Family Bridge

Amadeus wants to join in the bridge fun . . . he may not be ready for duplicate, but a different family member will soon be joining the Newcomer group. I have convinced my brother that duplicate is the game for him, much better than chess or poker. So Ed started studying and playing online, and today he is coming over to play some hands with me and two friends. I don't know how long it will take him to get up to speed, but once he does, he'll be a good player. I just hope it takes awhile for him to catch up to me!

Kalamazoo

Yesterday Julie and I drove to Kalamazoo to play in their afternoon NLM game. It's a good thing we started out early, because even though I had gotten directions from their website we had a heck of a time finding the club. First we missed the street and had to back track; then we went down the street but it was a dead end, so we went down the street the other way and that was a dead end as well. Then Julie remembered the way to where we played in the tournament, so we went there, but that wasn't the bridge club. Finally we went back to the dead end street and drove around the back of some buildings. Success! We found the club. (Later that day, Julie's husband asked why we hadn't taken along one of Julie's two GPS systems. No comment.)

We were warmly greeted and welcomed. Our presence was announced to the group, and we smiled and waved. They had started using electronic scoring devices just the day before; I like technology and thought this was very cool. However, as we started to play, we could immediately see how we did compared to others who had played the same boards. We were not doing well. Everyone else had either made an extra trick, or gone down by one less, or were in a better contract, etc. Julie and I were baffled.

"We played well yesterday and we never do well two days in a row," I commented between rounds. This was true.

"These players are bidding really aggressively," Julie opined. "I would never have gone to game with the 7 points I had in my hand."

"I agree they're aggressive bidders, but they're too aggressive. It's working for them this time, but it can't work all the time."

We continued to play, a bit discouraged and not really seeing what we were doing wrong. For example, one time I opened a weak 2 diamonds and Julie bid 2NT, asking for a feature in another suit. My RHO bid 3 hearts, I passed (since the only good cards I had were diamonds), and my LHO went to 3NT. Unknown to the rest of us, Julie had diamond support and was going to bid again. At the 3NT bid, though, she decided to pass. We ran the diamonds and set them. Although I don't remember what North reported the others as doing on this board, I'm sure it was something much better than what we did.

At the end of the afternoon, I reluctantly went up to the wall where the director had posted the next-to-the-last round results. I had to look twice, report the results to Julie, and then go back to make sure I had seen correctly. We had a 62% game and were first in A, B, and C--our best score to date! The last round was uneventful and the score held.

As for the game where we set our opponents' 3NT contract--that ended up being an excellent board for us. I think that although we didn't have a lot of top boards, we had consistently high boards. Either that, or people weren't used to the new electronic devices and were misreading them. (I do think that happened a couple of times.) In any case, we had an enjoyable afternoon playing bridge at a different club with very nice members.

When I first started playing bridge, I was shocked by the occasional rude behavior that certain players exhibited toward their partners. There are just a few outstanding examples of this, although over time I have noticed subtler variations in the form of quieter put-downs and eye-rolling. Oddly enough, this doesn't bother me so much anymore, because, oddly enough, the same people continue to play with these critical partners. If they don't care, why should I?

What does bother me, though, is when partners excessively congratulate each other and boast about their excellent play. Sadly, when I reflected back on the last two days of playing bridge at the club, this is what popped into my mind. I didn't think about using 1430 for the first time. (My partner bid 4NT, I incorrectly bid 5 clubs when I should have bid 5 hearts, my partner thought "so what?" and went to slam, making it.) I didn't think about getting points (even a fraction of a gold). I didn't think about what I learned or the mistakes I made. No, I thought about how I had a bad feeling about bridge and then traced it back to boasting.

When players are rude to their partners, it affects the atmosphere at the table but does not reflect on me or my partner. When players boast, that too affects the atmosphere but it also reflects on my play. I don't like it.

Slam Bidding

It has been awhile since I've written about bridge--not because my interest has waned, but because I've been busy with other things and also because nothing especially noteworthy was happening at the bridge table. I've been playing regularly and I think (hope) continuing to improve. There have been interesting hands, new conventions, odd conversations, tournaments, victories and defeats. Yet with all of that action, it took yesterday's Friday night game to bring me back to blog.

Here's what happened. Julie opened with a weak 2 spades bid. My RHO thought for a moment and bid 3 hearts. I had 5 spades, plus the ace of clubs (and about 9 points). WOW, I thought, we have 11 trumps! Plus a club trick! My only explanation for what happened next was that during the previous round I had made slam but we had only bid game. Yes, you guessed it, I bid 6 spades.

I have to commend Julie for keeping a straight face; it couldn't have been easy, since she had about 6 points in her hand. My LHO thought for a moment and bid 7 hearts. Everyone passed, and I led with my ace (I know, I should have doubled). They went down one, which was a top board for us. It turns out that we wouldn't even have made 4 spades, and that it always played their way.

When we told this story later, no one laughed or even commented. Apparently experienced players don't appreciate it when unorthodox (stupid) bidding by less experienced players pays off. Oh well. We will take whatever good boards we can get. That round helped us place 2nd in C, which on a Friday night is enough to make us smile.

Aggression

"The most noticeable difference between the bidding of an expert pair and that of an average pair is the experts' ability in competitive situations. Experts are able to hop in and out of the auction on a high percentage of the hands and rarely get caught. Average players are much less aggressive in competitive situations and when they do butt in they frequently get punished." (Bid Better, Play Better: How to Think at the Bridge Table, Dorothy Hayden Truscott, 1998, p. 74.)

How true. And how frustrating it is when expert players steal our bid or push us to a level where we go down. And even worse, because the result is usually worse, when we try to do the same and it just doesn't work out. However, we are getting better at doubling when our bid is stolen and we are working on disrupting the opponents' bidding without getting "punished."

My hard-learned lesson this week was on the need to be more aggressive, whether there is competition or not. Twice on Thursday afternoon I had a ton of clubs. Instead of diddling around I should have just bid 5 clubs. Once I thought my bid was forcing and my partner thought it wasn't, and once I bid to show points and length instead of a different (forcing) suit. In both cases, my partner passed and we were in a partial contract. I think my hesitation comes from past games when bold bidding often led to disaster. But I've learned a lot in the past few months, and it is time to trust of my evaluation of the situation. So what if it doesn't always work out, it's just a game. Right?

Complex Bidding

Last weekend Julie and I played in our fifth tournament. There were two sessions on Saturday--the first went okay but not great (meaning we didn't place) and, as has been the case four times previously, our play went downhill during the second session. Exhausted but undaunted, we returned the next day with our friends Melissa and Jeanne to play Swiss Teams.

We knew going into Swiss Teams that it would be a long day, but somehow we hadn't realized that we were going to be playing seven rounds of seven boards each. We started at 11:00 am and finished around 6:00 pm. That's a lot of cards!

The most entertaining play came towards the end. Our opponents were a young couple (young, of course, being a relative term). They were 0-5, having lost all of the rounds up to that point. Our team was 2-3, which all of a sudden didn't seem so bad. Once we started to play, it quickly became apparent that these two had quite a complicated bidding system.

I wish I could replicate the bidding here, but that is impossible; it was just too complex. I'm still struggling with trying to remember the differences in leads when playing suit vs no trump contracts, so the esoteric meanings that flew across the table were beyond me. However, I can still picture this lively and friendly pair as they slowly and intricately worked their way to a slam contract. It took quite a while, since every bid was alerted and I kept asking what each bid meant. I just couldn't resist. For example, one seemingly innocuous bid--was it 3 hearts?--meant that the bidder had a certain number of "points" in her hand. These points were assigned to aces and kings, so she had either one ace and three kings or two aces and no kings (or something like that). I was happy when they finally reached a 6 no trump contract, since I was on lead and was holding two aces. That took care of that.

At the end of the day we were 3-4, which didn't seem very good. But then I found out that we had gotten silver--the first for Melissa and Jeanne--so I guess we did okay after all.

Crystal Clear

My bridge partner last evening is an A player with zillions of masterpoints (I have about 13). She is very friendly and kind, but for some reason I was a little bit on edge. Not nervous exactly, but more like I-really-don't-want-to-do-anything-stupid. I recognized only a couple of really awful goofs, which I guess isn't too bad, although I do realize that there were most likely more goofs that I didn't recognize. We were playing as A players and came in 4th with 55%.

A huge benefit of last night's play was that my errors were crystal clear. When I play with a less skilled partner, I am not always sure if my bidding was on target or if I could have made one more trick (or stopped our opponents from making one more trick). Yesterday I could see the answers to those questions (or get the answers from my partner).

My bidding is not perfect but is coming along and getting more precise all the time. My main problem is keeping my focus sharp throughout the entire match and giving my complete attention to what has been played. For example, I trumped my partner's good queen (one of my egregious errors). I have to whip my lazy brain into shape!