Great (Matchpoint?) Player

	J 4 2 A J 7 6 3 2 J 6 3 2
Helen
A 8 7 6 5 Q 10 K 9 A 10 8 7		Q 10 3 8 5 Q 8 6 K Q J 5 4
	K 9 K 9 4 A 10 7 5 4 3 2 9

Lead: K

West	North	East	South
1	2	2	4
4	5	pass	pass
Dbl	all pass

I have been thinking about how to play better matchpoints and I came across an article with tips by Helen Shanbrom of Tamarac Florida.  Helen plays in clubs so she is playing a lot of matchpoints and she wins the over 10,000 masterpoint category every year. (She would win any category she was eligible to play in.)  And then I saw this hand which was published by Richard Pavlichek    Richard’s description of this deal.  So I thought I would start by looking at this deal and then moving onto her tips.

Helen was sitting West playing with Julia Carswell and she opened the bidding with 1.  When her partner could only bid 2 I don’t think she expected to make 4.    But instead of defending she chose a pressure bid of 4 over South’s 4.  She was hoping that North would bid  5 and she was pretty sure that she was going to defeat that contract.  One argument for this bid is that her opponents were not all that likely to double her and even if she went down a trick or two (as she would have) that would be a decent score.  Do you like here pressure tactics?  I do.  But it is the defense where the partnership really shine.

Her partner made the natural lead of the K.  Since dummy had a singleton her partner was going to switch to something and the most likely something was a spade.  But what if her partner didn’t have the queen and jack.  Helen forsaw that if East played a spade it could give away a trick.  (Try it and you will see she is right, it doesn’t matter whether East leads the  Q or a small one, the defense will only take one trick).

Many players play that when dummy has a singleton that they give partner suit preference.  So here a high club would ask for a spade and a low club would ask for a diamond.  Why do that?  Because partner is probably going to switch so you want to tell partner what suit you like.

So Helen made a good play.  On the opening lead she played the 7.  And her partner, Julia made a great play, she played another club.  This was the terrible for declarer.  On a lead of a diamond or a trump declarer can set up diamonds for spade discards but on the lead of a club a critical entry has been removed and it is no longer possible.  The hand could no longer be made.

(For more great stuff like this visit Richard’s website www.rpbridge.net)

Helen with friends:

JennyLee Mealer, Helen Shanbrom,
Steve Preston and Jesse Laird.

How can I learn to play like this you might be thinking (I am thinking the same thing).  Here are some of Helen’s tips:

a.  No hand makes 2NT.  It either plays 1NT or 3NT.

b.  Do not open the bidding on a bad hand with a bad suit.

c. Do not abuse or misuse systems.  IF you forget or do not understand a system, strike it off your card.

d. Do not rescue the opponents.  Why do you have to bid when you have their suits.

e. If I want to be saved (from a doubled contract) I’ll go to church.

There are quite a few more and if you want to see them then go to

Helen’s tips

I like the first tip although I think of it a bit differently at imps.  At imps I am going to push to vulnerable games so most of the time if I bid 2NT I am in an auction like this:

1NT-2C-2D-2NT

If I had anything close to a good invitation I would have bid 3NT.  So 2NT requires a super hand for partner to bid on.  I know that sometimes I will get a minus this way but it was important to see if partner had a major and we might have game.  But at matchpoints I shouldn’t bother bidding on a marginal hand.  A plus is just too important.  Still I could see following this advice at all forms of the game but with a little more caution about bidding 3NT at imps.  You may or may not like the idea but one thing is for sure, you are going to have to become a great declarer if you follow this rule.

The second tip seems sensible.  When you have a good suit you can be a little frisky.  You know you have a place to play the hand and if nothing else it will help partner to find the lead.  There is a big advantage to opening the bidding so we all want to do it but perhaps it isn’t such a good idea some of the time.

All of the rest of the good ideas are true at any type of scoring.

Still it seems to me that most of Helen’s ideas aren’t really about matchpoints they are about playing good partnership bridge.  It seems to work at any form of scoring.

Squeezes and such

I love squeezes.  In fact right now I am working on an update to Clyde E. Love’s famous book, Bridge Squeezes Complete.  If you are interested in squeezes there are many good books I could recommend including  David Bird’s

Bridge Squeezes For Everyone.  It is well written and quite comprehensive.  It is designed to make you a good squeezer.  And of course there is the award winning, A Bridge To Simple Squeezes by Julian Laderman.  I only raise this topic because in my last blog, as several astute readers pointed out, the slam I discussed needs a squeeze.  This was a slam that was bid and made at both tables.  So let’s look at the play and you can decide if you want to get to this slam.  (The deal has been rotated for easier viewing).

The following is only for very advanced bridge players:

The opening lead is the ♣J which you win with the ♣A.  You now play two rounds of trump as East follows and West discards two clubs.  It appears that you have a heart loser and a diamond loser.  Your only hope is either a squeeze or an endplay.  Let’s think about this carefully.  What do we know about this deal from the bidding and first few tricks?  East must have six clubs to the KQ.  It is unlikely that he has seven for two reasons.  First he didn’t open the hand 3♣.  Second East bid 5♣ and almost certainly has four clubs for that bid.  East also has two spades.  He has five red cards.  At this point the squeeze will operate if he has three hearts and two diamonds.  If this is true then West will have to guard both diamonds and hearts.  Our plan is to have a heart-diamond squeeze against West. (The squeeze will also operate on hands where West has the KQJ of hearts and five or six diamonds).

If you want to be a squeezer follow along with me.  If only one hand is guarding both hearts and diamonds (here West) and we can get down to one loser then all of West’s cards will be busy.  The threats are going to be the ♦7 in the South hand and the ♥10 in the North hand.  We need to remove all the hearts from the East hand and we need to lose a trick.

Here is the whole hand:

The ideal trick to lose is a heart because we have to do one more thing.  We have to make sure that only West can guard hearts.  We want to remove all the hearts from the East hand.  So after drawing trump, we duck a heart.  We win the return and then play the ♥ A and another heart, removing all of the hearts from the East hand.  Now we can ruff a club if needed and run all the trump.  Here is the position when we play the last trump:

The last spade squeezes West.  If West throws a heart then the ♥10 will be good, a diamond will set up a diamond winner.

That is how the slam was made.  Was it a good slam?  As was pointed out in a comment to the last blog it needs the red suits to be split so that West has exactly three hearts and two diamonds.  And to make it worse an opening diamond lead which doesn’t seem ridiculous from the West hand will break up the squeeze.  I will let you figure that one out for yourself if you are a squeezer.  One hint is that when the defense gets in on a heart they must return another diamond to destroy declarer’s squeeze.

So was the bidding as good as I made out?  If not who was pushy?  South could have had a slightly better hand.  If he held the ♦J that would have improved the odds on the slam a lot.  But North was probably a bit pushy since even with this great hand slam was still a reach.  While I still admire the auction I admit it is not a good slam.  Although as I recall Bob Hamman would say if you make it then it is a good slam.

Bidding Slams the expert way

I was watching the Spingold, one of the premier US team events of the year.  It is interesting to watch experts bid to slams.  Most of us can get to the right games most of the time but slams are often more demanding.  Before reading on, some of the ideas in this blog are very challenging.  You may not understand everything but I still think you will find it interesting.

You can follow this deal from both the North and South seats.  Let’s start with North.  You are the great Polish star Balicki and with nobody vulnerable your hand is

You are in third chair and there are two passes to you.  At this point you are thinking about the game opposite a passed partner.  You have a pretty nice hand.  You have 16 high card points but more important you have a great suit.  On hands like this I like to count tricks.  If things go well in the spade suit I should have six spades, a club and maybe a diamond.  Let’s say seven and a half tricks.  I don’t need that much from partner for game.  Bid 1S.

Now East, who happens to be Larry Cohen, passes and your partner bids 2C.  This is Drury which shows spade support and about limit raise values.  If you are not familiar with Drury it is the bid of 2C, used by a passed hand to show a limit raise in partner’s major, while keeping the bidding low.  You do this in case partner opened a bit light in third chair.  You can find out more about this convention in 25 Conventions You Should Know by Barbara Seagram and Marc Smith.

So now you know you are going to bid game.  Slam is still a possibility though perhaps not a favorite.  Now West, David Berkowitz bids 3C.  Does this help you or hurt you?

Let’s think about it a moment.  Since David is a passed hand and he came in now at the three level he must have an awful lot of clubs.  He is missing the ace but he likely has the king and queen.  This means that partner’s high card points must be in the red suits and that is quite helpful.  Now you make an expert bid.  You bid 4C.  This shows that you have clubs under control.  You must have slam interest otherwise you would have simply bid 4S.  Now East interjects 5C and this is passed back to you.  Here is the auction so far:

Now you are sure that partner doesn’t have many clubs.  The opponents have at least nine clubs but I think more likely ten.  After all they don’t have many high card points and are ready to compete to the five level.  Partner could have doubled them if he really didn’t want you to bid again.  His pass suggests that he is willing to hear you bid.  This is an expert concept but the point is that Zmudzinski had three choices pass, double or bid on.  When he passed he suggested he was willing to have partner bid higher.  A double would have told partner that he was happy to defend.

If you find this confusing I am not surprised.  Even top experts have trouble with these auctions from time to time.   Given that information what do you think Balicki should do?  What I like to do in these situations in think of logical hands that partner could have that are the worst possible.  I want to see if there is risk in bidding on.  Let’s try that:

This is the worst hand I could come up with where partner still had a limit raise and might be willing to have me bid again.  It is possible that if partner has this hand I might go down.  I am missing two aces and there is a serious risk of a diamond ruff.  Also I might end up losing two heart tricks.  But even on this terrible hand I am still quite likely to make it.  (Also there is some risk that the opponents can make 5C).  So I plan to bid 5S.  But if partner has a good hand slam is still possible.  It is this thinking that distinguishes the great player from the merely good players.  So what do you think he did?  He bid 5D.  These control bids (some people call them cuebids) show the ability to control the suit with at most one loser.  They mean that you have a void, singleton, ace or king.

This told his partner he had diamonds under control and that he still had slam aspirations.  Zmudzinski now bid 5H showing that he had hearts controlled.  Now Balicki didn’t bid the slam.  He just bid 5S.  Why?  He had told his story.  He only wanted partner to go to slam if he had the best hand they could have.  A heart control was not enough.  Let’s look at the deal from the South hand.

The auction to this point was

Now the pressure is all on you.  When partner bid 5S he wasn’t saying I don’t want to bid the slam.  His 5D control bid was a slam try and you cooperated with 5H.  Your side has a control in every suit.  So why is he discouraged?  He isn’t really.  He just wants to know if you have something more, something you haven’t really shown yet.  And you have, don’t you.  You have two aces including the diamond ace, not to mention the fifth trump and the singleton club.  You have the very best hand you could have for the auction.  So you bid 6S.

Did you notice nobody ever bid Blackwood?

If you are wondering if you could do this then let me suggest you find out more about control bids (or cue bids).  They allow you to suggest that you might want to be in slam so that you can try for slams on deals where you need partner to have the “right hand”.  There is a chapter on control bids in 25 Conventions You Should Know but personally I think you should read the chapter about advanced cue bidding in 25 More Conventions You Should Know by Barbara Seagram and David Bird.  (Yes, there are 50 worthwhile conventions.)

But my point isn’t really about the books.  It is to take you into the mind of an experts.  They don’t rush to bid game or slam.  They make careful bids that allow them to get partner’s cooperation.  They visualize the hands that partner can have that makes sense with the auction, both the best and the worst.

I will never be as good as the gentlemen at this table.  But I know I can still learn from them.

If You Don’t Play You Can’t Win

I think “if you don’t play you can’t win” used to be the slogan of the lottery here in Ontario.  Whenever I enter an event that is important to me (and even some that aren’t) I find that I get nervous.  This is not a fun feeling so it tends to discourage me from playing.  Does that ever happen to you?

When I was in school I remember that I never wanted to compete in anything unless I thought I could win.  Winning didn’t have to be first place.  When I was about ten I played in a very competitive music contest.  I played the piano and I was playing against a lot of big strapping thirteen year olds.  I had played up.  So it was wonderful to come in third.  My dad was so proud of me.  You can imagine the picture I made.  I was a very tiny child and my feet couldn’t really reach the pedals and I was standing there among girls who were literally twice my size.

I find it hard to lose.  It makes me mad.  It makes me want to win even more.  I want to try harder.  Be better.  Being competitive is a blessing and a curse.  I think you have to be competitive to really succeed at something.  But it is tough when you lose.  And some times I don’t want to take the elevator down to the tournament.

I know I inherit all this from my dad.  He played bridge but when he realized I was a better player than he was, he never played another hand.  I understand how he felt.  I do.  But he was wrong.

Now if you haven’t tried to play a competitive game, duplicate in your club, a local tournament or even something better, go ahead, try it.  Nothing really bad can happen and who knows some times you might even be one of the winners.

One of the things you might find is winning most things isn’t all it is cut out to be.  You win.  They might take your picture.  You feel good for a few minutes.  But then you realize it was never about winning.

Don’t be afraid.  Just do it.  It gets easier the more you do.  Remember you will have lots of company.  Almost all the players there will “lose”.  Many larger tournaments have a wonderful IN (intermediate Novice) program with free mini lessons.

And if you happen to be in Montreal in the next few days at the Montreal Regional you might find me there.  Competing.

A Pretty Hand, a lesson for the advanced

This hand was played in a practice team match for Canada Master Point Press Women.  This is the ladies team that Master Point Press is sponsoring.  They will be representing Canada in Brazil at the World Championships this year.

All of the hands for this match were provided by the coach so many of them had lessons.  The one on this hand is a pretty play point.  I don’t expect almost any student to be able to figure this one out.  It is an advanced point.  I have seen this idea in many bridge problems but it does come up from time to time on at the table.  I will give you a hint.  Think ‘loser on loser”.

You are playing in 4♥ and the opening lead is the ♠A.  You follow with the ♠J hoping that West will continue with the ♠ K.  But West shifts to the ♣ Q.  Let’s plan the play.  First count losers.  One spade, no hearts, possibly two diamonds and a club.  That is one too many.  How can we get rid of a loser?

If you are an intermediate student you would probably think about the diamond finesse right away.  They is a good plan and will work a lot of the time.  On some hands that would be your only option.  If you are an advanced player or expert you might think of an elimination.  Here is how that would work.   In fact this play has a cute name – a strip and endplay.

The idea is to strip West of all his trump and spades, the elimination.  Then you want to throw him in on the third round of clubs.  That is the endplay.  West won’t be able to lead a spade or a club (that would give you a ruff-sluff allowing you to ruff in dummy and throw your diamond loser from hand).  West will have no hearts left.  So he will have to lead a diamond right into your AQ.  If you can do all this you don’t care if the diamond finesse is onside.

To achieve this you will have to ruff dummy’s two spades while drawing trump.  You might start by winning the club in hand and playing a trump to dummy’s king and ruffing a spade.  Now you play another trump to dummy and ruff the ♠Q.  If necessary you can draw a third round of trump but on this hand trump break 2-1.  This is the story now.  Lets look at East-West hand at this point

If everyone is asleep you can now play a club to the ♣K in dummy.  Then you play another club and West will win the ♣J.  You will have succeeded in your strip and endplay.  But an expert defender can throw their ♣J away to avoid the endplay and that is what happened at the table I watched.  When declarer played a club to the ♣K the defender play the ♣J under the ♣K.  Now when East won the third round of clubs she was able to play the ♦9 and declarer could not make the hand.

Both sides played the hand very well in expert fashion.  But declarer missed something.  Can you see a better way to endplay West?  Look in the original dummy.  Do you see a card that only west can win?  if you could strip West from exit cards (the same type of strip we saw) and then play the ♠Q then West would be on lead at the critical time, forced to lead a diamond.  You simply lead the ♠Q and throw a loser on it (the ♦7).  This hand illustrated both a loser on loser on and endplay.  Let’s walk through that.  No, I was not expecting you to work this all out.  This is a tough play to see even for experts.

At trick two West played the ♣Q.  Let’s duck that.  Why?  We need to eliminate the club suit and we don’t want East to get the lead.  Ducking the ♣Q is safe since West will win the trick.  Let’s say West continues with a trump.  You draw trump ruffing one spade along the way and cash the ♣K and ♣A.  You are eliminating all of the exit cards from West.  Here goes:

Here we go.  The first three tricks were ♠A, ♣Q and now West played a trump.  You win and ruff a spade and play another trump.  The trump actually split 2-1 so all our gone.  You are now at this point.

Can you see what will happen now?  A friend of mine in a similar position said something at this point like; “ this is going to be really good.”  First you eliminate clubs ending in the dummy. 

You have completed the elimination.  West has no safe cards to exit.  Now it is the critical moment.  You play the ♠Q and throw your diamond loser.  West has to win the ♠K and he has no choice but to give you your game going trick.  If he leads the ♠8 you can ruff in dummy and throw away your ♦Q.  If he leads a diamond he is leading right into your AQ.

We can’t all see these plays at the table all the time.  But knowing this kind of loser on loser play you can at least look for them.  Loser on loser plays are used for many purposes, the strip and endplay is the most complex.

Inspired Declarer Play

My experience in playing with bridge students is that when dummy comes down they just aren’t sure what to do.  Readers of my blogs will know that when they are in a suit contract my rules are:

a) count losers and make a plan and b) is there a reason NOT to draw trump.  If you don’t have one then get those kittys off the street.

But still I can tell that it is often hard to decide what to do.  For many players playing a hand is a high point.  They should feel comfortable.  Julian Laderman’s new book will give them the inspiration they need to play the dummy.   A Bridge to Inspired Declarer Play has just won the ABTA (American Bridge Teachers’ Association) Bridge Book of the year. 

Julian is two for two having also won for his previous book A Bridge To Simple Squeezes also won the award. 

Why are Julian’s books so very well received?  Why did every book seller at the recent Washington Nationals sell out requiring us to overnight another carton of books?  First Julian, a math professor at a New York university, is a wonderful ambassador for his books.  He has a way of making concepts simple and easy to understand.  (I wish I had been his student when I was studying math!)

In a bridge to inspired declarer play each hand is presented as a problem.  Julian than provides a solution which not only explains what to do on this hand but illustrates a particular play point.  He shows you how you can recognize this type of play approach when it occurs at the table.  Finally he shows you how if the hand was a little bit different you might have to adapt how you played it.

Here is an example:

You are in 4♠ with no opposition bidding and the openly lead is the ♦K.  With three hearts to lose you will need to find the queen of clubs to make the contract.  Julian asks the question: “How do you find it?” 

When you get to the answers you find out that this is a trick question.  You don’t have to find it you can let the opponents find it for you.  In order to do that you want to make it impossible for the opponents to exit safely when they get the lead.  This is called the elimination.  If you had no diamonds left and you drew trump the opponents would not be able to exit with a trump (they have none) or a diamond since that will give you a ruff and sluff.  So you start by playing a trump to dummy and ruffing a diamond.  Then you play another trump to diamond and ruff the last diamond.  You will have arrived at this position:

At this point you have finished the elimination and you are ready to perform the endplay.  You now lead a heart.  The opponents can take three heart tricks but then they have to lead a club.  Whichever opponent leads a club you can just play low and the queen will be found.  You have just performed a sophisticated bridge play called a strip and endplay.  (Sounds a bit sexy to me).

Julian explains how you can recognize this situation with a few simple rules.  He also asks you an interesting question.  Suppose you had the queen of clubs instead of the jack.  Can find a way that the strip and endplay would allow you to take another trick anyway?  Think about what the other two hands would have to be for this to work.

I promise you if you read this book Julian will not only teach you something but make you think.  This is a worthy award winner.

Can’t Miss Contest, really. Pick the winners

We are having our annual contest on www.bridgeblogging.com to pick the winners of the Open Event and Seniors Event at the World Championships.  It is free and open to everyone and you get a $10 gift certificate just for entering.  There will be two winners, one for the open contest and one for the seniors and they will also get a free book.  What do you have to do to enter?  Just send an email with your entry to eric@masterpointpress.com. 

You need to pick the 8 teams that will make it to the quarterfinals, the four teams that will make it to the semifinals, the two teams in the finals and the winners.  For more details just click on this ===>  Contest.

To make it really easy here is the list of teams with my choices

Here is my entry.

Open

1. Germany
2. Italy
3. Netherlands
4. Norway
5. Russia
6. USA 1
7. USA 2
8. Brazil

Final four

Italy , Norway,  USA 2. Brazil

USA vs Italy in final with Italy winning

Seniors top 8

• Belgium
• Sweden
• Turkey
• Canada
• USA I
• USA 2
• Indonesia
• Australia

Final 4 USA1, Canada, Australia and Turkey.

Final 2 USA 1 versus Canada

USA 1 wins

To get a complete list of the teams entered Entries for teams in Sao Paulo Brazil.  Now how will you know which teams are good and which aren’t.  Well you can read my blogs about it  Here is a link which will take you to the four blogs I wrote discussing my thoughts Linda’s Blogs about the contest.  If you click on each blog you will get some of my thoughts.  You can just copy my entry if you like and make any changes to it you want.  But I will say that since I wrote it I think that USA2 might not be as good as I had thought since they have been weakened by the tragic death of Dick Freeman so you probably want to make a change there.

What does a three bid look like?

I was playing with some students the other day and this hand came up for North

I had ♠ 72 ♥ KQJ1098765 ♦ A8 ♣ 6

North was in second chair with nobody vulnerable.  This is not a normal opening three bid.  It is much too good.  With eight solid hearts and the diamond ace she has eight sure tricks even if her partner has nothing at all.  That is just too good.  There are two rules to think about when you decide to preempt.  One is the Rule of 2 and 3.

Rule of 2 and 3

When preempting you can overbid by two tricks when vulnerable and three tricks when not vulnerable.  So for a three level preempt

Not vulnerable you would have 9 minus 3 tricks or six tricks

Vulnerable you would have 9 minus 2 or seven tricks.

The idea behind this rule is that you can never go for a penalty greater than five hundred.  This is a very conservative rule and most players are more aggressive these days.  As Marshall Miles says in his great book Modern Constuctive Bidding.

“When I discovered that most modern players were preempting like that (much more aggressively) I decided to become a modern player myself, especially not vulnerable).

Still if you want to play the Rule of 2 and 3 it is not terrible.  Mark on your convention card your preempts are fairly sound and enjoy. 

Law of Total Tricks for preempts

Basically the idea is that when your side has nine cards in a suit you can compete to the three level, eight cards in a suit to the two level etc.  So you assign partner about 1/3 of the remaining cards assuming he gets his fair share.  So if you have a seven card suit you would expect partner to have about two.  With nine cards in the suit between the two hands “the law” says you can compete to the three level.  Based on that with a weak hand and

This is not a bad rule to follow but be careful not to be too aggressive and bid a really bad suit when vulnerable.

So what should you do with eight sure tricks and a eight card suit.   Based on the Rule of 2 and 3 you have enough to bid 4♥ even if you were vulnerable.  Based on the law of total tricks your length is good.

So opening 4♥ is a reasonable bid.  Opening 3♥ understates the playing strength of this hand by about two tricks.  What about opening 1♥.  There is nothing wrong with that either.  You have an opening bid with ten high card points and that great eight card suit.  You even have some defense with the diamond ace.  It has the disadvantage of allowing the opponents in the auction but the advantage of telling partner you have some high cards.

I prefer 4♥ but if you were playing with me an bid 1♥ I would be a happy camper too. 

Advanced students might want to consider a convention called NAMYATS.  Namyats happens to be Stayman backwards.  (Both conventions were invented by the same man, Sam Stayman).  Namyats uses the bid of four clubs to show a very good preempt of four hearts and the bid of four diamonds to show a very good preempt of four spades.  With a normal preempt you just open four hearts or fours spades.  Namyats tells partner you have 8-9 tricks in your hand.  On this hand you are good enough to open four clubs Namyats.  If you are interested this convention is very well described in the book 25 More Bridge Conventions Your Should Know by Barbara Seagram and David Bird or follow this link

Definition of Namyats on the web

Diary of an intern, part I

(Reprinted from my post on Bridgeblogging.)

I had my first bridge lesson – sort of – last week, when Linda handed me a copy of her and Barbara Seagram’s book Beginning Bridge. I haven’t actually played a game yet. To help you follow my thinking when I finally do, let me outline the foundations I’ll be starting with.

To my mind, bridge seems most similar to a Parker Brothers card game my family used to play called Rook. Like bridge (at least, the way my family played it), Rook involves set partners (it doesn’t have to, but at its bridge-iest it does). It involves taking tricks in four colours/suits (red, green, yellow and blue). Also, like bridge, only four of each suit actually has value (the one, five, ten, and fourteen). This means the value of your hand can be calculated, and if it’s below a certain number, you pass. If you call trump, it means that you have at least the one and fourteen and two or three others of the same suit.

There are differences. Unlike bridge, Rook has fourteen cards in each suit. Also, scoring seems simpler. Each five and ten is worth five and ten points, each fourteen is worth ten, and each one is worth fifteen. Combined with twenty points for tricks (ten points each if both teams take seven tricks) and twenty points for the Rook card (more on that in a moment) each hand is worth 200 points. My family used to play until one team reached 500.

Like bridge, Rook involves bidding, but you bid based on the number of points you think you’re going to win, not the number of tricks you plan to take (and it certainly isn’t assumed you’ll take six!). Also, no suit is inherently stronger than any other, unless it’s called as trump.

Finally, Rook has the Rook. I’ll admit the Rook throws many of the bridge/Rook comparisons off, because it means an extra card is set aside once the hand is dealt. This card is picked up by whoever wins the bid, and said bidder then discards a non-point card, which adds an extra level of strategy. The Rook itself is the lowest trump, but worth the most points; whoever holds it is advised to get rid of it on a trick they or their teammate are guaranteed to take as soon as possible.

The Rook changes notrump hands, because it becomes a guaranteed trick, the only trump in the deck. Finally, Rook doesn’t have a dummy; the winning bidder’s partner plays under their own volition.

The fact remains, both Rook and bridge involve bidding; both involve trumps and taking tricks, and while Rook’s bidding strategies are simpler, I have no doubt an experienced bidder would have a much easier time learning bridge.

Unfortunately, I suck at bidding. In Rook, I never got a feel for recognizing the sort of hand my partner had, and rarely bid above 100 (half the tricks); if I did, it usually meant I was guaranteed to win.

Based on Beginning Bridge and the Aces on Bridge columns I edited for the next month, it looks like half the game’s strategy lies in bidding.

It’s going to be a long education…

Thinking about bidding

I had the chance to play with a developing bridge player today and we had one deal to bid that I think is interesting.

Chayam opened 1NT and I am playing West as lml (my initials).  What should I do?  In the textbook they say that you should bid with eight points.  It usually takes around 25 HCP to make a game in notrump and partner can have as much as 17 points.  Since I have a four card major I might bid Stayman and then when partner bids two hearts I can invite perhaps.

But as you can see I didn’t do any of this.  I passed.  When dummy came down Chayan was surprised.  Why didn’t you bid hearts she asked?  I assume she meant why didn’t I look for a major suit fit.  Then she asked the better question. “ I had 16 HCP why didn’t you bid?”  We didn’t have time to talk right then and I just told her that we were in a great contract and that she had done perfectly.

The biggest problem on the hand is that we are mirrored and we are both as flat as pancakes.  Mirrored means that are hands have exactly the same shape.  The good part of this hand is that we have very good spot cards.  The nine and eight of hearts are worth a whole trick as is the great club spots.  Anyway on a normal spade lead you are likely to make about eight tricks.  You will take two spades, four hearts and a diamond and maybe a club or even a diamond.  But you really have no chance for nine tricks.  Game in hearts is even worse and we got quite a good score for making two notrump.

It is true that Chayan could have another point or that the hands might have worked better but this is why I didn’t bid on this hand.  Eight is the bare minimum you need to try for game opposite a 15-17 notrump.  When you have a minimum you should consider other things. 

I a whole point for 4-3-3-3 shape.  Having no long suits (and no ruff if you are in suit contract) is a disadvantage.

I add about half a point for decent spots.  Good spots are at least 9’s or an 8 with a 9 or a 10.  I don’t bother too much about whether I have a 6 or a 2.

Are my high cards in my long suits?  Well I do have a queen in my four card suit which makes it a working queen so this is neutral.  No points

Are my points in queens and jacks or aces and kings?  Are my honors together?  An AQ is much better than an ace and a queen elsewhere.  Here my hand is probably a minus.

So here is my tally

So by the time I am done I think this hand is worth about 7 HCP not 8.  In any case if it is a borderline decision it is NO GO.

There is one other factor to consider.  At IMP scoring making a vulnerable game is worth so many imps that is worth it to push hard for the game.  At imps vulnerable go for it if there is any chance.  But at imps not vulnerable or at matchpoints only try for good games.  Here we were not vulnerable playing imps.

What about playing in the major?  Well once I decided not to try for game I have no way of finding out if we have a fit.  I can’t bid Stayman unless I am prepared to invite.  If Chayan had answered two diamonds I would have had to bid two notrump and Chayan could go to 3NT if she had a maximum.  You can generally only use Stayman if you have an invitational hand or are prepared to pass any response by partner.

But even if I had an invitational hand I would probably not bid Stayman.  It is easier to make nine tricks then ten tricks and often 4-3-3-3 hands play better in notrump.  Chayan was not going to be able to ruff anything in my hand.

I hope that answers your questions better Chayan and thanks for the game.