Helsinki league R1/9 1st half: The autumn battle is on

1. Helsinki league R1/9 1st half: The autumn battle is on

The local Helsinki league starts with a match against Nixu. League has once a week 32 boards match with half time. Scoring uses VPs with maximum victory being 25. There is two division levels where both are playing full round robin to find the winner. The division one where we are playing has 10 teams.

Deals are duplicated between both divisions. Duplicated boards caused our table to start from the board 14.

Nixu has been one of favorites for many years and they are again. Of course players changes a lot in a local teams competition. But the match promised to be a tough start for the league.

Juho is my partner in the match. Our CC and system notes can be found from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4izKEmfNQIBSzdac19HeGp2Q00 (PDF)

Board 3: Chickens don't fly, do they?

A competitive biding where I hold long bad opponents suit before opponent isn't fun to judge. Either Juho or RHO may have the remaining spades. I don't fear trump promotion from the lead with my ace-jack-ten forth support. But it may cause trouble in lines that involve ruffing multiple spades.

My values look like working help for my partner. I have ace forth support that is over two cards more than my partner expects. I also have singleton in the second opponents suit. I don't know how good fit thy have in clubs but I suspect a good one because we have a good heart fit while they don't have good spade fit. That leaves me with probable two ruffs.

Juho promised a better hand than direct 4 heart bid which places about 8.5-9 tricks to his hand. With my likely 3 tricks we are definitely in close to a small slam. But I don't like my three small diamonds or five card spades. Specially diamonds run risk that finesse in there would be offside making our slam fail because of two diamond losers. Those two side suits made decide to go for a sure plus in a game.

Specially in competitive biding conservative bids are long run winners. None knows what kind of twists biding has taken in other table that may lead to our team mates producing an unexpected score. The unexpected score happening in this hand too when other table did bid to the grand which requires queen-jack doubleton in diamonds to make.

Of course this time Juho had all values working for the small slam making it cold. But only one point less in diamonds would make it below 50 percent slam. I think that we would have a good chance to avoid the slam if Juho has a worse hand. Those my pass for an inferior action compared to a slam invite with five clubs.

Team mates: 7♥ W +100
Result: +680 (13; 0.0)
Possible result: +1430 (17)

Form those results we can quickly calculate that a slam would be worth biding only when odds*17 >= 13 -> odds >= 13/17 = ~75%. Of course that match assumes our opponents going down but it shows why conservative biding decisions do win in a competitive auction.

Total: -4

Board 5: Adventure in card reading.

Juho led the heart jack and declarer dropped 9. Was that lead from shortness? The singleton would give at least 8 cards and like 9 cards to spades and diamonds. We (me, dummy and declarer) have about 28-33 points together leave Juho with enough values to overcall. That makes it very unlikely that lead is singleton. But of course doubleton is still possible from a shape like 4-2-4-3. But Juho failed to lead a spade that would be more attractive from most of combinations than Jx heart lead. That makes also doubleton unlikely.

That leaves only one shift clearly superior. That is setting up our spade trick. Also Juho will have chance to continue with heart if he has the doubleton. In combinations when spade lead comes.

Play continued with spade finesse losing and spade return to declarers ace. Then I'm again winning a trick with my club ace. This time I can play for thee different meaning full holding for Juho that include heart singleton, spade doubleton and the ace of diamond third.

It is easy to see how heart singleton or spade doubleton could gain a trick from ruff. Ace of diamond third can gain a trick if my shift to the suit prevents declarer from discarding two losing diamonds on the majors. Those discard could be possible after either of my major return if Juho doesn't ruff the return. As a bonus the diamond shift also works if Juho has spade doubleton and ace third diamond and four card heart.

In both ruff cases opponents have a higher scoring major contract available that makes playing for those distributions less likely to matter. Combining the scoring with possibility that Juho would bid with many hands that would fall to a ruff category I decided to shift to a diamond. But no shift did actually mattered in the table.

Team mates: 2♣ S +90
Result: -90 (0; -2.9)

Total: -4

Deal 7: Adventures continue

First deal where I have to first talk about Slawinski leads. The lead of diamond 3 denies holding 2 because we never lead the second lowest card. Possible combinations where 3 is led are singleton, doubleton with a higher spot card, three cards with a honor, four cards without a honor and 5 cards with a honor. Singleton isn't practical because that extreme shape wouldn't pass to 2 spades when hearing a fit exists. Also lead of 3 is impossible from five card suit because declarer is marked with HH2 or better diamonds because Juho didn't lead high from his honor sequence.

The second trick provides some more insight to the shape when declarer leads spade jack and Juho gives odd count with the nine. That leaves declarer singleton spade, 5 or 6 hearts, 3 to 4 diamonds and 2 to 4 clubs. That makes trump shift no win play because clubs can be always thrown to the dummy's spade tricks. That made club shift a mandatory play because nothing else could matter.

But latter on I was a bit puzzled when declarer revealed the 5 card club holding which made the club shift incorrect defense. There is no way that declarer can discard club losers when holding 5 of them. But of course defense didn't matter because declarer mis-guessed trumps giving us the fifth defensive trick for heart jack. But in pairs declarer would have taken 9 tricks giving us a horrible score.

I'm not sure if I remember the lead correctly. I do remember that I felt confused after the deal and opponents did mark same lead to the bridge mate. But I quickly made my self to forget the deal completely because it had danger to affect following boards if i started analyzing it in the table. It would be very unusual position to psyche the lead when we are defending a part-score. In part-score contracts declarer has a huge information advantage without defensive signals.

But I may have read the lead incorrectly which shadows the memory of played card. I haven't yet learned to read the Slawinski leads automatically correctly. We played them first time in Hämeenlinna

EDIT: Juho confirmed that he did lead 2 which means I did read the original lead incorrectly and later forgot the actual card.

Team mates: 2♥ S +140
Result: -110 (1; -0.6)

Total: -4

Board 14: Where is the fourth trick?

This time you get to follow Juho defending because he had an early defensive problem. My spade 8 lead followed rule that we lead 1/3/5 in partner's suit. That leaves declarer with either two or three spades. But without entry to Juho's hand defense can't ever take 3 spade tricks making trump shift pointless. Juho cached the second spade to prevent declarer from discarding it to either of minors.

After everyone followed two rounds of spades Juho is in crossroads. Declarer can have many different hands where either club, diamond or spade is required to defeat the contract. Following hands are examples from each case.

Spade matters when it either setups 5th heart to be second trump trick for partner or heart queen depending on where return is ruffed. Diamond matters when that return breaks entries to blocked clubs and setups one of honors to partner. Club matters when ever partner has a trump trick and club king third or forth.

Diamond and spade can matter only in very specific combinations while club can provide the setting trick in a lot more different combinations. Those combinations include slow and fast trump tricks for partner.

But in life deal nothing matters because declarer had too bad trumps. I actually made a defensive error that lost third under trick when I ducked the second trump trick. If I win the second trump I can lock declarer to dummy setting up my heart 4 to be third under trick. But the third under trick wouldn't have mattered to the score when comparing to five clubs making.

Team mates: 5♣ N +400
Result: +100 (11; +7.7)

Total: -4

Half time comparison

We had quick opponents leaving us time to play chess match. We definitely didn't know how to play chess. Both gave free pieces after each others.

But bridge results looked great in half time. We had managed 66-5 lead score in half time. It looked like every decision made in both table had scored our way. But we still have a second half to play where opponents has same amount of chances to produce a come back.

Our buttler score was 1.71 for us. Our team mates scored 2.27. Those scores are clear indicator that both of our pairs played a solid game while opponents made a few errors.