In other news, I'm now a certified ACBL club director. Unfortunately (?) my first game last week went by without a single director call, but I may have a different kind of story for you in the next couple of weeks directing at the Cardinal Club.

Today was a unit BAM in San Jose -- a fun form of scoring, and a bunch of people I'd never played with (or rarely played with) before. For some reason (possibly a coincidence) this brought out a bunch of jokerism from me and Ari. Here are some of the ... curious ... hands from the evening.

On the first board of the evening, I upgraded my "good" 14, KTxx Kx Qxx AQ8x, and opened 1NT. Partner, holding Qx xx JT87xx Jxx, decided to check it out. I escaped for down one not vul. On the next hand, I held a rather normal hand, KJT8x AK Kxxx xx. I opened a routine 1S, and lefty overcalled 2C. Partner doubled and righty passed, and I bid the obvious 2D. Now lefty bid 4C (okay...) and partner passed. Righty raised to 5C and when this was passed back to partner he thought (?) before bidding 5D (!). This got doubled, and I was quite unhappy because I thought we might beat 5C. It still seemed that way when partner tabled xx QJTxx QTxxx x, but amazingly lefty was slow-rolling her 9 solid clubs! We went down one for +100 and an eventual win on the board.

The night had just begun.

The third and fourth boards brought more interest. On the third board, I held Ax x AKJ87x JTxx. Lefty bid 1H and partner overcalled 1S. When righty raised to 2H (all red) I had a weird decision. Nothing really seemed right. What would you do?

I eventually bid 3D, planning to bid 3S (!?) over 3H. However, over the 3H, partner surprised me by raising to 4D. I hemmed and hawed. 4S could be right. 6D could be right (or, rather, bidding 4H.) Ultimately I decided partner need not have that much, and contented myself with 5D. This was enough to win the board, but partner's hand was KJxxx AT xxxx KQ and we were cold for six. Resulting? Maybe, I don't know.

Board four of the evening I held x AJ97x xx AK7xx. Partner opened 1H and righty overcalled 1S. I made a 3C fit jump (agree?) and I was stunned when lefty bid 3H (how many points are in this deck?!) Partner bid 4H and I didn't know what to do over righty's 4S, no one vul. I'm not telling you how this one turned out...

There were basically no hands tonight where we just played cards uneventfully. How would you play this one: you hold T9x AKQ8xx A8x x. Partner passes, righty opens 2S red-white, you bid 3H. Partner raises you to 4 and on the SK lead tables 8x JT9 JTx AJxxx. Lefty continues with the SQ which righty overtakes and plays back the SJ. Lefty pitches a small diamond. Plan the play.

After all these interesting hands, we started to get frisky. Holding xxx xxxxx AQ AKx I opened 1C in second seat. This backfired horribly when partner opened 1D, I rebid 1N, and partner raised to 3N: lefty led a heart from AQ97. Partner tabled KJ of hearts, but the defense had the ace of spades and three heart tricks to book it. Who knew I was supposed to open my five-card major as a lead avoider... though maybe that's not such a bad idea.

Ari calmly responded 1S to my 1D on the next hand, holding Axx xx Txx AT8xx, perhaps expecting me to have five when I raised. 2S was a good spot for us. It's funny how much this works out (among other things, it's impossible to defend accurately here.)

Some interesting defensive hands went by, including a 3Sx where we gave declarer the contract and he promptly gave it back, and then we held the following hands:

me: void Qxx AKQ87 Q976x; partner: xxxx JTx xx AKJx. My righty opened 2S in second seat. I bid double, and partner bid 3C showing values since we play lebensohl. I raised to 4C and partner passed. You be the judge... personally I think we are both to blame.

How would you bid this hand from partner: AT8x KJxx J Q98x. Partner opens 1C, suppose you bid 1H (what else.) Partner now rebids 1NT. Your options are:

-- show a 44xx invite
-- invite showing a balanced hand with club support
-- sign off in 3C
-- game force (eventually being able to show your hand)
-- anything else?

And so we reached the last set of the evening. I picked up a nice collection, KJ7 9xx x KT98xx, but unfortunately I was in 4th seat, so my dreams of opening a weak 2C were out the window. Partner opened 1D in second seat, and after righty passed I had to bid quickly. So 1S it was. Partner bid 3S, and here I was, once again.

The diamond queen was led (this looks good) and partner tabled AQ9x AQ8x ATx Qx. Plan the play, once again.

Then on the final board, we had a hilarious auction. I held KQ8 Kx AJ9 AKQxx and I bet my auction was shorter than yours:

3NT -- 4H (transfer)
4S -- 4NT
6S

Partner tabled Axxxx AJx xxxx x. On a club lead, I quickly scampered home with 12 tricks despite a 4-1 trump break, and ran to compare with our teammates. After all of this smoke had cleared, we compared with our teammates and had managed 17 out of 24 to take the event.

Good times.

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?!