Yesterday was quite an interesting day. In the afternoon, Li-Chung and I participated in the "Bidding Box" feature in the ACBL Bridge Bulletin (look for us next month.) We did okay, I thought; we had two nice auctions to top spots, two of the problems were basically insurmountable with our system, only one did we outright flub (my fault, I think.) It was definitely a fun time, and it'll be cool to see my name in print (for a second consecutive month; our Red Ribbon win was in the May bulletin.)

Then I went to a sadlily-small Cardinal Club in the evening, and the cards sort of went nuts. We had some insane tops and some hilarious bottoms, as always, ending up just north of 50 percent, but certainly a fun way to get there. I learned something from this deal:

AKQJx KJTxx xx x all red. Partner opened 1D and righty overcalled 1H. I went for the penalty pass and partner bid 2D. As always, I had to catch up now. I bid 2H, partner responded with 3C which righty (overcaller) doubled. This put me in a very sticky situation. I wanted to play 3NT from partner's side at this point, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I tried 3S, but partner wasn't on the same page (perhaps I should have passed 3Cx?), and he bid 4D. I now tried a natural 4NT as a last-gasp, but partner pulled to 5D (maybe thinking it was pick a minor?). This seemed untenable at matchpoints so I pulled to 6. Partner's hand was xx x AKQxxx Kxxx and went down one...

The moral is not what happened, not really, but basically that making a penalty pass of 1H with 5 spades (or vice versa) is silly. With this hand, partner is only going to reopen with a double if he has 3 spades, and if he has 3 spades we have good slam chances (and often he'd have 4 to reopen with a double.) Meanwhile, we have to beat this 800, and if we are beating it 800 with him having 3 spades we probably _are_ making a slam.

Anyway, that was definitely an instructive hand. This hand was less instructive: I held AKJ x JTx QT98xx. Partner opened an innocent 1H in first-seat favorable and the auction quickly escalated:

1H (2H) x (2S) (x suggests penalty)
4D (4S) x (p)
5C! (p) 5D (p)
5H (p) p (x)
xx all pass

When he bid 4D, I knew he had at least 11 cards in the reds and a huge hand. My holdings in the reds sucked, so I was thrilled when they bid 4S and I could double it. But now partner pulled again! Now he has at least 12 cards in the reds (and by general probability theory exactly 12 almost always.) Amazing as it is, I thought he was patterning out by bidding 5C, meaning that he was 0751 or 0661 (we play substitution, so I thought he might have pulled to 4NT with 1750 or 1660, or maybe 5D with 1660 or something.) I had the spade ace, not the club ace (plus he was more likely to pull with a spade void), so I bid only 5D. In fact, partner was 1660 missing the diamond king. They could have held 5Hxx to 11 tricks, but failed to tap him twice, and he took twelve. The redouble was key, since 5Hx white is only 650 (750 with an overtrick), and the other scores in our direction were 800 and 920! So the redouble was worth all the matchpoints; how often do you see that?!

Psyching is an interesting beast. There's this idea that the people you should be psyching against are bad/novice players, that they get flustered and so on, but depending on the type of psych, this isn't really true -- first of all, in theory you are headed for good results against these people anyway, and second of all, they may not count the hand out to make your weird bid pay off during the play.

There are psychs and then there are psychs. Probably the most common psychs are:

1) Opening super light in third seat -- for instance, 1S on KQTx x xxxxx xxx. I don't really consider this a psych so much as a lead-directing bid. Would overcalling 1S on this hand (which I've done; in fact, I overcalled 1H over 1C on xx KQ9x Qxxxxx x just the other day; the auction proceeded something like (1C) 1H (x) 4H (p) p (x) (5C) and when declarer attempted to cross to dummy with a diamond my partner ruffed much to his surprise) be a psych? Would doubling opponents' artificial 1S bid be a psych?

This is technically a psych (if you routinely open less-than-8 (?) counts you have to prealert the opponents), but it doesn't really gummy up the works, and I would say it's more of a tactical bid than anything else.

2) Opening 1NT on generic nonsense. I held Qxx x JTxx xxxxx and confidently opened 1NT all white first seat. Partner bid 2D transfer to hearts which I passed.

The funny thing is that I would have done much better completing the transfer. I won't go too deep into psych theory, but I always get cold feet when I open 1NT and tend to pass partner's next bid in these situations. Partner had a great hand for 2D actually, x AKTxx AQx KQTx, but if I had accepted the transfer partner would (presumably) have bid 3C which would have been a great spot (and partner could easily have had her spade and diamond holdings reversed.) I of course was worried that the next bid would be 3NT or somesuch, but with only four diamonds it was probably odds-on to complete the transfer (and if the points are split evenly-ish I might not have gotten doubled in 3NT anyway, with opponents perhaps cold for game.)

This psych is hard to combat if you aren't playing penalty doubles of 1NT. Sometimes you can just wing a strong-sounding bid later, but this is always troublesome (suppose you have your 18 points, there is no psych, and partner really has a yarborough), and most of your strong sounding bids (e.g. (1NT) p (2H*) p (2S) 2NT) have probably been appropriated by competitive bidding later. You won't really be able to get into a position where partner can express their hand intelligently; most of the time either you will have to overbid and hope both that it's a psych and that partner has some values, or you will have to content yourself with an action that could be made on far worse a hand.

This, of course, is part of why you're not allowed to psych all the time. I once (I admit) conducted a study on BBO where I simply opened or overcalled 1NT on every hand when possible. The psych showed a substantial net profit. Of course, this is playing against randoms who are probably not regular partners and who don't know how to handle the inevitable convoluted sequences, but still I think it's a very powerful one.

So, with this pro-psyching platform so far, I feel like I need to insert some things about how to defend against psychs. Against the 1N psych there's little you can do but hope that the 1N bidder's partner has values and maybe spec double their final contract, assuming 1N opener does not reveal the psych as I often stupidly do. A far more common psych is the following:

(2D) x (2H)

The opponents open a weak two, partner makes a takeout double, and RHO bids a new suit. This is an easy, costless psych; partner is unlikely to raise you and if he does you can always take him back to his suit (perhaps after being doubled.) What's amazing to me is that many people play a double here as takeout! No, no, no. Not negotiating with terrorists is one thing, but trust me, you want to play penalty doubles here. If you haven't seen this one yet, you will, it's among the most common of psychs.

I hadn't had many interesting hands in the last several sessions, but yesterday was really fun. Some highlights:

Despite the fact that the boards weren't that interesting, I had one of the most fun rounds of my life. On the first one, I held some nondescript 4234 14-count. I opened 1C, partner responded 1S, and I bid 2S which ended the auction. Lefty now led the five of hearts out of turn. Partner had five options, and he chose an unusual one: he left the five of hearts on the table as a penalty card. This somehow got his left hand opponent to lead her stiff jack of trumps, and with QT74 facing A953 this was quite helpful, though the defense still had a trump trick. He played out some of the hand and eventually his RHO, who had the H5 as a penalty card on the table, won a trick with the ace of clubs and played back another club! I guess she forgot about the penalty card, but this worked out great for us because a heart return would have resulted in an additional trick for the defense. So despite forcing herself to get it right by the laws, she got it wrong anyway.

On the next board I inadvertently (well, I had nothing else to play for really) pulled off a winkle. I stretched to open 1C on KT 98 K8xx AJ7xx, and soon found myself playing 1NT after partner had bid a spade. LHO led a small diamond and dummy tabled Jxxx Jxx A7x Kxx. In an effort to conceal my points, I won the diamond on the board and played CK and a club to my jack. This held as both opponents followed, and I promptly ran off five clubs. Lefty pitched a heart, a fatal mistake, as after I cashed my DK, with six tricks to go she held AQ of spades, AQ of hearts, and two good diamonds. I threw her in with a diamond; she cashed two diamonds and then SA HA, but on the HQ continuation her partner was winkled! If she overtook the HQ with the HK my jack would be good (she didn't have any spades left), and if she didn't lefty would be forced to lead to my SK for an eighth trick. (It also would have worked if she hadn't cashed the SA and partner had retained a spade.)

So that was kind of neat. Fun hands, and I haven't even told you about the hand where we bid and made six notrump off the ace-king of spades. The moral, as always: don't overcall a jack-high suit lest your partner lead it against the opposition's six notrump.

Last weekend was our district's GNT flight B qualifier. As you may recall, we won this last year and then went on to win the national GNT B; you may recall the dramatic story, where in our first match (in the round of 16!) we went to a playoff and then lost 13 on the first board, but managed to win that somehow. Given that we won nationals, it's the equivalent of a team winning its first round NCAA match with a miracle three from halfcourt and then going onto win the title.

Anyway, this time around, off our win, we were seeded first, although there were similar dangerous teams in the field as last year. Our district has very strong flight B players; counting us last year, we've won three of the last four years at nationals with very different teams. I knew it wouldn't be easy to make it through qualifiers.

Indeed, in the first round, we were up only two (against the last seed!) at halftime, although mostly this was the flat boards. In the second half, things were more like what we might have expected: we picked up 50-ish to win handily. I wasn't sure whether this was an auspicious or an unauspicious start.

In our second match, cutting the field from 12 to 8, we were in a round-robin. Again, the boards seemed really flat; I don't have any remotely dramatic stories to tell you. At halftime, we were something like +15 to one team and -20 to the other; just a few blips, guesses, whatever, not huge swings anywhere. We played fine, I thought; in the second half I really got tired towards the end (I haven't been getting much sleep for various reasons), and felt like the last few weren't so great, but we ended up +1 IMP on differential and advanced.

On to the quarterfinals. I felt like we had gotten a decent draw: a solid team to be sure, but not one of the many dangerous floaters in the draw. So what happened? We were down 41 after the first half. What can I say? They played basically perfectly and none of the positions we took worked, and the same thing happened at the other table. Perhaps the first two boards (though they only cost six IMPs) contributed to their being in a positive mental state. On the first board I held Jxxxx x Jxxx Jxx nobody vul. Two passes to me and I opened 1NT. I didn't really do this because it was the first board; it just seemed like a good hand to psych on. This almost went well. Lefty passed, and partner bid 3H showing four spades and a game force. I thought we would buy this for 4S down a few with the opponents cold for 4H, but unfortunately (system loss!) righty doubled this. I bid a quick 4S and now lefty went into the tank and finally bid 5H. Partner doubled but we had only two tricks (well, he had only two tricks, I had none), -650 the hard way.

On the second board, red/white, I had another awkward hand, x AQx AQJ Q9xxxx. Righty opened 4S in first chair and I made an aggressive double. Partner, holding a 2524 hand with the club king and out, passed, and they again made eleven tricks for -690 the hard way. In retrospect, I think these aggressive doubles of 4S are not a good thing, but not because of what happened. The thing is, you're getting stolen from, but partner may well wing a slam, which will probably go down since he probably expects more from you (and he has to guess because there is almost no room to investigate.) It's hard to recover equity, but of course the same sort of thing is happening at the other table, so you don't need to. And partner, especially at these colors, may stretch to bid instead of passing anyway, playing you for more. I think I'll stop doing this.

Anyway, this was only lose 6, but I think it emboldened our opponents. Like I said, they played flawlessly, there wasn't much we could do. We pulled out the swings in the second half, and some worked, but not enough; we lost another 9 on the set, and, amazingly, we had gone from national champions to losing in the quarterfinals of qualifying. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

As many of you know already, I had a very successful trip to Detroit; we managed to win the Red Ribbon pairs. This is probably the premiere flight B event in the country (if there is such a thing), and obviously it was amazingly thrilling to win it. It's definitely the largest field I've ever won out of (176 pairs to start with), although I guess you could contend that the GNT-B field is implicitly larger (including teams that are eliminated at the district level, etc..) Anyway, obviously it was tremendous.

How did we win? We did not play perfectly, far from it. We played very well, and got lucky, although the only session in which the opponents gave us gifts left and right was the big game we had in the second qualifying session which left us in the overnight lead -- 69 percent (in a huge field, this is a ridiculous score), and it would have been higher except that on the last hand of the evening, I picked up AJ9x JTxx xx Axx white/red. After two (one?) passes, righty opened 1D, I doubled, lefty tried 1S and partner bid 3H. Righty now bid 4D. I thought that we were odds-on to make 3H and that if this was making, we were getting a terrible score anyway, so I made a matchpoint double going for the +200. Instead, I got the -710.

As you can see, it's certainly not true that everything we did worked out. But here's an example of an amazingly lucky thing:

Holding Jxx J876x Axx Qx, I think red/red, partner opened 1D. Righty overcalled 1H and I passed; lefty bid 1S and partner doubled. Righty now bid 2S, and I really ought to have bid 3D here, but I passed. Partner doubled again and righty passed. Now I was stuck. My hand seemed to me to be worth more than a 3D bid; partner apparently had a big hand, and I had six points in his primary suits. I tried to do something clever, namely bidding a temporizing 3H (which was ludicrous as partner was never bidding 3NT on this auction.) Of course, all of this could have been avoided if I had bid 3D in the first place.

Anyway, I was hoping partner would figure out whether to bid game or not, and which game, but instead my dummy in 3H was x AKx KQxxx AKTx.

So here we were, playing in their overcall suit at the 3-level after an accident, and ... +170 for a great result (5D is cold but the field didn't get there.) Now that's lucky.

The end of the second day was pretty amazing. We sat down to the final round knowing we were doing well and had a chance, and we sat down against friends, and wouldn't you know it, we got the worst possible normal result on both boards (not bottoms, but certainly at best average-minuses.) -100 in 3S when we bid aggressively, -100 in 2D when they defended optimally. I turned to them and said, "I think you just cost us the event," smiling (of course they had done nothing wrong, just the opposite; it would have been extremely unethical for them to punt to us in this situation.)

And when I saw the results with 2 rounds to go I was sure they had. A pair had had a slight lead on us going into the final session, with three other pairs very close; none of those other pairs had done well, but we were three percentage points ahead of the leading pair with two to go. Our second to last round was also average-minus, and I knew we would drop a bit. So it depended on what they did.

After being not at all nervous the entire time, my heart starting pounding madly as soon as the last card on deal 104 of the event had been played. We had played them fast, so there was a lot of waiting game. I went outside, had some food, made a phone call, paced around the hallway, and came back just as the results were finishing being entered. I stared at the directors and watched as the print-out started...

1412.31 Mike Develin-Li-Chung Chen
1411.20 Ron Nelken-Sidney Kantar

And I didn't feel safe yet. One matchpoint on a 43 top! That's a scoring error, an appeal, even a couple of scoring errors not involving either of us. The second place pair came and congratulated us and we were chatting, and they said, well, we should go look for scoring errors. I waited patiently. The Daily Bulletin editor photographed and interviewed us, and just as he was wrapping up, they came running up. "We found a scoring error. Seriously."

My heart sank.

They had been +600 instead of +500 on a board. Surely this would turn the tide. I wasn't really breathing.

The directors looked at the board. +690, +660, -100, etc., etc.. No +500's, +600's, or anything. They paged through it. "I don't think this is going to change the matchpoints," one director said. They punched it in and it came up 1412-1411 again. We had, amazingly, survived the scoring error, and that was that, and I was able to breathe again.

It was a tremendous experience.

The next two days, seventh in the NAP flight B, we weren't completely there (and of course were super tired on the last day with its 10 AM start), but we autopiloted our way to a seventh-place finish, whatever, it hardly mattered. Winning this event by a single matchpoint on a 43 top will live forever in my memory. To put it in perspective, over a four-day stretch, we won by less than one-tenth of one percent, an amazingly close margin. We needed every matchpoint double, every overtrick, every lucky break, every bad opening lead by the opponents and good opening lead by us, everything. What a game.

Vegas was, as always, a ton of fun. I admit that I was in a sleep-deprived haze most of the time (hyperoxygenation of casino air can only accomplish so much); the bridge at the tables was a lot of fun if unmemorable, at least the first two days (someday I'll realize that Sunday morning bridge is really just not for me and graciously bow out of it.) I even had some kibitzers for some of the time, during which I got a series of incredibly boring hands, most of which I put down as dummy (Victor certainly got his money's worth declaring on the trip.)

Tons of fun bridge and fun non-bridge. What could go wrong?

This was super neat today:

            xx
            Qxxx
            K65
            Q9xx

T9876               AQJ
KT9x                Jx
Q2                  A973
xx                  Axxx
            Kxx
            Axx
            JT84
            KJT

As you might have guessed from the title, the key card in this hand is that not-quite-smallest of diamonds, the four, lying in my hand. My RHO opened 1NT which lefty elected to pass, and so we were defending 1NT (I was sitting South.) I made the normal lead of the diamond jack, which went to the queen, king, and ace. RHO now played the spade ace followed by the spade queen, which I won with the king. Trying to cut off declarer from the board, I played a small heart, and partner (bless her) worked out to play the queen. She returned the diamond six; declarer tried the seven and I won the eight.

I had a pretty good count on the hand at this point. Declarer was marked with AQJ of spades and the heart jack (he had played small from dummy when I played a small heart) , ace of diamonds. That's twelve points, so he must have exactly the club ace to open a 15-17 notrump. This places partner with the club queen, so I shifted to the jack of clubs (in case righty had opened 1NT on 14 and had only the queen. Declarer won the ace and cashed the spade jack, then tried exiting with a club. I went up with the king (I wasn't born yesterday) and played the CT, which partner overtook to cash the nine.

At this point in the three-card ending, I held HA and T4 of diamonds. Declarer had the heart jack, the nine of diamonds, and another diamond, while partner held two hearts and a diamond. As partner reached for her diamond, I prayed that it was the five and not the three, and I was overjoyed when this proved to be the case. Declarer played the three and I smugly inserted my four, taking the last two tricks with the heart ace and diamond ten.

So many relevant spots! Diamond five, diamond four, club nine, all playing a role in this very satisfying 1NT down three.