The BBO ACBL Club Bulletin #22

By Dan Israeli (ACBL_17)

Welcome to the 22nd edition of the BBO ACBL Club Bulletin.
Once in a while, I will present a few interesting hands played in our very own ACBL games, and try to show you how the hand should be bid and played.
Of course, Bridge is not an exact science, so I will try to bring more than one angle.
I hope you will find this interesting and useful.

If you come across an interesting hand you'd like to share and have analyzed, or if you have an interesting story to tell or a question to ask, feel free to email me.
My email address is ehhehh@gmail.com.

A few preliminary notes:

1. I try to keep the bidding simple. The Basic SAYC system is used, but mostly it is common sense bridge, added with a few simple gadgets.
2. Some boards will require a more scientific approach, but nothing really major. I believe good bridge can be played without 200 pages of agreements.

Hand 1:
This hand was played on May 23rd, in the 4pm Speedball game .
The traveler can be seen here.

(Click the NEXT button to view the presentation)

Important things to remember:
1. If there is only one reasonable layout of the cards in with which you can legitimately make the contract, you should assume the cards are like that, and play accordingly.
Making the contract is the most important part of the game when playing IMPs, and if the layout is different, you will go down anyway.
2. Vulnerable games are worth a lot of points when playing IMPs, so sometimes they are worth stretching for.

Hand 2:
This hand was played on Monday, July 5th, in the 2pm Speedball game.
The traveler can be seen here.

(Click the NEXT button)

Important things to remember:
1. Underleading an ace against a suit contract is one of those things which should never be done. Declarer's singleton king might win the trick, or even declarer's doubleton king, which was going to lose a trick if declarer would have had to play the suit himself through partner's QJ.
2. It's very important to plan the play before playing to trick 1. In this board, it's important to keep south off lead until we can establish a club discard on the diamonds.
A careless declarer would have covered the heart queen with the king, and south's club switch at trick 2 would have defeated the contract.
3. Drawing trumps is important, but sometimes it must be postponed in order to preserve a late entry to dummy.
4. It's important to be able to draw inferences from the defense:
If north held the club queen and south the ace, then a club switch at trick 2 would have defeated the contract. South would have won the ace and played back another club, and the defense would have scored two club tricks, a diamond and a heart.
By failing to switch to clubs, declarer can reasonably infer that the ace is with north.


Hand 3:
Last time, I finished with a double dummy problem.
I didn't get any attempts to solve it, so it must have been tough.
As promised, here is the solution. If you missed the previous bulletin, you can just try to solve it here before continuing with the presentation.

You are playing 6 spades from the south seat. The lead is the heart Ace. Can you make the contract?
(Click the NEXT button)


Thanks again to Eli for sending me this nice problem.

That's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed reading.
See you next time!

Dan Israeli