Reflections from Newton

Week 23

I rented a car and drove up to Massachusetts on Thursday. I spent Thursday and Friday on Cape Cod with my family, then played in the regional in Newton (a Boston suburb) Saturday and Sunday. It was a great weekend. Always wonderful to spend time with the family and play in the pool with my niece and nephew.

Lew Gamerman was one of my regular partners when I lived in the Boston area. He’s a great player and a ton of fun to play with. We had a really good time on Saturday. The hands were really wild. We finished third in the pairs. We certainly had a few matchpoints we left on the table, but mostly we played pretty well.

On Sunday I played with my friend Ben Kompa. He’s a former USBF junior who has a job and doesn’t get to play a lot. We didn’t make much of a showing in the Swiss on Sunday, but we had a great time.

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I messed up a keycard auction, which is really irritating. In fact, I messed it up twice! I held ♠ AT76 ♥ AK85 ♦ K95 ♣ T9 and opened 1NT in first seat, both vulnerable. Maybe my first mistake of the hand. But with 4-4 in the majors, it’s nice to open 1NT and declare, protecting that king of diamonds. And the hand was prime with some spot cards. Anyway, that’s how it started.

Lew bid Stayman, and after I showed hearts he bid 3♠. We hadn’t discussed Baze, but I was pretty sure we’d be on the same page here, so I bid 3NT and he bid 4♥. If I was right about what was going on, he was showing spade shortness (we would show shortness low-middle-high), which makes my hand great. If he was just making a general slam try and signing off…not so much.

I asked for keycards with 4♠ (we were playing Kickback) and he bid 5♦. Two without. So we have all the keycards but not the queen of trumps, so I have a totally normal 6♥ bid. But I got it in my head that we had all the keycards and the queen and bid 5NT. Which isn’t even the right bid for that, I should bid 5♠. Fortunately Lew just bid 6♥, which needed 3-2 trumps and a finesse. Not the best slam I’ve ever been in, but certainly not the worst.

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Here’s one of the crazy ones.

I held ♠ J ♥ — ♦ J96532 ♣ AQT653. Both vulnerable, the auction started 1♥ P 2NT to me. My first instinct was to bid 4NT. But I wanted a club lead if they ended up with the contract, and I wanted partner to choose clubs with equal length in my suits. So I bid 3♣. Maybe I should bid 4♣. On my next call I bid 4NT, and we let them play in 5♥. That was the right decision, as we can hold them to 10 tricks in hearts. We didn’t, but that’s a bit beside the point.

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This one really frustrated me; I made a terrible bid. I held ♠ K3 ♥ K862 ♦ Q8432 ♣ T6, first seat both vulnerable.

P 1♣ P 1♠. For reasons unknown, I doubled. Yes, I have the other two suits, and I’m a passed hand, so I can’t have too much more than this. But there’s no urgency here. If opener has a spade fit and it goes 2♠ P P I can double. But when responder has a big hand, all I’m doing is giving them a roadmap to play the hand. Which is exactly what happened.

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The good news is that I didn’t dwell on any of these of these mistakes and moved on quickly. That’s a good sign.

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Greg and I are starting to ramp up practice before the NABC in Philadelphia. We’ll be looking for folks to play some set matches with over the next few weeks; let me know if you’d be interested in playing with us.

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I encourage you to share your progress in the comments. We’re all in this together!!

Have a great week.

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