India vs Italy in China

Date: 10th Oct 2008 - Friday
Venue: Beijing International Conventional center.
Focus: U-26 team swiss round 15 of 17: India vs Italy.
India's aim: To retain the last position.

Players: Guthi and SP in Open Room
Dashu and Arijit in Closed room ( Vinoth & Karan were supposed to play - but we were
misinformed.)

You can find our results here.

I shall post about what happened in the first two deals here, others will follow. Most deals are intersting. A cute Italian girl who was my screen mate. Lets call her - cig and her partner aig (amorphous Italian guy?)


Board-1

Full credit to SP for finding a diamond switch at trick 2. ( little credit to Guthi for not stupidly leading Ace of spades?)

The auction.

P - P - 2S - X
4S* - X - End.

Q1) Do you agree with the first Dbl by West? (2S is a regular weak bid)
Q2) after winning the first heart with the Jack, what do you shift to?
Q3) do you agree with the 4S by north?

A1) Its fine by HCP count, and the rule that there is 3 card support for other suits, such auctions run into trouble w/o 4 cards in the other-M. What say? Another option is a 2NT overcall, especially because others have passed.
My order of preference is this X>2NT>Pass>3D. What is yours?

A2)
Play went: Heart to Jack; low D - Q - Ace - ruff; club A; club Q - discard H; spade A; low spade.
cig had no way of goin to dummy now. ended up losing 1S+1H+2D+1C.
I think declarer can hold the contract to -1 on this defence by cross ruffing the minors suits - losing 2S+2H only.

Full credit to SP for finding a diamond switch at trick 2. ( little credit to Guthi for not stupidly leading Ace of spades? Like in the other table?) removing the entry to the table incase clubs get set up. He did not cash Heart Ace thinking it could get ruffed - placing me with 4Hs - which is the right thing to do.

I can easily imagine what happened at the other table: spade Ace, heart shift, ruff the thrid heart, spade king, club to Q, then Ace, ruff one, ruffing finesse of D gives a total of 10 tricks.

Correction: Vinoth points out that after diamond switch the contract can be made peacefully by crossruffing. So it turns SP has to switch to a spade at trick two - stealing the first 4 tricks. It follows that the contract is cold after the lead of Spade Ace.

A3)
The toughest question? I wonder what is 3C in many juntas agreements ( in 2S-(X)-3C! )
by an unpassed hand its obly forcing, by a passed hand should it be fit showing? as in raise to 3S with values-length in clubs. 4C is surely that by a passed/unpassed hand. This will help partner to decide if its worth a save in 4S - if opps bid 4H of course.

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Board-2

Bidding was very intersting here.
1D* - 1S - 2C - 2S
P - P - 2NT* - End

1D was precision. 2NT was some kind of scrambling showing minors, denying 4 carder heart(?) with a 4 carder heart I would double. SP passed it to play.
I managed to get 1S+4H+1D+1C for down 1. I don't see any line to make it on low spade lead. Opps will run with 4 spades, 1 club and 1 diamond.


Q1) Do you open Easts hand K9xx;AKxx;J8xx;T

A1) I agree with opening a 2.5 trick hand which has both majors. Yes, even in standard.

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Cheers
Guthi

I read a relay system over 1NT opening.. It's quite simple and seems efficient. Have a look at it..

http://www.lusobridge.com/main/Noticias/sars.pdf

Relay Primer

Despite not being very popular, relay bidding systems are likely the most accurate bidding systems, especially in the game and slam zones. The idea behind them is that only one hand communicates information about itself while the other hand keeps bidding alive by bidding the next step. This process is called the relay, and it stops when the asker knows enough to place the final contract. Even though you may not want to base your entire bidding structure on relays, it is useful to understand some basic ideas, in my opinion.

I will now prove a fundamental result that helps you gauge what is possible within so much bidding space.

How Much Information?

Suppose the responder (the giver of information) has the job of telling asker which one of k distinct types of hand he has. Also suppose that only n steps remain in the bidding ladder. For the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that the final contract lies beyond these n steps and that asker must always bid the next step.

Let f(n) denote the maximum number of types of hand that can be distinguished within n steps. f(1) = 1. This is because responder is forced to bid and there is only one bid he can make, so he cannot distinguish at all. f(2) = 2. This is because the second step must necessarily show one type (because no room is left to resolve any ambiguity). The lower step must also show one type only, because asker can do no better than bidding the second step, leaving no room for further bidding.

If n > 2, the the auctions that ensue can be broken into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive sets. One consists of auctions where responder's first bid is the second step or higher, and the other consists of those auctions where responder's first bid is the first step. The number of elements in the first set is obviously f(n − 1). When responder bids the first step, asker bids the second step to continue the relay, leaving responder n − 2 steps (obviously, the first step doesn't pinpoint one hand type). That means f(n − 2) auctions lie in the second set. Therefore, for n > 2, f(n) = f(n − 1) + f(n − 2).

As you can well see, this sets up a Fibonacci series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …

What Do I Do With This?

Note first of all that the number of items responder can distinguish between is at least the number indicated in the series. It is possible to design a system where asker has the flexibility to ask other questions, by bidding something other than the next step. Therefore, the series only indicates a minimum efficiency, which can always be achieved. Take, for example, the Ogust responses after a Weak Two in spades (2♠). Responder (to the relay) distinguishes between only four hand types using the four steps that are available to him (3♣ through 3♠), which is one lower than the minimum guaranteed to be achievable.

If you're in the habit of tinkering with your bidding system, you undoubtedly come across ask situations. With the clear mathematical foundation that you have here, you can ensure that your ask–answer structure is “tight”. Don't ever say that there's too little information left to convey. There's always information. I remember SP telling me that in the famed Guthi-SP Precision system, a sequence like 1♣-1♦-2♥ initiates an ask. Responder's replies to 2♥, if I remember correctly, consume more than one complete level. The discussion above tells you that whenever you're using up four or more steps, the structure had better be relay.

I will soon post a sample application of this: a relay structure after a Jacoby major-suit raise

Another Lead problem?

This deal came up in the finals of Board-a-Match in South zone. Like in most deals, all sorts of random things happened on this deal. Read on to find out.

I picked up

A9xxx
64
-void
AQTxxx

Yes, a 5-2-06 in a hand dealt deal. Its green upon red and RHO as dealer opens 1H.
What do you call. (You are playing open ranged michels )

The bidding went like this
1H - 2H - 3D - P
3H - P - 4H - End

Q1) What do you lead.
Ashok, please dont feed this into GIB and tell me what it is. It may never agree with the winning led I found on the table. ;)

I lead a low spade. hoping to set the contract if partner has Ax of Heart and figures to give me a diamond ruff. Read on what happened.

Dummy comes down

KJx
xx
AQJxxx
Kx

The declarer was confused and put up the king which held. SP signaled with spade 2. (so I know the spades are 5332) Ran a low heat to his Ace. Trick three he played a low D from hand, I ruffed, cashed Ace of spade and returned a spade for SP to ruff, he ruffed with his Queen of hearts. Trick 6 disaster strikes. He returned another D for me to ruff. Like I will have more trumps. Of course the fault is with me, as I should have cashed club Ace before giving him a spade ruff. (even though I played my lowest spade for him to ruff, asking for a club shift )
It has happened in many instances before, if it is the setting trick, its better to cash it, especially if there is danger of a long suit being set up.

I don't remember all the 4 hands, but I remember the result at the other table was 5C-Doubled is only 1 down. and 4H actually makes on correct play. Declarer expected a 3-1 heart break, and was catering to Qxx with SP, thanks to my michels bid announcing a 5-5. We had a 10 card club fit.

Q2) Do you think this hand is work a michels bid if partner is a passed hand. Answer for all the vulnarablitlies. I think there is no reason to bid so high if you are vul and partner is a passed hand. simple 1S overcall will suffice. what say? The downside is, you may not find a sacrifice, like in this case (though we did not anyways)

There is another interseting hand of this kind which came up in Beijing, earned us a top in the pairs event. will post about it next.

Cheers
Guthi

When the Experts Are Wrong

You have to make a lead against 3NT after your RHO dealt at Both Vul and opened 1NT (15–), which was raised on your right to 3NT. You hold ♠ J97643 ♥ J3 ♦ J9862 ♣ —. What do you lead?

I picked this up from page 8 of the second issue of the youth bulletin from Beijing Mind Games. Defenders at both tables in the match discussed had led a diamond and been rewarded (the diamond lead was the only lead that would've succeeded). Why a diamond, you ask? Well:

Recently, I've been trying to train myself to lead better with the guidance of GIB. I have examined a lot of leads recommended by it and, though I can't honestly claim that I can predict reasonably well what GIB would recommend, I have learnt enough to be suspicious in cases like this. So I fed GIB this problem. Guess what? The correct lead is ♥ J.

This is what is wrong with much bridge writing: denial of human fallibility. Ridiculous explanations are frequently concocted to justify opening leads. Do these people really not have doubts, or will expression of doubt hurt sales (or readership)? I don't want to go into too many details, but suffice it to say that I'm utterly convinced that a bulk of the theory of opening leads we learn is nonsense.

Let me give one example of the ridiculous explanations that I mentioned earlier. Matthew Granovetter in Murder at the Bridge Table strongly chastises the lead of the unsupported ace against suit contracts. In one example, he criticizes the lead of the ace from a doubleton in partner's bid suit (though partner is known to be weak) against a game contract. In the actual layout, the game is made purely because of the lead. Though is auction is a bit involved, I wanted to see what GIB had to say. Not surprisingly to me, GIB said that the lead of the ace was second-best, the best lead being a neutral trump lead from three small. Anyway, Granovetter then says that the lead of the unsupported ace against trump slams is in fact attractive, because—want to guess? Because when you have found one trick, it's easy to find another. It's the most ridiculous explanation I've ever heard, even if the thing recommended has merit (I don't know).

For the hand given here, GIB in fact thinks that the diamond lead is considerably worse than the lead of the jack of hearts. A small spade is the second-best choice, it says.

I wouldn't say that GIB is always right about leads. GIB does not do deception, and GIB does not do concealment of high-card strength and distribution from declarer. It also cannot understand many auctions. But for cases like this one, I think it would be foolish to disagree with it.