, you wouldn’t have to consider the cases where holding them to making only 1 is the best you can do. However, the heart K is the right play after the CQ holds in either form of scoring.

Want to Lead Trumps and Tap Dummy? Okay

May 27th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  No Comments 

Here is another interesting declarer play hand. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s really an interesting defensive hand, at least for the first 2 tricks. I was playing money bridge on BBO and was worried my robot would find a way to go down on this hand but it did not disappoint this time.

Dealer: East Vul: NS		North
		♠	J97654
		♥	Q4
		♦	A
		♣	A653
West				East
♠	8			♠	AQ3
♥	95			♥	KJ8
♦	J9643			♦	KT75
♣	KQJ92			♣	T84
		South
		♠	KT2
		♥	AT7632
		♦	Q82
		♣	7

First of all, after the responsive double, what would you rebid with the south hand? I’m afraid I would bid 3♥. Playing in spades doesn’t appeal to me, for you’d probably have to trump in the hand with longer trumps. Here, 4♥ has little chance but 4♠ can make. Actually, if I had the south hand, I’d probably preempt 2♥ the first time but then I wouldn’t have a chance to score 790 to end an excellent day of money bridge.

The defense started with a spade to the ace and a club shift, which seems to be the best defense. They must lead trumps to prevent declarer from simply cross-ruffing the hand. Without a trump lead, declarer could come to 10 tricks via the 3 side suit aces, 3 club ruffs, and 4 trumps in dummy, losing a heart and the AQ of spades. However, the defense also must lead clubs to keep declarer from being able to draw trumps before working on hearts. If the defense continues with another spade or diamond, declarer can lose a heart to west’s K, eventually take a finesse for the ♠Q, and set up hearts by ruffing out the J, and get back to dummy with the ♠K, while drawing the last trump, losing at most a heart and 2 spades. Some combination of these two defensive strategies must be best and spade ace and then a club is the only way to do this. I’m not sure I recall another hand where the best defense is to lead trumps once, and then tap the hand with shorter trumps.

This defense posed a problem for declarer as a second heart trick is now needed to make the contract, and he cannot get a second heart trick until trumps are in unless east started with 3 hearts and 3 spades and he gets a favorable heart lie. And he also cannot draw trumps until he’s lost all the heart tricks he can lose because the opponents would have a club or two to cash. So, after winning the ace of clubs, the robot declarer led the ♥Q and ducked when east covered, and ruffed the club return. Now, a ♦ ruff to hand to lead a ♥ to the 10. Note that declarer cannot afford to ruff out the hearts to set the suit up because he needs the extra pitch for a club loser. When the 10 held, declarer, drew east’s annoying ♠3, cashed the heart ace, and led a good heart, pitching his last club. In reality, declarer could take the second heart finesse any time and play it on a cross ruff, taking the 3 side aces, the ♥10, 2 club ruffs in hand, and 4 trumps in dummy.

Don’t You Love it When the Opening Lead Gives Away the Whole Hand?

May 24th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  No Comments 

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a hand worthy of blogging about, mainly because I have hardly played in the last week, but tonight I have a good one – kind of.

Dealer: E Vul: NS		North
		♠JT7
		♥AT4
		♦76
		♣Q7632
West				East
♠98				♠KQ42
♥9532				♥KQ76
♦983				♦KJ2
♣KJT4				♣85
		South
		♠A653
		♥J8
		♦AQT54
		♣A9

I love defending a contract when I have all the outstanding cards and can make passive lead after passive lead. I tend to have success doing that because many people try to make an aggressive lead in such situations. This hand isn’t one of those but it is one where the declarer knows where just about all the missing honors are.

East opened 1♦ and I overcalled 1NT, partner invited and I declined. So, 2NT by south with the ♣4 opening lead.  When east plays the 8 at trick one and I win my 9, it becomes like a double dummy hand. I mean, west could still have a J or even a Q outside clubs but I played for east to have everything outstanding and it worked amazingly here. With a mere 22 hcp and no 8 card fit, I rolled in 11 tricks. I cashed the ace of clubs to rid east of his only safe exit card and then led a spade to the J. East has no good counter. At the table, he returned a low diamond, hoping to find his partner with an honor but my 10 won the trick, and this time I put east in with a heart by letting the lack go. This time east exited with a spade, taken in dummy. Now, a repeated diamond finesse and the run of the diamonds squeezed east into unguarding one of his remaining major suit kings. +210 (via 5 diamonds, 2 clubs, 3 spades and a heart) for win 2 imps.

Ruffing with a Singleton Trump

May 17th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  No Comments 

In this hand, you are defending 2♠ . 2♣ was two-way new minor forcing, 2♦ was forced and 2♠ showed an invitational hand with 4-4 in the majors. How can the defense set the contract?

Dealer: W Vul: Both		North
		♠
		♥
		♦
		♣
West				East
♠	AK54			♠
♥	J52			♥
♦	T8			♦
♣	KJ42			♣
		South
		♠	J
		♥	AQ
		♦	A7643
		♣	98763

It’s rare that you get a chance to use a singleton trump to ruff. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on the lookout for such an opportunity. In this hand, the bidding marks south with 1-2 in the majors. Many people, even experts would say this is a time to lead the unsupported ♦A. I do not disagree, but at the table I chose a club. This time they work out the same but let’s say you lead the club. North takes the ace and shift to the ♥6, playing 3rd/5th best leada against suits. You, south, win the Q, cash the A, and then what? Partner follows with the T. Declarer played the 4 and 8. What now? You can now count 4 tricks for your side. Partner may have a spade trick or the diamond K or the heart K (but probably not more than one of the 3) or even a singleton club. Why did partner play the T of hearts? He knows you cannot continue hearts so it’s not an attitude signal. Surely he is suggesting to lead back the higher remaining suit (diamonds) instead of clubs. With a singleton club, he would have folloed to the second heart with the 3 and with no preference would have played a middle spot card.

If you had started with a diamond lead, partner would have encourage with the 2 at trick one. You continue, get a heart through and this time he will follow to the 2nd heart with a low one because he has a club entry rather than wanting you to try for a trump promotion by leading another diamond.

Squeezing the Dummy

May 14th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  1 Comment 

A crafty defensive play to get an extra trick is one of the most fun things in bridge. Even if declarer probably should have made the winning play anyway, giving him that losing option is still satisfying. In today’s deal, west opened 1NT (which I do not agree with, btw) and got to play it there. It’s kind of an interesting declarer play problem as well. Clearly 7 tricks are fairly easily available by knocking out the ace of clubs and then later leading toward the king of spades but is that the best line and if you do, do you cash all of your top hearts first or just trust the defense to lead a 3rd round of hearts later and keep dummy’s pointed honors guarded?

Dealer: E Vul: Both		North
		♠	AT5
		♥	J764
		♦	863
		♣	A42
West				East
♠	632			♠	K87
♥	AKQ82			♥	53
♦	Q7			♦	J942
♣	KQ9			♣	J863
		South
		♠	QJ94
		♥	T9>
		♦	AKT5
		♣	T75

But what I want to write about today is squeezing the dummy to defeat the contract, as you might have guessed. My partner started the defense off with a low heart, taken with the A, declarer then led a big club from hand, partner won the first one and put the 5 of spades on the table. Declarer, not willing to give up the whole spade suit at the time, played low and I won my J. After I continued hearts, declarer took his 3rd heart and cashed the Q, J, and 8 of clubs and came off dummy with a low diamond. Here was the 5 card ending:

Dealer: Vul:		North
		♠	AT
		♥	J
		♦	83
		♣
West				East
♠	6			♠	K8
♥	82			♥
♦	Q7			♦	J94
♣				♣
		South
		♠	Q9
		♥
		♦	AKT
		♣

I took the diamond king and led a spade to partner and on the cash of the jack of hearts, dummy was squeezed. if dummy discarded a spade, partner’s 10 would score the setting trick, and if he unguarded diamonds, my diamond 10 would score the setting trick.

An Interesting Possible Endplay

May 13th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  2 Comments 

This hand had a rather uniquely interesting ending, an ending which would have been more interesting had we been playing matchpoints. Against 3NT (after 1D-1S-1NT-3NT), east led his 4th best heart and declarer’s 10 won the trick. Clearly he has 11 top tricks when spades and clubs both split evenly. So, what was so interesting about this hand?

Dealer: W Vul: NS		North
		♠	AQ8
		♥	AT6
		♦	J972
		♣	Q97
West				East
♠	743			♠	J62
♥	84			♥	KJ732
♦	AQ864			♦	K53
♣	863			♣	J5
		South
		♠	KT95
		♥	Q95
		♦	T
		♣	AKT42

After taking the opening lead followed by 4 spades and 5 clubs, declarer, led the diamond T off dummy with this 3 card ending. Here is another reason I like matchpoints a lot more than imps. West has to be on his toes here at the end and north has to judge his opponents to decide whether he should cash his 11th trick or try to endplay east for a 12th trick. At imps, one can get lazy and quit counting once he sees declarer has 10 tricks coming because an overtrick isn’t a big deal, but that overtrick in matchpoints is worth a lot, especially since this seems to be a very normal contract with a very normal opening lead. Anyway, to an unalert west or a west who is too conditioned to play second hand low, he may play low on the diamond. This forces east to win and lead from his heart king again. It isn’t entirely clear to west that the heart honors lie the way they do but it should be clear to anyone who has made any effort to count the hand that north and east both have 2 hearts and 1 diamond remaining. Therefore, going up with the ace must be right, for the Q8 will both be good.

Dealer: Vul:		North
		♠
		♥	A6
		♦	9
		♣
West				East
♠				♠
♥				♥	KJ
♦	AQ8			♦	K
♣				♣
		South
		♠
		♥	Q9
		♦	T
		♣

Switch the diamond A and K and try thinking about the hand again. East can definitely be endplayed unless he gets rid of the diamond ace earlier. Would you have the courage to discard the diamond ace on the run of the clubs? From the bidding partner must have the K or else north would have opened 1NT. You get a full count on the hand pretty early and realize that north is 3-3-4-3 and may have the Q or J of diamonds but not both. So, on the last black suit winner, if declarer comes down to 1 diamond, you can discard your A but if he comes down to 1 heart and 2 diamonds, you need to discard a heart. If you pitch your ace of diamonds in the latter situation, declarer could lead toward his presumed Q for a 12th trick.

Teaching a Computer How to Bid

May 11th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  1 Comment 

My latest little project, started about a week ago, is to write a computer program that can bid my canapé system. It’s a rather interesting process but I’m afraid this will be another thing that I will give up on after a month or two. But if I succeed, I expect it would improve my bidding. Just going through the process of thinking about exactly how to evaluate hands and quantifying everything should make me a better bidder. I suppose the main point of this would be to practice the system and maybe teach other people this bidding system. I have succesfully gotten it to get through 3 bids (at least for 1 level openings, responses and most rebids) with no interference – that part is pretty easy because it’s so formulaic. Based on hcp and distribution, the bids are really straightforward. Beyond this, and even more when opposing bidding is added, more analytic skills are needed. The formulas can only go so far before there get to be too many possibilities to explicitly mention. I haven’t quite decided how to implement this.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working as a software engineer and redesigning an old and incredibly unorganized piece of software for the last few years is that knowing your requirements and having a detailed plan are essential to writing good code. Yet I jumped right in and started coding because I wanted to see some results right away.

I have also realized something about my programming interests. I dislike programming GUI’s. I guess I actually knew this before. I never liked doing any kind of interface programming but I enjoy the algorithms and logic parts of software. So, this project is gonna be all text on the console unless someone else volunteers to write a GUI. I don’t even want to think about programming a computer to actually play bridge – that has to be way harder than bidding.

A Cool Unblocking Play

May 7th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  9 Comments 

Last night I had the worst set of 6 boards in a row I can ever remember. In the whole 8 board match, we lost 38-37. Anyway, the board I’m writing about today was a push. It was also the only board without at least a 6 imp swing. Both myself and the person at the other table went down in what is a cold contract on the lie of the cards.

How do you play the hand after AK of clubs and a ruff, and a shift to the diamond queen? At the other table, the declarer started with the spade 2 to the K so now he could never set up a 3rd heart trick and be able to get to it.

I, on the other hand, started with the 6 of spades to the J, ruffed a heart with the 8, and played the spade 10 to the K. I remembered to unblock 3 times already to position myself to ruff one more heart high, for if the suit splits 4-4, dummy’s last heart will be good for the crucial 3rd pitch I need for my diamonds. but when I saw the 3-1 spade split, i just cashed the AK and eventually lost a diamond. I was so focused on retaining the spade 3 as a potential entry that the fact that east already used a trump completely slipped my mind. It’s a cool hand, nonetheless.

I expect to make plays like that all the time but still when such an unblock opportunity comes up, it’s cool. I’ll blame it on being sleep deprived all week. It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t so careful about preserving my deuce of spades from the beginning, but to get it that much right and then forget something simple is really frustrating.

Slumping in Bridge

May 3rd, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  2 Comments 

We all are well aware of the slump phenomenon that occurs in sports, particularly with hitters in baseball. The Braves recently had a 9 game losing streak but followed it up with wins in the last 3 days. The same thing can be said about bridge. Or any game, for that matter. In the week or two preceding Gatlinburg (actually, going all the way back to the Reno tournament), I would say I was in a bridge slump. I had been below average 3 out of 4 sessions at the local club and even in online games, I was only coming out about average. But what really convinced me that I was in a bridge slump was a couple of weeks ago, Chalcraft posted a hand in which he had a trump suit of Q9 opposite 87643. I made the erroneous claim that JT doubleton in one hand would not be enough to allow the suit to come home for only 3 losers. Clearly, that and any 3-3 split are the two combinations where you legitimately can get out for 3 losers.

So, how do we get in slumps? Athletes blame it on the weather, their diet, a change in their sleeping routine, a nagging injury, experimenting with a new PED, a particular pitcher they faced one day, relationship problems, or just pure dumb luck. Baseball players try everything from sleeping a different way, wearing different clothes, brushing their hair differently, getting laid, going back to review the fundamentals, taking a few days off, playing through it with extra practice.

In bridge, I’d say the way we get into slumps can be attributed to getting into bad habits by playing in atmospheres that are not conducive to good bridge – this could mean playing bridge and scrabble simultaneously, playing bridge while intently watching a TV show, playing with people whose bids and carding can’t be trusted, or simply playing in a weak field where you know you can get away with bad bidding so you do it but then in good competition, you get punished for it. And relationship issues are always things that can cause slumps in any aspect of life.

How do we recover from a slump? By singing, dancing. Yes, that’s right. In lieu of bridge at the local club 2 or 3 times a week, I’m rehearsing for a play. So, bridge for awhile is limited to some online playing (when I probably should be sleeping) and blogging and reading bridge blogs (when I probably should be working). I find that searching the BBO hand records for hands to write about and actually writing about them – even the non-interesting ones that I never put on the net – help me figure out where pitfalls are in my game. Going back to review the basics of how to think as a defender and reminding yourself to stick to your system as a bidder can be quite helpful to get your mind thinking properly about bridge. Anyway, I think I may be out of a bridge slump now, as in the past week, I was +164 imps in 140 hands on BBO and 59.50% in 67 matchpoint hands in mostly above average competition.

How to Properly Execute a Suicide Squeeze

April 29th, 2010  ~  Andre Asbury  ~  No Comments 

Today’s hand is actually fairly boring, especially at imps, but it did have a nice ending that ended with me making an overtrick via a suicide squeeze. This is also why I like matchpoints more than imps. You have to be on your toes all the time and the decisions you make are more evenly weighted than they are in imps. A defensive error to allow an overtrick can be and fequently is as big as a defensive error that allows a game or slam to make.

Dealer: N Vul: EW		North
		♠	62
		♥	Q9732
		♦	Q7
		♣	KQJ5
West				East
♠	AKQ73			♠	JT5
♥	865			♥	AJ4
♦	T95			♦	A42
♣	83			♣	AT42
		South
		♠	984
		♥	KT
		♦	KJ863
		♣	976

Against my 2S, north leads the ♣K and it look like there are 8 tricks with virtually no chance for a 9th – KQ doubleton of ♥ or KQJ tripleton of ♣ seem to be the only legitimate chances. Anyway, I won the lead, drew trumps and ducked a heart to south’s T. They took 1 club and then led diamonds, I took the A and ruffed a club. Finding no good fortune there, I exited a diamond and hoped something good would happen. Sure enough, south took 2 diamonds winners and led a 4th round of diamonds, which may have seemed like a safe play, but with the heart entry to the board, the ♣T is still very much in play. Here is the situation with south on lead at trick 11:

Dealer: Vul:		North
		♠
		♥	Q9
		♦
		♣	Q
West				East
♠	7			♠
♥	86			♥	AJ
♦				♦
♣				♣	T
		South
		♠
		♥	K
		♦	83
		♣

Clearly, if south exits with the ♥K, north will eventually score his heart trick, and north has to have the Q for the bidding and play so far to make any sense. but on the diamond lead, north has to unguard his ♥, and the J becomes good for the 9th trick and what would have been a very good matchpoint score for east-west. A fine example of a suicide squeeze!