Philadelphia WBF Tournament Report

When our group of WBF newbies decided to go to the tournament in Philadelphia I think our expectations were all different from those we have when attending a usual ACBL tournament, where we all have had considerable successes. We went to compete against the best in the world and wanted to be respectable and to say we were competent enough to play in a tournament of this caliber. Our group consisted of Maritha Pottenger, Christopher (Kit) Young and me (Judy Rimer) all of San Diego and Craig Huston of Portland, Oregon – he plays regularly with Kit and I have played with him in several tournaments. Craig and I played together in the first event, the Mixed Pairs which had three qualifying sessions and three sessions in the final. We made it into the finals and had a respectable finish. Goal achieved!

The next event was the Rosenblum Cup – three days of round robin matches to get to the first cut of 64 teams, and three days in which we would not see any other female players. Each of the 14 brackets had 9 teams and we were the bottom seed in the third bracket. Craig had named our team “San3pdx” (San Diego three + Portland one) which baffled everyone since they had no idea who we were anyway!! Our first opponent was the Billy Miller team whom we trounced 67-2 – yeah, we won a match. Second, we played the Belgian team and beat them, next the Colombian team whom we also beat. At the end of the day we were in a tie for the lead of our bracket!! Of course things got more difficult. We went to our table to play the next match and were told we had been moved to the BBO room – we were being broadcast live over the internet on the Bridge Base Online site!! We were playing the Cayne team, Jimmy Cayne, the former head of Bear Stearns (comic) and his Polish squad! Maritha and I bid two slams that they did not bid in the other room; unfortunately I misplayed one and went down in a cold slam and other misadventures occurred at our other table but we felt really good about the match. The commentator on BBO didn’t even know who we were, and asked if anyone knew anything about any of us!! I will leave it to Maritha to give one of the hands that we had. The next day we showed up at our table again and were told we would be on BBO for a second time since we were now playing the highly ranked Auken team from Norway, Sweden, etc. We lost, but again thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We did not qualify for the group of 64 but thoroughly enjoyed our experience in the event and exceeded our expectations.

By the way, all games used screens throughout the tournament so you were always self alerting your bids and explaining them to the opponent on your side of the screen. We soon became well experienced with lots of Polish Club and forcing club systems!! All of the players on these teams were extremely personable and polite and a pleasure to play against.

Next came the Ladies Pairs which was smaller than we thought it would be and not as interesting. We played some of the really good women’s pairs but we did not qualify for the finals and therefore went on to the IMP Pairs, the strangest of the events. Again we had four qualifying sessions, followed by five final sessions. The five session final was run as a 72 table Howell, where we played all of the other pairs in the event! We did not distinguish ourselves but at least we did make it to the finals!! There was lots of strange bidding, psyching, etc. I had one highlight of this event that I will not forget anytime soon. Here is the hand:

I was West and was declarer in 1 NT. North led the ♠8 which setup up the spade suit for me so I had four spade tricks and two heart tricks and just needed a seventh trick. So at trick two, I played a small club toward the dummy and you can imagine my surprise when both opponents ducked it. I was so happy, I now had my contract! I ran my winners and threw South in with the ♣A, scoring a diamond trick at the end for an overtrick because the opponents had tangled up their winners. After the match I looked to see whom we played it against and was surprised to see we had played that board against world famous Alfredo Versace and his partner!! I never saw him since he was on the other side of the screen.

It was a wonderful experience – 16 days of 2-3 sessions per day. I was physically and mentally exhausted at the end and probably could have played better the last couple of days but I think all of us would agree that it was an experience none of us will forget.

There were a number of interesting hands from Philadelphia. The first for me was: ♠7 ♥KT7542 ♦AKQ752 ♣ –. You pick up this lovely hand and LHO opens one spade. You bid hearts at your first opportunity. RHO shows clubs. You bid diamonds at your second opportunity and partner eventually raises your diamonds. The opponents go slamming, so you bid 6♦ (unwilling to defend even 5♠). The opponents bid 6♠ which you happily double. You figure partner is looking at enough clubs to recognize your Lightner double and the club lead will set 6♠ assuming you get ONE diamond trick. The Poles think for a long time and try 7♣. You don’t double that because you are not sure whether or not you are getting a diamond trick. You lead a top diamond and dummy comes down with ♠AQJ953 ♥A86 ♦93 ♣A4. Your partner has ♠T642 ♥Q ♦J1086 ♣9632. 7♣ is down one. 6♦ (by us) would have been down one (doubled). 6♠ would have been down one (doubled) on the club lead.

The most frustrating hand was played against Petra Hamman, partnered with Peggy Sutherlin. You hold ♠Q8653 ♥Q65 ♦K10 ♣964. RHO opens a strong no trump. Partner doubles the transfer bid and they get to 4♠. You lead the ♥5. After playing one round of trumps to get the bad news, Petra Hamman thinks for about one minute. She then proceeds to trump two hearts in dummy while playing three rounds of clubs, playing your partner for the queen. Then the ace of diamonds and a low diamond. Endplayed in trump! She gets three club tricks, one diamond, one heart, two heart ruffs in dummy and three spades in her hand. You get to say, “Why did we have to play this hand at this table?!”

My contention is that Judy is sometimes a very lucky player. Here is a “Judy story” from Philadelphia. Playing in the IMP Pairs, you pick up ♠KQJ8 ♥J ♦Q ♣AKQ7542. RHO passes and you open 1♣. LHO bids 2♥ and partner bids 3♦. RHO bids 4♥ and you bid 5♣. LHO passes and partner bids 5♥ – forcing to slam. You carefully do NOT bid 5♠ – thus denying first round control of spades – and bid only 6♣. LHO breaks the rules about preempting only once and bids 6♥. Judy now bids 7♣ and you start to pray for a heart lead even though the auction screams for a spade lead. Your prayers are answered and the ♥10 hits the table. Dummy has ♠2 ♥A2 ♦AKJT8653 ♣63. You grab the ace and pull trumps, grateful that they are NOT 4-0, only 3-1. The diamonds are also 3-1, so all your spade losers go away as North tells his partner that the auction demanded a spade lead. Yes, but it was a Judy hand, so they led a heart!

One more Judy story (also from the IMP Pairs). You pick up ♠AKJ2 ♥K76 ♦KQ3 ♣KQJ. You debate opening only 2 NT because of the awful 4-3-3-3 shape, but decide all your supporting honors are good and open 2♣ followed by 2 NT. Partner Judy drives the hand to 7 NT. The lead is the ♦10 and this is your dummy:

So, you have four club tricks, just three diamonds (despite 10 HCP in the suit!), two hearts and two spades. In addition to the spade finesse you need a spade-heart squeeze to make 7! It’s your lucky day because North (your RHO) has ♠QT98 ♥AJT54 ♦762 ♣2.

The odds of making this grand slam are roughly:

Assuming the opponents kept quiet in the auction, this works out to about 20.6%, i.e. 0.5 * (0.3553 + 0.0572). P(finesse) isn’t constant due to LHO’s varying number of spades in each distribution that must be considered, but since the squeeze is automatic rather than positional, P(finesse) can be treated as constant owing to symmetry. Maritha had to rely on the extra 2.9% chance conferred by the possibility of a squeeze, the blue term above. Note that including the possibility of a major suit squeeze after dropping the offside singleton ♠Q instead of finessing, barely changes the odds because LHO must then have a freaky rare distribution. - Matthew

Then, a declarer play classic. I teach all my students that when you have AKJx in a suit with eight or fewer cards, cash ONE high card BEFORE taking any finesse (assuming transportation is not a problem and assuming you are going to finesse).

So the opponents bid to an aggressive 7♣ against us in IMP Pairs. When dummy comes down you are looking at:

Declarer plays carefully (in one respect), ruffing out three spades (in case the royal marriage comes down as declarer starts with the AJ75 of spades) while pulling trumps. Then she plays three rounds of diamonds, getting a count on the hand. She knows that diamonds were originally 4-3 or 3-4 and that Judy had three spades and I had six. So, hearts are 5-1 or 4-2 and Judy is the favorite to hold the queen of hearts. However, declarer forgets the basic rule of cashing ONE high heart before taking the finesse and goes down one on a hand she can make. So much for basic technique!