President-Bernetha
Henry
March 2008 Vol. XXV No.3
Editor – Patrick
Lauterbach
All the
news that fits, we print
TRICKS
AND TREATS
For
Members of the
(Calendar On-line at www.cbcbridge.com)
Our February party was the ACBL-wide Fund
game. Great analysis by Frank
Stewart, a great Valentine’s theme by Rosa Shaw and a great game by Ken and
Brian.
N/S 15 tables ACBL Fund Game E/W __
1) Mary Trzecieski/Bill Fogleman
180.50 Ken
Fasching/Brian Lipscomb
199.25
2) Mary Townhill/DaMaris Rorie 173.50 Margaret Hill/Marj Edens 189.96
3) James Chianelli/Henry Momand
172.00 Butch
Maybin/Harold
4) Louise Hightoweer/Alvaree Hanley 168.50 Ellie Hack/Fran Jenkins 183.20
5)Joan Osteen/Ellen Oliver
167.50 Mary and
Rick Giles
182.46
Up
the Ladder Regional Master-Anita
Momand
A new Gold Life Master-Joyce
Hampton!!
The
game on Saturday March 15 will be held somewhere-just not at the
Watch the Web site and listen at the
games for announcement of the location.
We continue with some more defensive help from Eddie Kantar 37) When defending a suit contract, there are two main techniques declarer uses to garner extra tricks: 1) setting up a long suit in dummy, 2) ruffing losers in the short hand (usually the dummy.) If dummy comes down with a long and a short suit and you have the long suit bottled up, lead trumps because the long suit is not usable. If it appears that the long suit is usable, play an attacking defense going for outside tricks quickly. If the dummy comes down balanced, declarer has no place to get rid of losers and will eventually lose them. Therefore you and your partner should adopt a passive defense. Avoid breaking new suits if possible. Let them have what they have coming.
38) (ed. note: This is one of the best tips for the advancing player he put in this collection) The best time to lead a short suit is with trump control. A-x-(x) or K-x-x are great trump holdings to lead from shortness. However, if ruffing will cost you a trump trick, leads from shortness with trump holdings such as j-10-x-x, Q-J-9-x or K-Q-9-x are counter productive.
Our Wednesday night Supervised Play that has
been running since January 2007 averaged 25 students over the past 7 weeks since
resuming in January this year. This group is eager to learn and has lots of
fun. We provide a friendly
environment where people of all levels, but especially new-comers can come and
play, ask questions be mentored, brush up on the game if they haven’t played for
years and be successful. “The Play
of the Hand” 9 week course that began 1/19 is going well. There are two
groups-beginners and intermediates. We have 33 students in all who are learning
and improving their game each week.
Meeting at the
On a related note…Congratulations to Bernetha Henry, Chris Webb and Sylvia White. They got their certification as bridge teachers at the Hilton Head Regional.
For you on-line subscribers-the calendar is available at the CBC web page (see above).
Something extra for you on ‘page three’ (this will also be available in the web site version.)
New phone number for Emily Lamphere 714-6299, now in Blythewood.
In
case you missed it…..
Almost everyone knows my opinion of a 2NT(8-9 Invitational) response to partner’s 1 NT opening. I’ve expressed it in more or less trenchant terms (depending on company) for years.
For those who won’t take my word for it, here’s an excerpt from Marilyn Hemenway in the February 2008 ACBL Bulletin’s Its just Mayhem column.
“Rule of 16. When contemplating raising a 1 NT opening to 3NT, count the number of high card points and the number of cards that are 8 and higher. If the sum is more than 16, you should raise to 3 NT. This avoids the need for the use of 2NT as a bid showing 8 HCP and asking partner to raise if at the top of his 1 NT bid. One advantage of this method is that it frees up 2 NT for use as something other than an invitational bid.”
My evaluation method is a little different-I require at least two Aces or Kings to bid 3NT (easing transportation problems) and if I only have 8 HCP-it should be two aces (one of which heads at least a 5 card holding). Those who bid 2NT on a “really good” 7 HCP are beyond hope. Those who continue to bid 2 NT invitational rather than use some evaluation method for jumping to 3NT will continue to make 3 NT often enough (or thread the needle at 2nt passed out) to keep them happy: and they will go down often enough to keep me happy. I leave it to the reader to figure out which of us is coming out ahead.
We have a host for the March birthday party. We need one for April through December 2008. If you can bring the cake, let Joyce or me know.
If you know of an ailing member or one who has suffered a loss, notify Karen Coulter-the club would like to send a message of concern and support.
Board meeting: March 3rd,
Points won at CBC Trophy races
Centurion Cup- 1) Zan Edmunds (45.36) 2) Jim Willrodt (41.30) 3) Lib Odom (36.09)
4) Sam Robison (17.82) 5) Cynthia Cone (16.80) 6) Francis Robinson (16.37) 7) Melinda Young (13.66) 8) Faye Levinson(11.85) 9) Jay Shahani (10.85) 10) Dozier Shaw (9.30)
Sol Lourie Open
Henry Mills 0-2000
Coleman Farrell NLM
1) Brian Lipscomb
115.07 Lil Hopkins 82.15 Jan Ripley
65.60
2) Pat Lauterbach
112.60 Jim
Chianelli 71.06
3) Ken Fasching 108.89 Mary Townhill 66.86
5) Joyce Lauterbach 85.74 Bernetha Henry 66.32 Sue Harrington 48.42
6) Hap Neuffer 84.68 Janice Ripley 65.60 Susan McFadden 45.77
7) Lil Hopkins 82.15 Henry Momand 64.08 Zan Edmunds 45.36
8) Pat Webb 73.48
9) Ellie Hack 72.90
10) Alice Moore 72.75 Tom Gabriel 51.06 Karen Ccoulter 37.82
“What she was taught and what she learned
are two different things.” Greg Evans Luann
As promised-from the archives of Bridge World- a discussion on how to play suit combinations. The ground rules are: Declarer has sufficient transportation and control to operate and nothing is known about opponents’ distribution beyond the probabilities of the original deal. The number of card combinations in the two defenders’ hands we are dealing with is a power of 2 equal to the number of cards missing. (if missing one card its two to the first or two combinations, missing two cards it’s two squared or four combinations three cards would be two cubed or 8 combinations…)
This one looks obvious ….. But think again-N/S best play for 5 tricks:
A 2
K 10 8 7 6 5
Think about it, for the answer, scroll down.
Today’s problem is missing five cards so we
have two to the fifth or 32 possible card combinations with the defense. If the
remaining cards are divided 3-2 (20 combinations-good) or 5-0 (2 combinations
-bad), your handling of the suit won’t matter. Among the ten 4-1 splits, you can pick
up West’s singleton Queen, Jack or 9 by cashing the ace and finessing. However, first leading the ten from the
South hand is even better. You can
pick up the same three West singletons in the same way and also East’s singleton
9-the only East singleton that you can do anything about. Your success rate in the combinations you
can do something about is increased from 30% to 40% (Your overall rate is
increased from 72% to
75%)