Queen’s Gambit

November 24th, 2020  ~  Ray Lee  ~  1 Comment 

It’s hard to escape this Netflix show right now — everyone seems to be talking about it. Apparently it’s making chess sexy again. And I wondered whether it was possible that bridge could get similar treatment… So I started to watch it. Unfortunately, I know something about chess. I used to be (a couple of lifetimes ago) a pretty good player, and I played in a lot of tournaments. So I can tell you that what you see of the game in this series is so bad it’s ludicrous.

I won’t get technical about the dialog and the glimpses of games that we see, although some of that stuff is appalling. Let me just mention that in Episode 2 the heroine plays in a tournament with about 40 entrants, and after 8 rounds of Swiss pairings (winners play winners) there are still 2 players with a 100% record. In Episode 3, she is shown studying a position on a pocket set which is set up with a black square in the right corner — an error only someone who knew nothing about the game would make. I could go on, as there’s lots more, but you get the idea. I gave up 10 minutes into Episode 3.

Season 3 of Fargo, a couple of years back, featured a couple who were supposed to be pro bridge players. We watch them at the table in a Regional. They bid to 3NT, and then one of them prompts his partner to make the opening lead. So bridge hasn’t fared well on the screen either.

If you want to watch QG, be my guest. If you’re not a chessplayer, it may well be fun and distracting, but don’t ever think that the chess world is like this, or ever was. And pray that bridge never gets screwed up on the screen the same way.

MPP merges with 52 Entertainment!

October 22nd, 2020  ~  Ray Lee  ~  2 Comments 

We are very excited to announce that Master Point Press is now a part of the 52 Entertainment Group, based in France. The Group is strategically focussed on bridge and similar games, and includes Bridge Base Online, FunBridge, and French-language book and magazine publisher, Le Bridgeur, among others.

This move will open up new markets for our books and authors, as well as the possibility of our being able to sell products from other parts of the group. MPP President Ray Lee said, ‘I’m delighted that we have secured the future for the company that Linda and I founded 25 years ago, and that it will be an important part of an organization that aims to support and promote bridge throughout the world.’

Download the press release.

LOVEBRIDGE – Love it or Hate It?

October 12th, 2018  ~  Ray Lee  ~  35 Comments 

Last week in Orlando at the World Bridge Championships, I saw a demo of what some think may be the future of the game. It’s called ‘LoveBridge’ and it’s implemented over a private secure network with each player using his own dedicated tablet to play on.

First let me say that the interface is terrific, and highly customizable. Only the most dedicated Luddite will have any problem managing it. You even have individualized choices regarding the way the cards are played — click, double click, or drag and drop. In the time I spent with it, I found it intuitive and very easy to use — much easier than the web interface on BBO, for example, and far more sophisticated. I could go into more detail here, but if you are interested in the way it works for the player, take a look at the videos on www.lovebridge.com.

It’s actually in game management that the whole concept comes into its own, however. No duplicating boards. No leads out of turn, no insufficient bids, no revokes, no going to the wrong table or sitting in the wrong direction or playing the wrong boards. And if you call the Director, the official has a screen that gives every detail of the bidding and play to date — including the exact time each player has taken over each action. The advantages of that are self-evident. For the journalist, it’s a godsend. Every bid and every play at every table is there to be examined, both in real time if it’s broadcast, which it can be, and afterwards. The same information is there for the players. Do you suspect you should have made that Four Spades contract? You can look at every table where they did make it, and see how the play went. The usefulness for teaching, too, is obvious.

LoveBridge was created by a Hungarian company, and they say that the system has already been used successfully in clubs in Budapest. Indeed, they plan a Bridge Festival in February where only the LoveBridge interface will be used. Clearly, use of this system would address some of the issues of top-level bridge in terms of cheating, or the ability to follow these competitions online. For example, there is a limit to the number of Internet feeds that can be provided from major championships, and the natural tendency is therefore to focus on the Open competitions, which attract far more spectators per table on average than do the Women’s and Seniors events (the ratio is 3300 to 400 to 70, according to the WBF official I talked to). The result is that those who do want to watch something other than the Open, or write about it, have a hard time getting access. With a LoveBridge tournament, even if the play isn’t broadcast live, everything will available online shortly afterwards for all tables in all events. Again, you can see examples of the kind of information that is available on the LoveBridge website.

But outside the top levels, is this a solution looking for a problem? One top-level expert I talked to put it this way: ‘Forty years or so ago I learned to play a card game, and I want to keep playing a card game. I don’t even like using a touch-screen phone.’ Is this really the way people in bridge clubs want to interact (or not)? Perhaps it will take time, until the generation(s) that have grown up with touch-screen tablets and phones become the majority of players, before a computer interface becomes the accepted way of playing.

I’m reminded of an incident from many years ago. We owned an early Apple II desktop, and my wife wrote several game programs for our kids. One day my son, who was about 6 at the time, was proudly showing off a Crazy Eights game to some visitors, and they were quite impressed. Then at one point he turned to them and said, ‘You know, you can play this with cards too.’ Maybe that’s where bridge is heading.

A Gift for Roberta

December 12th, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  1 Comment 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

When we moved into our winter home in Florida three years ago, we were surprised to find we already knew one of our neighbors. Roberta is a teacher on BIL (the BBO club where bridge students are connected with volunteer teachers for six months of mentoring), and had encountered Linda there. When we started our bridge classes down here, Roberta helped out and it was great to have her there when we couldn’t be at every table at the same time.

Roberta is also a crossword fan, so it’s easy to pick a gift for her: Jeff Chen’s Bridge Crosswords. Jeff is a constructor whose work has been published in the New York Times as well as the LA Times, and it was a lot of fun working with him on this project. The crosswords in the book are all bridge themed, and range in difficulty from NYT levels Monday through Thursday.

The best way to give you a flavor of the book is to let you try one of the puzzles. This one is a Tuesday level – so about average – and there are more challenging puzzles in the book. How many do you get? 52 of course!

[crossword]

A Gift for Papa

December 10th, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  No Comments 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

Who is your favorite Menagerie character, outside the Hog and the Rabbit?  I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for Papa the Greek – arguably as good a player as the Hog, technically brilliant, intuitive, yet he loses time and time again, because the Hog is always just one step ahead.  His obsession is winning, and he will use any (legal) means to do so – the Hog once described him as being capable of falsecarding with a singleton.  He always knows what everyone will do – except that the Hog usually does something else.

Papa needs more ammunition if he’s going to beat his porcine opponent, and maybe he’ll find it in Mike Lawrence’s new edition of his book on Falsecards.  Lawrence is a writer whom I recommend unhesitatingly to intermediate players.  It doesn’t matter which of his books you read, you’ll learn from it – every point he makes is explained so clearly, and so many examples are discussed in great detail to illustrate each idea.

I love the way Mike starts the Falsecards book, as follows:

Before getting into specific hands and circumstances, I would like to offer a bit of advice relating to falsecards.

A FALSECARD IS INTENDED TO FOOL DECLARER, NOT TO FOOL YOUR PARTNER.

In general, defense is the hardest part of bridge. It is difficult enough when you know what is going on. It’s nearly impossible when you have to guess. If you insist on sending out a bewildering array of signals, you will nail an occasional declarer or two. But you will also nail your partner.

Bridge is a partnership game. One or two or three successes will not compensate for a confused, embarrassed or upset partner.

In other words, now you’ve bought his book, he’s almost warning you about the dangers within – and saying, ‘Continue at your own risk’!

I could pick almost any section of this book to illustrate it, so fascinating are the nuances of cardplay that it contains, for both declarer and the defenders. I’ve picked this one because the opening paragraph contains my favorite passage in the entire book – the bit about subtlety being the key to success in falsecarding.

DISRUPTING THE DEFENDERS’ SIGNALS

Without exception, the most potent falsecards in bridge occur at Trick 1 when declarer plays from his hand. Some of these falsecards were discussed earlier, i.e. winning with an unusual card so as to misrepresent your strength. The most effective falsecards, however, are not the big, brazen ones. They are the subtle ones where you play a two instead of a four. Or a six instead of a three.

Take this situation from West’s point of view:

At notrump, you lead the queen and partner plays the five, declarer the six. Should you lead the suit again?

If this is the setup, you’d best switch.

But, if this is the actual layout, it is correct to continue.

What West should do is not clear. What is clear is that declarer has created an illusion that is going to mislead the defenders rather frequently. What’s scary is that it was so easy to do. Declarer played a six instead of a two. Nothing fancy, nothing gaudy, but still effective.

Good defenders rely heavily on their communications and that usually means good signaling methods with their spot cards. As we’ve just seen, these signaling methods are not perfect.

The examples in this section are among the most important in the book. Their importance stems from many factors.

1. They work.
2. They are easy to execute.
3. They are common.
4. The things that make them work can be used in many other situations.

A Gift for my Son

December 8th, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  No Comments 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

When Linda and I started our family, and managed to produce a girl and a boy, I know we both secretly thought, ‘Ah, a mixed team!’  It was not to be.  Jennifer worked briefly at a bridge club while in high school, decided bridge players were all very strange people, and wanted nothing more to do with the game. 

Colin took after us, though.  In the course of earning a degree in mathematics, he became part of the bridge crowd at Waterloo University, and went on to play in two World Junior Championships for Canada.  A career in software development and raising a family has left him little time to play seriously since those days, but Colin still takes a serious interest in the game.  He’s been very useful to me on several occasions when I was working on a book that involved bridge mathematics and probabilities.

Which brings me to David Bird.  David has written many books for us, but when he first mentioned the idea of two books on opening lead theory based on computer simulations, I really didn’t think it would fly.  He pressed his case, and eventually we agreed to make it part of our Honors Books series, where the author does most of the prepress , editing and proofreading work (and gets a much bigger royalty, of course).  I don’t mind admitting I was dead wrong about the project – Winning Notrump Leads and Winning Suit Contract Leads have both been very successful, proving that people will tolerate books with a mathematical basis as long as there’s a practical application for the math that they can take away.

Which brings me to David’s latest book for us, Winning Duplicate Tactics. This is a book Linda has wanted to do for several years – she feels that many bridge players don’t really understand matchpointed pairs and how different the game is from IMPs (of course, she bases that on many years of playing with me, and I certainly don’t understand matchpoints).  This is the kind of technical intermediate-level book at which David excels, so I was delighted when a gap appeared in his hectic writing schedule and he agreed to do it.  What we didn’t expect when the project started, though, was that David would make extensive use of computer simulations as the basis for his advice in this book, which covers the right approach to matchpoints in every aspect of the game: bidding, opening leads, declarer play and defense.

Let me give you an example.  He has discussed the use of Stayman on 4333 hands, concluding that prevailing wisdom is correct, in that it is better simply to raise partner to 3NT with this shape even though you have a 4-card major.  However, he does note than when partner is not 4333, you are better to play in a 4-4 major fit at matchpoints, in the long run scoring 52.9% compared to the 47.1% that 3NT offers.  The book continues:

Was Terence Reese right?

Many experts decline to bid Stayman on 4-3-3-3 shape. Terence Reese went further. When watching top invitational events such as the Sunday Times Pairs, he would pour scorn on contestants who used Stayman on certain 4-4-3-2 hands. ‘Did you see that?’ he would exclaim, far too loudly because he was deaf in his later years. ‘Absurd! The man bid Stayman.’ Was this another of his famed eccentricities or was there some sense to it? Let’s find out. Partner opens a 15-17 point 1NT and you hold this hand as responder:

♠ K 9 7 4    ♥ K J    ♦ Q 10 7 2    ♣ J 8 3

Should you raise to 3NT or use Stayman to seek a 4-4 spade fit? The fact that the heart doubleton contains two honors reduces the chance that a heart ruff will provide an extra trick. The presence of minor honors and the lack of an ace also tilt the odds towards notrump. These are the results from a simulation that evaluates 5000 deals where Stayman would locate a 4-4 spade fit:

3NT or 4♠, in a 4-4 spade fit with this responding hand?

Ah, not so eccentric, then! 3NT is more likely to make and is the better contract at IMPs. 4♠ has a small advantage at matchpoints. The most common result, occurring on 21% of the deals, is a swing of +20 for 420 against 400, or 450 against 430 (or the matching scores when vulnerable). Now look at this responding hand:

♠ Q 6 5    ♥ 10 8 6 3    ♦ A Q   ♣ K 8 7 3

You have a strong doubleton, your major is weak and there may be too many trump losers in 4♥ . Should you make a Stayman response? Let’s see.

Playing in a 4-4 heart fit, with this responding hand

As on the previous hand, 3NT is more likely to make and is better at IMPs. Playing pairs, you should still choose the suit game. On 33% of deals 4♥ will give you the matchpoints with a +20 advantage (620 against 600, for example).On 23% of the deals 3NT will give you a +10 advantage (630 against 620).

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I know this one is right for Colin!

Here’s one for Fred

December 6th, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  No Comments 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

Fred is one of my oldest friends, in both senses. He was best man at my wedding forty-two years ago, and we have played bridge together many, many times over the years – as partners, as team-mates, and even as opponents.  Like me, he remembers the golden days of Toronto bridge – at least for us, that’s what they were.

When I arrived from England in 1969, I soon started playing at Kate Buckman’s Bridge Studio – or just ‘Kate’s’ as we all called it.  The characters there were many and varied, as was their bridge ability. Many of them had curious nicknames – the Moo Cow, the Jolly Green Giant, the Shoe, the Owl, the Bambino, the Fish, the Fowl, Black Cloud and so forth.  Many of us were, like me, very young, with an inflated idea of our own ability.  We loved to mess around with new bidding ideas, and play in silly ways just to prove that we could do things like use ‘No Peek’ (a system where you couldn’t look at your cards during the auction), or bid 3NT on every hand, and still win.

We weren’t as good as we thought we were, of course, but we were enough better than many of our opponents to get away with it. Eventually, of course, we encountered players who really could play the game, and most of us mended our ways, becoming interested in playing ‘properly’ and winning in legitimate ways against good opposition.  Several of our coterie back then were talented enough that they went on to play at the world level for Canada.

Fred was part of that scene forty-plus years ago, which is why he’s going to like Michael Schoenborn’s book, Bridge on a Shoestring. In this, Mike tells of his own adventures at Kate’s and the other bridge clubs in Toronto, and of his eventual epiphany and conversion to ‘proper bridge’.  In the end, he does achieve his goal of playing in the Bermuda Bowl, but you’ll have to read the book to see how that turned out.

The story is told in the third person by the Shoe’s favorite kibitzer, Bungalow Bill Miller.  Here’s an extract that will give you the flavor of it:

The Shoe was a superb natural card player, and like many in his circle, he had little use for textbook bids and plays. The objective was to win, and have fun doing it, rather than to slavishly follow well-trodden paths. Shoe’s inclinations prompted him to reinvent the game, rather than seeking assistance from experts. He particularly disdained the percentage play, reasoning that 52% for the drop against 50% for the finesse paid off one time in fifty, whereas any really good player, himself automatically included, could induce the opponents to make a mistake at least half the time. His goal was fittingly immodest: one day he would play in the Bermuda Bowl. What better place to begin such a journey than at the Hart House Bridge Club?

The first bridge hand that the Shoe ever submitted to The Kibitzer was rejected by its then editor, Sami Kehela, one of the few players who could legitimately lay claim to being possibly even better than Shorty. We have to presume that he considered the story too improbable to publish, or perhaps just not instructive. I can vouch for the hand because I watched it. Justice did not necessarily triumph. Shoe was directing the Hart House game sitting at his usual spot, South at Table 1. He claimed that he had learned from the newspaper bridge columns that South always got the good hands. He picked up, at favorable colors:

♠ 8 6   ♥ —   ♦ 4   ♣ J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

The Shoe’s RHO opened four spades, and Shoe so desperately wanted to bid five clubs that he actually hesitated more than the required ten seconds before passing. His partner on this occasion had been introduced to me as Eric the Half Bee, and I had to wonder how he had ever met up with the Shoe. The Half Bee was an older, silver haired gentleman in a blue suit. Later, it transpired he was a successful engineer whose only shortcoming was a fanatic love of bridge. His success in life and intelligence had not, so far, been transferable to duplicate bridge.

The Half Bee would be bound to assume that a five club bid showed more than a jack. Worse than that from the Shoe’s point of view, if a five club bid proved unsuccessful, the Half Bee would be sure to win the post-mortem discussion. He’d have enough opportunity to do that when he treated the Shoe to another dinner. Reluctantly, the Shoe passed, as did LHO. The Half Bee doubled, RHO passed, and Shoe contributed a modest five clubs, confident that any blame had now safely been transferred to the Half Bee. The five club bid seemed to bring the table to life: LHO bid five diamonds, the Half Bee five hearts, RHO five spades. This was surely what bidding up the line was all about! Once again, the Shoe wanted to bid on, but even he could see no way to justify it. After a pass by LHO, the Half Bee came to the rescue with a bid of five notrump. This was all the excuse Shoe needed: he could win any argument that might possibly ensue. If the heart bid had not promised club tolerance, surely the five notrump bid did? Anyway, holding all the low clubs, where was his hand entry? Accordingly, six clubs by the Shoe, double by LHO, all pass.

 After the opening lead of the ♦Q, Shoe was in a position to make the hand regardless of the location of the ♥A: two rounds of diamonds pitching a spade, followed by a club lead, putting West in a position of yielding a heart trick or a ruff and discard at Trick 4! In case anyone had overlooked the beauty of this hand, the Shoe expressed disappointment with the other two +1090 scores, which probably only occurred because he had the misfortune to find the ♥A with RHO. Shoe persisted with further analysis: even on a diamond lead, declarer in 6♠ would lose only four tricks for minus 800. Furthermore, 6♣ would not make from the Half Bee’s hand, as the ♠A could be cashed. As far as I know, this was the first occasion when the Shoe noted that the hand would play at least a trick better from his side, an observation codified in Shoe’s Second Rule of Bridge.

A Gift for David

December 4th, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  2 Comments 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

David Silver and I met playing bridge, naturally, but then one day I was warming up on the squash court when the door opened and David poked his head in.  Having discovered this new mutual interest, we began playing regularly, and continued to do so for many years until David’s worsening eyesight made the proceedings a little too hazardous for us both.

David’s bridge is a product of his upbringing.  He is a fine natural card player, who became an expert player by the simple process of playing for stakes he could not afford.  That was many years ago, and the bidding was primitive by modern standards.  And today, David’s bidding is still primitive by modern standards.  But as any old-timer will tell you, that’s what made them all such great card players – they were usually in the wrong contract, and very often too high.  They often needed to make tricks appear out of thin air, or pull off some amazing swindle.

I think David will appreciate a book on cardplay, and there’s no doubt what it should be: Eric Rodwell’s The Rodwell Files, certainly the best and most original book on play that has appeared in at least fifty years.  And don’t be misled by the ‘with Mark Horton’ on the cover.  This isn’t some celebrity putting his name on a ghost-written memoir – yes, Mark did a lot of research in coming up with example deals, but the ideas, the concepts and pretty much all the writing are Eric’s.  Given his tournament schedule, I have no idea how he found the time.  Even after we were well into production, Eric would send me half a dozen hands from every tournament he played, with the note like ‘Great example of XYZ’ or ‘We have to get this one in somewhere’, until I finally had to say ‘Stop! We have to finalize everything and go to press.’

Every aspect of cardplay is covered, both for declarer and defenders.  And while the book is mostly geared to advanced players, Eric thinks almost anyone can pick it up and get something out of the first few chapters.  As well as general principles, a great deal of space is devoted to describing specific maneuvers, many of which have never been in print before.  Eric strongly believes that giving things names, often the sillier the better, helps one remember them, so the book contains sections on such ideas as the Crossover Stopper, Cash and Thrash, the Shortshake, Gouging, Days of Thunder, Bait and Switch, and a host of others.

Here’s one of my favorites, which Eric calls

THE SPEED OF LIGHTNING PLAY

Now let’s move on to some general tactical ideas — some of them are legitimate, in the sense that the opposition can do nothing to counter them, while others depend on inducing an (often slight) error. The speed of lightning play is one of my favorites. As any fan of the band Queen will anticipate, it can be very, very frightening.

If RHO is the dangerous opponent, you can often lead away from a holding like AJx in dummy toward holdings in the closed hand headed by the ten, on the theory that RHO won’t go up with Qx(x). A common variation is where you lead low from KJx toward 109xxx in hand. Of course, you must be able to afford to lose a trick to RHO later on. This play is most valuable when you have something like Qx opposite AJx in hand in the suit they led (dummy’s queen having won Trick 1), where East can’t hurt you later, only now.

This play is so named because East will play low at the speed of lightning, as a matter of habit. In fact, if he knows that he is the dangerous opponent, there is every reason for him to play the queen (danger hand high!) since if he ducks, declarer will doubtless try some coverage ducking play.

Here’s a full deal showing the play in its purest form.

West leads the ♠6 to dummy’s queen, East playing low. With only six top tricks you need to develop the diamonds. As long as East doesn’t get in on the first diamond lead, with the queen, you are safe. So your best shot is to lead the ♦3 from dummy at Trick 2, hoping East, dealt Qx, plays low at the speed of lightning.

The whole deal is:

This type of play can have some unforeseen consequences if we expand it to include other situations where players reflexively play low when they could play an honor to win a trick.

With this combination:

declarer played low to the jack. When that held, he played low to the king and then a third heart — the suit splitting 3-3 for three tricks!

You might also get away with three tricks with something like:

♠ K 7 3
♠ J 8 6 2

You play low to the king, then low to the jack, hoping West has ♠Axx and ducks twice (I have seen it happen!).

A Book for Cynthia

December 2nd, 2014  ~  Ray Lee  ~  2 Comments 

For December all of Linda and Ray’s Holiday Gift Picks will be on sale for 20% off at ebooksbridge.com. To see a full listing of ebooks on sale visit ebooksbridge.com or
our informative blog post on BridgeBlogging.com.

My friend Cynthia is lucky enough to live in Sarasota full-time, not just half the year like us.  She and her husband Colin are fine tennis players, and I’ve enjoyed playing with them both.  Cynthia is also a good bridge player, but she gave up the game about a year ago because, even as a duplicate player, she couldn’t stand getting bad cards all the time.  Like most of us, she wants her side to win the auction, and not be at the mercy of the opponents’ erratic bidding – at least on her fair share of the boards.
I’ve got the perfect gift for her, one that might even tempt her back to the bridge table:  Eddie Kantar’s Defensive Tips for Bad Cardholders.  Eddie is one of my favorite people as well as one of my favorite bridge authors.  He is that rare kind of writer, a world champion who can understand and communicate with players who have far less talent for the game than he does himself – which is most of us.  And he dispenses his advice with a wonderfully gentle self-deprecating humor.
This book is what I call a ‘bathroom book’ – it consists of hundreds of short sections that can each stand on its own, so you can pick it up and open it anywhere, and read for five minutes, and get something out of it.  The topics run the gamut that you would expect, from opening leads to avoiding being endplayed, covering second- and third-hand play and of course counting (points, tricks and distribution) along the way.  Eddie designates some tips ‘advanced’, and also notes the ones which require partnership discussion and agreement if you are going to adopt them (like signaling methods, for example).
Here’s one tip that warns you not to try to be too clever (labeled ‘advanced’):
Do not take your eye off the ball by focusing all of your attention on one suit to the exclusion of the entire hand; a trap that is easy to fall into.

East-West vul.
Dealer South♥ 

Opening lead:  ♦ 2  (third and lowest)

Declarer plays low from dummy, you win the king and declarer plays the queen. Now what?
Notice your club holding. Do you remember your surrounding plays? If so, you probably switched to the ♣ 10 hoping declarer had AJx and partner Kxx. Guess what? Declarer does have AJx and partner does have Kxx and you have just let declarer make the hand! You forgot to look at the whole hand.
Partner has apparently led from a five-card suit and declarer has un­blocked with Qx, preparatory to finessing the dx10 after drawing trumps. Your play is to kill the dummy at once by returning a diamond. With no side entry in dummy, declarer is forced to try to cash a top diamond at Trick 3. No luck, you ruff and your club and heart winners come later.
Declarer’s hand: ♠A K Q 10 9 5 3  ♥2  ♦Q 8  ♣A J 5
Partner’s hand:  ♠J  ♥9 7 5 4  ♦J 9 6 4 2  ♣K 6 2

If you return the cx10 at Trick 2, declarer wins the ace, draws trumps and leads a diamond to the ten; seven spades, two diamonds and a club comes to ten tricks.

Happy holidays, Cynthia, and take special note of Tip #575 – ‘If you get a run of lousy hands, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself.  You may be able to help partner out with accurate signaling, perhaps even an unblock here and there.’

Marshall Miles

February 7th, 2013  ~  Ray Lee  ~  3 Comments 

It is with sadness that I report the passing of Marshall Miles, at the age of 87.  Always an original thinker, he was still making contributions to bidding ideas and theory up to the end of his life.  His most recent book, More Accurate Bidding, was published only last year. Marshall won 5 North American Championships, most of them partnering Eddie Kantar, but his proudest achievement was winning the World Senior Teams in 2004, at the age of 78. His books include two that are classics of bridge literature: How to Win at Duplicate Bridge, and All 52 Cards.

Working with Marshall was always interesting — his ideas were often idiosyncratic and non-mainstream.  While editing It’s Your Call a couple of years ago I mentioned to Marshall that I had given several of the problems in the book to Linda, and each time she had chosen the same bid he recommended — in each case one that most of the bidding panel had not.  There was a pause. ‘Well’, he said, ‘She must be a very good player then.’  After that they played together a few times on BBO, but Linda told me that their styles were too dissimilar for them to mesh will as a partnership — and also that she felt somewhat intimidated playing with such an icon of the game.

The message I received this morning was from Marshall’s email address, and the first thing I noticed was that it had an attachment.  My immediate assumption was that Marshall was sending me a new manuscript (roughly an annual event), but sadly that was not the case on this occasion.

————————————————————

For more information on Marshall Miles please visit the Wikipedia page, a bio on the ACBL Hall of Fame, and his author page on eBooksBridge.com.