Monday, December 15, 2014

One More Difference

"I'll try not to aggravate you," I promised Dave.  He's an A player and this was our first time playing together.

"I don't get aggravated," he solemnly assured me.

"That's good," I replied.  We'll see, I thought. I can be pretty aggravating.

Thus started our partnership.  I proceeded to do some good things and some not so good things; Dave did some very good things.  One of the not so good things I did was defensive.  I was on lead and my partner had bid hearts.  I hadn't supported his bid since I only had 5 points, but I did have two hearts.  I led one.  Dummy came down and I calculated that declarer only had one heart, so when I got in again I led a different suit.

That may not sound particularly interesting to you, but I was a bit proud of myself.  It's not easy for me to keep the bidding in mind once play begins and to put that information together with the cards in play to figure out who has what.  In fact, I recalculated several times wondering if I should again lead a heart, but every way I looked at it the declarer had to be out.  I thought about leading a heart anyway to draw his trump, but in this case that didn't seem like an especially fruitful idea.  Even so, I had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

At the end of the hand I was relieved to see that declarer did, in fact, have no hearts left in his hand.  My partner was not as relieved.

"Do you still have hearts?" he asked me.

"Yes, one," I said and showed him.

"Why didn't you lead it?"

"Declarer was out, he would have ruffed," I said with confidence born of confirmation.

"You still should have led it."

"Even though declarer would have ruffed it?" I asked, bewildered.

"Yes.  Since you didn't support my hearts and didn't lead a heart a second time, I thought you were out and declarer had hearts.  I would have kept my clubs and thrown off the hearts if I had known declarer was out."

Wow, what a great lesson to learn.  It seemed obvious once Dave explained it, but I hadn't thought about it that way.  This was one more example of a difference between the thinking of an A player and a C player (but no longer this C player).

And as you would expect, Dave stayed calm and unaggravated throughout.


Wednesday, December 3, 2014

The Patient Died

Recently I was declarer in a particularly tricky contract.  I strategized, I finessed, I thought about where the king was (and was right), I counted cards, I set up a suit...I did it all.  At the end, I was down one.  I looked at what was left of the dummy and what the opponents held.

"Are those two spades good?" I asked my partner, horrified.

"Yes," Julie replied.

"I lost track," I apologized, hanging my head.

"But you played it brilliantly!" the opponent kindly said.

"How good could it be if I didn't make the contract?" I countered.

"Well, that happens.  But it was masterful the way you played it.  Really, it was perfect!"

I appreciated the comments, but it made me think of the old saying "The operation was a success but the patient died."  Later, Julie had a recommendation for me.

"If I'm not sure if something is good or not, and that's the only way to make the contract, I just play it," she suggested.

"That was the problem," I explained.  "I WAS sure that the spades were NOT good."

"Oh."  She laughed, I didn't.

Although this is not a perfect example of doing everything right and getting a bad board, since obviously I didn't do everything right, you get the picture.  Then there's the other side of the coin, when you do everything wrong and somehow it works.

I was recently in a 4 spade contract with a new partner.  When dummy came down I could see right away that it was going to be difficult.  I had a singleton ace of diamonds in my hand with several diamonds on the board but missing the king.  The opening lead took one entry out, leaving just the ace of trump as a way back to all of those beautiful diamonds.  Hmm, what to do?  I led the queen of diamonds towards my hand, my opponent covered with the king.  I played my ace and -- ta dah!--the diamonds were all set up.  I made the contract.

What's the problem, you ask?  Well, during a sit-out we watched John and Joanne bid and play the same board.  They reached the same contract after a wildly different bidding sequence, and made the contract without ever playing the diamonds. I commented on this, and Joanne had a little talk with me.

"Do you see why you should never cover the queen in this type of situation?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.  (I would have said "yes" even if I had meant "no".)

"If your opponent had held up, you would not have made it."

"I can see that now."

I won't even go into how we stumbled into the right contract (mostly because I don't remember), but bridge is definitely a game where you can do everything right and get a bad board, and do a lot wrong and come out on top.  Sometimes.