Staying with happiness--part two

I last wrote about this subject last year in Staying with happiness where I committed the capital sin of not providing a hand diagram. A recent hand came up online that illustrates the principle very well. I swear I am not making this up. And neither was this in a "Goulash" tournament. You hold the following hand, playing with an unknown partner, and hear the auction proceed as below:

Do you double? On the plus side, they are definitely going down, perhaps by two tricks, and surely 500 is more profitable than 200? On the other hand, they might run to spades. Who has all the spades? Partner might have a trick there, but there's no guarantee. What about the clubs? Are we cashing any diamonds? Doesn't look like it.

You decide to pass and the contract does indeed go down two. You gain 6 IMPs for staying with happiness. Here's the situation you would find yourself in at trick one if you had doubled (click Next):

You are defending 6S, quite possibly doubled and maybe redoubled. Which card do you play at trick one after giving the defense due thought (declarer will not be thinking long about the play from dummy)?

Can it really matter? Surely, my partner didn't bid 3D vulnerable on a five-card suit! Yes, it does matter. The only way declarer can make this hand is if he pitches a heart on the first trick, wins the continuation, draws (five) trumps and claims five clubs and two hearts. But if you are on lead after overtaking with the ace, you will obviously play a heart now for partner to ruff. If instead, declarer ruffs your ace, he will have one fewer trumps than partner and can never make the hand. Indeed, two declarers in spades took only seven tricks. In practice, 6S was set three tricks (once), two tricks (doubled--once), and one trick (redoubled once, doubled thrice, and six times otherwise). But! it also made twice (once doubled). Let's say that we do double and defend 6S perfectly. Against a competent declarer (i.e. one who can count to thirteen), we are still only +200--the same score we could have had without requiring any thought beyond following suit.

I think both North and South (your author) were very disciplined on this deal. 5S by E/W (-650) is the par result and we beat that. In practice, the datum was -60. True, we might have had another five imps (eight if they redouble 6H as one declarer did). Against that, there are several ways to lose imps in addition to the scenarios already described. Bidding 7D for example, as several pairs did, would quickly concede 500 for -10 imps.

Staying with happiness won't always get you the very best score. But it will usually get you a decent score and avoid the risk of a much worse score.

Somehow we landed in 6NT (part two)

My title quotes that of one of my favorite David Bird books, one which certainly contributed in its way to helping me make the hand in the story below. See also Somehow we landed in 6NT.

I've always been a fan of squeezes. To me, they seem relatively easy. And, because many players think they are something esoteric and don't bother to learn about them, I'm pretty much guaranteed a good board whenever I can find one. The other thing I like about them, and this is really important for me,  is that most of them don't require good card-reading skills. And, generally speaking, once the play is in motion, you don't have to make any decisions at the end. Either it's there for the overtrick, or it's not and you end up with the same number of tricks you always had.

But, while there are many exotic squeezes out there, including the famous backwash squeeze, the bread-and-butter squeezes are relatively easy to recognize and execute. But of these, the ultimate in my opinion is the progressive triple squeeze. I thought it unlikely I would ever get to play one. But all that changed at a recent tournament session. Even then, it required some fairly dreadful over-bidding by my side (mainly my own) and some helpful defensive errors by the opponents before the squeeze trick. That being so, I'm going to deliberately obfuscate the hand to protect the identities of the players. Watch the play unfold from my point of view:

Almost any lead but the one chosen, the jack of clubs, would have scuttled any chance of making the hand. Even so, I could only count eight top tricks after knocking out the DA. At trick two, I can legitimately make the hand by finessing the S9, but I didn't. That line gives rise to a double-squeeze at the end, with hearts the pivot suit. At trick four, East erred by pitching a diamond. He could have recovered by holding up the DA at trick five, but these things are not so obvious in the heat of the battle. The return of a heart was interesting. Surely, East wouldn't lead away from the queen so I rose with the ace. After the first six tricks have been played, and having found the diamond jack, my prospects were looking a bit brighter--I had ten tricks. At this point, I see a chance. If West does indeed have the HQ in addition to the KT of clubs and the SJ, he will be triple-squeezed when I play off the diamonds.  Not only that but the conditions would be perfect for a (two-trick-gaining) progressive squeeze. But for that to work, I must have both round suit threats in the dummy along with the squeeze card (D5), along with the spade threat in hand. Thus the other high heart had to be cashed before crossing to dummy. That of course caters to a possible doubleton queen also.

At trick nine, the squeeze card, D5, is played and you can see that West has no good option. In a progressive triple squeeze, it's usually best to concede the suit that promotes an honor in the opposite hand. That prevents the progression. But in this five-card ending, the hand opposite the squeeze card has an extended menace in spades and thus there is no defense. Here is the whole hand:

Note that in the more normal contract of 4S, there can be no squeeze since there is no possible way of denying West his rightful trump trick, at least not unless you peek and finesse the nine.

The Beer Card

For those who know me and my love of beer, especially English bitter or IPA over here in the USA, it was inevitable that I would eventually write a blog on the beer card. Just a matter of time.

The scene was an ordinary extra-points club game with a new partner. Sadly, we didn't qualify for any points, extra or otherwise, but we had a good time nonetheless. There were several high points for me, and none better than board 23 which we played in round two. After a very simple auction, I became declarer (as West) in 3NT and, to cut a long story short, here is the layout (I'm using a new tool here from www.contractbridge.net):

Dlr: S Vul: All 8642 KT6 QT9 754 753 AQ4 A752 AK8 AKJT 982 K3 JT63 Q9 J753 J864 Q92

North obligingly led a heart (the 6) which of course was rather advantageous to me as it immediately bumped my trick count up by one. At that point, assuming that opening leader had the length in hearts, it seemed prudent to cross to dummy with a high spade and run the club knave into the North hand. When that proved successful, I was now up to 10 tricks with an easy addition of a spade. Not knowing the spade position, I now erred by finessing against the queen. But losing this trick also rectified the count for a squeeze. What squeeze, you may ask? Well, admittedly, it's more of a pseudo-squeeze: one opponent has to guard one red suit and leave the other for his partner.

However, I won the HA on the return, effectively making this a pseudo-Vienna coup and ran the last two spades and thirteenth club. South had to find three discards and pitched two diamonds and a heart. Meanwhile, North had only one discard to make but he chose a diamond. Both were essentially guarding against the threat of the H9 in dummy. Finally, after cashing the DK (and not finding the H9 high), I was able to cross to the DA and cash the D7, the "beer" card for the final trick.

This was worth all the matchpoints, even though, in theory, West can always take 12 tricks at notrump (either East or West can make 6C but that would be hard to reach). Making 12 tricks on a passive lead would require some very skillful card reading indeed.

But the point of this story, apart from the beer connection, is that when you have a squeeze situation (or even, as here, a pseudo-squeeze), it costs nothing to set the wheels in motion. Worst case you come out even. All that stuff about BLUE laws, threats, etc. is great of course but don't give up just because you don't have BLUE perfectly satisfied. As long as you've got L (the loser count) right, you've always got a shot at petty larceny.

All doubles can be passed - with the right hand

One of the best times for making the opponents pay for their indiscretions is when we know that we have at best a seven-card fit. For example after a support double where you don't have a fit for partner's first-bid suit. I've tried this gambit (passing a support double) myself (see for example Passing a support double) but until this evening, it has never worked. The scene was a (pickup) team match on BBO and this was the layout:

The result was only a 2-imp gain, because our opponents got to a making 24-hcp 3NT contract. Actually, we had a chance on the opening lead for 8 imps but of course it's hard to underlead an ace!  In any case, I do believe that this was the perfect time to pass the support double based on the following considerations:

1. The vulnerability was favorable;
2. At decision time, it was not yet clear that we would have a game;
3. My suit was weak;
4. My holding in their suit was good, or at least decent;
5. I didn't have much of a fit for partner's suit.

The remainder of this article was actually written two-and-a-half years ago. However, I never apparently published the article, perhaps because I was waiting for my own story. So here it is.

On BBO, my robot partner apparently knows the rules too and when he tried it recently (Sept 2012), it was a huge success.

At every other table but one, the N/S contract was 3NT making an overtrick for 630. At my table, the East robot made an incredibly injudicious bid of 2C over partner's 1S response. My robot knew when he was on to a good thing. This was matchpoints so even down 3 would have got the same result. But we produced a double-dummy defense (and East erred in going up with the  king at trick 2) to produce a very nice 100% score of 1400 (13 imps at teams).

As a corollary to this, I also feel that, after a support double has been taken out, all doubles should be for penalties and all new suit bids should be "to play."

More insanity

I apologize to my readers for the two-month hiatus in bridge articles. Just pressure or work, and the fact that we are in the midst of the second snowiest winter ever here in the Boston area. I usually keep a few drafts ready to turn into something for times like this. This hand actually arose a few months ago.

If you're looking for stories of bridge insanity, just go to a random BBO table late at night (Eastern time) and start to play. This kind of stuff will curl your hair.

Here's a typical example (borrowing S. J. Simon's character names):

I was essentially an innocent bystander in this debacle ("Mrs. Guggenheim", i.e. dummy). Had we agreed Lebensohl, then I probably would have bid 2NT over 2H and passed partner's 3C bid. But as it was, my bid wasn't all that bad.

Stoppers are for the birds, apparently. So, despite a magnificent fit in clubs, and three small hearts, "Mr. Smug" bid 3NT. The "Unlucky Expert" would have done better on this occasion to lead his fourth best heart! But having shown a good suit in the auction, he decided on the expert strategy of starting ace and asking for count or unblock. Well, maybe not -- we can only guess. Perhaps he thought declarer would have only Qx for his "stopper". In any case, "Futile Willy" was oblivious. He simply followed with his three hearts from the bottom up, blocking the suit. Thus my side made 630 when we should have been down 200. Total chucks by E/W: 830.

And, while I'm pointing out errors, did you notice that declarer didn't bother to claim as soon as he saw East's spade lead? The hand was over but, as so often happens, he dragged it out for a few more tricks.

We gained only 7 IMPs on this deal because, as you can see, we can make game in clubs legitimately. And lest you think that I'm making this up, I assure you that it actually happened exactly like this twice (!) on this board (of 16 total plays).

Doubling 3NT for a lead (part two)

Last time, we talked about the general subject of doubling 3NT for a lead. Now, let's talk about the most problematic of all calls: double after it goes 1NT pass 3NT. You could play that partner could lead any bad suit, but it won't be any surprise when both defenders are weak in a minor suit on this auction. So, to me it makes sense to restrict leader's choice to a major. Some pairs play that double asks for the lead of a specific major. But unless you play a lot with this particular partner, it will rarely come up.

So, what sort of suit do we need for the double to work? How about ♠AKQxx? At the recent NABC in Providence, RI, this exact situation came up in a match against Benito Garozzo on my right and Jan van Cleeff on my left. Was my suit good enough to double with? I didn't have forever to think about it (lest I pass UI to partner) so I had to make up my mind quickly. Yes, I decided. There followed several tortuous minutes while I waited for my opponents to consider their options and for my partner to lead (this last didn't take long). Benito redoubled to ask how opener's majors were and opener passed to say "pretty good." However, none of this was clear to me at the time. It appeared to me that they didn't have a clear system for this situation (I knew who RHO was of course, but not LHO). My partner, Vincent, put his card face down. "Turn it over", I said. The deuce of spades. Hallelujah! Dummy came down with two small spades and declarer asked a fatuous "what are your leads?", and played the ten at trick under my queen. This card, incidentally, caused quite an upset—to say the least—for the 87-year-old Garozzo. But it was all play acting by van Cleeff and my feeling of victory was very short-lived. Declarer started with JTxxx of spades and wrapped up 10 tricks to go +1400. We lost 13 IMPs on that deal.

Was my bid so very bad? or was I just a little bit unlucky? I determined to find out. This wasn't a trivial problem in probabilities and I had to write some Java code to figure it out. But now the results are in!

I set up the following conditions: LHO has at least two cards in every suit and RHO is nominally balanced (so at least one spade). For the five remaining spades, LHO has 5 vacant places, partner 13 and RHO 12. Additionally, LHO has fewer than six spades; RHO has fewer than five (no transfer) and, 80% of the time, fewer than four (he didn't use Stayman). I also adjusted for the case where partner has four or more spades, because he might not recognize that spades is our suit. With five I assumed, he will not lead spades and with four I assumed he will pick a spade half the time. Probability of success? 52%.

That's really not enough (as I discovered) to make the bid worth while. Let's see what we get as an expectation of IMP gain.

We assume that when we are successful, running our suit, they will run to a minor-suit half of the time (bidding game half of those times and making it half of those times); otherwise they will sit for the double. When we are destined to fail, we assume that they will redouble, as Garozzo did. We also assume for the sake of argument that they are vulnerable.

In the case of my AKQxx, we have the following outcomes (with probabilities and expectations of IMPs):

Outcome	Probability	IMPs	Expectation
Redouble	48%	-13	-6.24
Sit	26%	+13	+3.38
Partial	13%	+10	+1.3
Game	6.5%	0	0
Bad game	6.5%	+12	+0.78
Overall			-0.78

Oh dear! Overall, the expected gain is negative! With so many possible things to go wrong, not to mention the fact that partner might happen on a spade lead all on his own, it's a bad idea to double. There's also the psychological factor to take into account when playing with humans rather than robots. Partner (not to mention doubler) may be so disheartened by this result that the rest of the set suffers. I don't think that happened in our case (although we netted minus 3 on the other six boards), but it easily might.

Let's take a look at some other cases:

Holding	P(success)	Expectation of IMPs
AKQxx	52.0%	-0.78
AKQJx	66.6%	+3.99
AKQxxx	72.7%	+4.80
AKxxxxx	30.1%	-5.93

The two middle situations are much better. Having the jack in the second case makes quite a big difference mainly because it increases the probability of success, but also because it prevents a redoubled overtrick. AKQTx would be better than my hand but obviously not as good as AKQJx. Adding a sixth card increases the probability of success and also the penalty when they sit. Note that AKxxxxx just isn't good enough. Basically, you have to catch partner with two and even then you need an even split. Having the jack would help in those cases where opener has a doubleton queen or dummy (or partner) has her. But even then, you're gambling quite a bit.

What about a topless solid suit such as KQJxxx with an outside ace? The overall probabilities and expectations are approximately the same as when you have AKQxxx. However, you will have to face the rather likely possibility that opener has 8 running tricks in addition to the ace of your suit.

There's another way this can backfire, as my partner and I learned a number of years ago at a sectional Swiss in Maine. Our non-vulnerable opponents were playing a weak no trump and the auction went 1NT—3NT.  I doubled with something like ♠xxxx ♥KQJxxx ♦x ♣Ax. Partner had something like ♠xx ♥Ax in the majors and quite reasonably assumed my suit was spades. We learned then, due to an adverse swing of 12 IMPs, that it might be a good idea to cash a major suit ace first just to see partner's card.

So, here are my conclusions if you're thinking of doubling 1NT—3NT for a major suit lead (assuming you've discussed this situation with partner):

Holding	To double or not to double?
AKQxx	Don't!
AKQJx	Do
AKQxxx	Do
AKxxxxx	Absolutely not!
KQJxxx	Maybe but be ready to apologize

Doubling 3NT for a lead

I've previously talked about various different sorts of lead-directing double. But I couldn't find any article where I had discussed doubling a 3NT contract for a lead. It's uncommon, for sure, but when it comes up, you really need to be on the same page with your partner.

Following the same principle of the Lightner double of slams, there is little reason to double a freely bid 3NT to increase the penalty. The arithmetic just doesn't support it. Suppose that they have bid a silly 3NT, not vulnerable, and you think, based on the auction and your holding in the suits bid on your right, that the contract will go down on partner's normal lead, most hopefully by two tricks. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the probabilities of various numbers of tricks for declarer are for 6 thru 10: 10%, 40%, 30%, 15%, 5%. At the other table, your teammates are in the more sensible contract of 2NT. The lead and the number of tricks taken are the same at both tables (yes, I know this is a big assumption). The number of IMPs in your favor is expected to be: 9 * 10% + 6 * 40% + 6 * 30% + -9 * 15% + -9 * 5%, which comes to 3.3. This is modestly positive but it might actually go negative if the opponents redouble when they are making, especially if they are vulnerable. And, then there's the very likely eventuality that they will run to a making part-score or, worse, game. And, far worse, the ignominious possibility that your double will tip declarer off to the winning line!

Contrast this with the situation where the opponents are actually going to make (-6 IMPs) on partner's normal lead, but will go down when you tell partner what to lead (+5 IMPs). That's a swing of 11 IMPs. The swing when the opponents are vulnerable would be 16 IMPs.

Unfortunately, you can't lean over to partner and say "lead a club", though you could try coughing (JK). You have to have a general agreement about what lead you want based on the auction.

Here's the scheme that I think makes the most sense and is easiest to remember:

1. if leader has bid a suit, then lead that suit
2. else if doubler has bid a suit, then don't lead that suit
3. else if dummy has bid a suit, then lead that suit
4. else use your judgment, normally leading your lesser major suit.

I'm also willing to play #2 as "do lead my suit" but it seems to me that partner is probably going to lead my suit anyway. The idea of "don't lead my suit" comes from George Rosenkranz's Tips for Tops. It can often happen that either because doubler had no opportunity to bid two suits or simply because, say, he opened a suit with nothing much in it he thinks that they will go down if you lead something intelligent. It might well be dummy's first bid suit. Let's say that the auction has gone 1♠ (X) p (2♥) p (3NT) p p X all pass. Your hand is ♠Kx ♥Jx ♦Txxx ♣Jxxxx. Normally you would lead the ♠K. But partner is asking you not to lead a spade. What could his other suit be? Could it be hearts? Double of dummy's 2♥ call would have been takeout-oriented, not penalty. Declarer has the spades stopped and he has enough tricks in one or both of the minors for his contract. He's relying (inadvisably) on dummy's hearts and/or hoping you will lead a spade. Get that ♥J on the table, therefore.

The reason for the first rule is that partner may be loath to lead away from a holding such as AQT73 after his RHO has bid notrump. But sometimes players will consider J982 a stopper. If partner has the K doubleton, you can take the first five tricks. But if you lead something else, looking for partner's entry, by the time you get to run those spades it may be too late. Of course, you might have been going to lead your suit anyway, lose the first trick to declarer and then wait for partner to get in and lead through. But there are two things that can go wrong with this plan: declarer may be able to hold up long enough to exhaust partner, or partner may have nothing to get in with. This is particularly true when you have opened the bidding or overcalled—the very occasions when partner will want to take the opportunity to tell you the good news.

In any case, this worked out well during the recent 0-5000 Blue Ribbons in Providence, RI. I opened 2D (weak two) with nobody vulnerable. My diamonds were QJTxxx and I had an ace on the side, I think (ACBL "Live" has lost the details of this event already so I can no longer be sure of the whole layout). My RHO ended up in 3NT and partner doubled with ♦Kx. We soon had a top with +500.

In the second part of this blog, we will talk about the most problematic of all calls: double after it goes 1NT pass 3NT.