Welcome to the Lima Duplicate Bridge Club Blog

Club Games at the Lima Duplicate Bridge Club are held TUESDAYS at 12:30 P.M. and THURSDAYS at 7:00 P.M., at the Council on Aging Building at 215 N. Central Avenue, Lima. The games are OPEN to the public, and ALL are welcome. $3.oo per session is the CHEAPEST duplicate game in the area, and sanctioned by the American Contract Bridge League. The Lima DBC is your venue for special ACBL events, as well.



Check out the CALENDAR at the bottom of this page for upcoming events and games.



If you do not have a partner, or if you have any questions,

please feel free to email the Club Owner/Director, Ruth Odenweller, at: 07bridge@gmail.com.



PARTNERS ARE ALWAYS GUARANTEED!!!



Sunday, December 19, 2010

Good Bad or Lebensohl

Leah was playing online at bridge base with the "robots."  http://www.bridgebase.com/

This is a really good site to practice your game, whether it be with "robots" or real people, or even with practice programs.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Getting Back to Par

Someone once said that the key difference between an expert and a beginner is not just in finding great plays but also in knowing how to get back to average after guessing wrong.  A case in point from last night's club game.

Dummy: AQ109x-Jxx-AQ10-xx
Declarer: Kx-AK98-xx-AKxxx

Declarer opened 1NT (15-17) and heard a 2D transfer overcall (hearts).  Partner bid 2H (transfer), and the contract ended in 4S.  LHO made the opening lead of a small heart.

If LHO has six heart, Declarer cannot guess wrong.  If LHO started with only Q10xxx, Declarer cannot guess wrong.  If Delcarer is missing the Queen or 10, there is a guess, but surely LHO did not have 10xxxx, right?

Declarer popped Jack, covered by the stiff Queen!  Bad luck!

Now, Declarer knows that he is down one trick to the field, because no one else is getting that heart call.  So, what to do?

First, find the spade Jack.  Because RHO has one heart and LHO has five, RHO has 12 cards that are not hearts to LHO having only 7 non-hearts.  Thus, the odds favor RHO having the spade Jack, and a 4-2 split is very possible.  So, Declarer went to dummy with a diamond finesse (working) and played the spade 10, winning.  Another spade then went to the King.

Now what?

There is an easy entry to dummy with the diamond, but then diamonds are wide open.  So, Declarer decided to play RHO for at least three clubs and tried to ruff out the clubs.  When the club Ace was played, LHO pitched a diamond!

What is going on here?  RHO had the feared four spades, plus only one heart.  Furthermore, RHO obviously started with all six remaining clubs.  That leaves RHO with only two diamonds.  Thus, only LHO (now known to have started with 2-5-6-0 pattern) can protect diamonds and hearts!

Declarer has already taken one diamond, one heart, two spades, and one club, for 5 tricks.  Of the remaining 8 cards, Declarer can win one more club, one more diamond, three more spades, and one more heart, for six tricks.  That leaves two for the opponents.  A typical two-suit squeeze (diamonds and hearts) works when the opponents have only one more trick to take (and you squeeze them out of that trick).  Thus, Declarer needs to "rectify the count" by losing that one trick early, while he still has control.

Declarer also needs to lose that trick in a way that does not snip communications or throw away a menace.  The easy route should be obvious.  Declarer cashed the second top club and then played a third club, ditching a heart to allow RHO to win the third club (to her shock).  RHO tried her best by returning a diamond (as she had no heart left to snip communications).  Declarer won this on dummy and pulled trumps.

The last two cards, then, were a small heart on dummy, plus a diamond, with Declarer holding the Ace and another heart.  LHO had to save the diamond King to beat dummy's diamond, because RHO was out.  LHO also needed to save two hearts, to protect his 10.  But, that's three cards, and he only gets to keep two.  In the end, he parted with the second heart, allowing Declarer to win two hearts at the end, for +480 and back to average.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Did you work them out?

There were two "problems" in the article about Stayman responses, involving slam making.  Did you figure out how?

The first noted that you MIGHT have a slam (might take 12 tricks) opposite a 1NT opener when holding AQxxx-x-Qxxxx-xx, after partner shopws four spades.

Gove partner Kxxx-xxx-AKJx-Ax.  You can see an easy route to 11 tricks (five spades, five diamonds, and the club Ace).  The 12th comes from a club ruff (pitch one of Opener's clubs on the 5th diamond)!

The second noted a probable making slam with
AQx-xxx-Ax-AQxxx opposite
Kxxx-x-Kxxx-Kxxx.

Suppose the opponent lead the best lead -- a trump.  Win the King and lead a heart.  Suppose they win and lead another trump.  Win the Queen and ruff a heart.  Cross to the diamond Ace and ruff another heart.  Cross again to the spade Ace and pull the last trump.  If trumps split no worse than 3-1, and if no one has a void in spades or diamonds (or a stiff if they find that lead), and if no one has only two hearts, all fair bets, then you end up with five clubs, two heart ruffs, three spades, and two diamonds, for 12 tricks, and the opponents only get that one heart trick!

December Newsletter is Up!

Featured this month are Tom and Jean's wedding, more about the special party for Dave Poeppelman's LM achievement, Bridge Tips, the Bickersons, and the first of a new series on Notrump Structure!