North Penn Bridge News

Greetings to the

North Penn Bridge Community!

Week of 01/29/2024

From the Club Manager

Dave Dodgson

Wednesday, January 31 Shuffle and Deal at 9:30 a.m.

Thursday, February 1 Handicap Team Game. Please sign up in the book at the club.

Sunday, February 4 Shuffle and Deal

Wednesday February 7 Four is Enough Game. Please sign up and see Pat Andrews if you need a partner.

Wednesday February 14 Valentine’s Day Extravaganza.

9:30 a.m. Shuffle and Deal. If you Stay and Play in the afternoon, your card fee will only be $6.

11:30 a.m. Lunch consisting of sandwiches, sides and desserts. All are welcome.

12:00 noon Open game. This is a Royal STaC event, awarding gold, red, silver and black points. You can win big across the entire unit!

8:00 p.m. Live onstage performance of “Love Letters” featuring Susan Morse and her husband David at the Sedgwick Theater in Mt Airy. Click here for details.

Partnership

We are in the process of re-activating our online partnership desk and will now be monitoring it on a daily basis. Please use it for requests for our Open games; partner requests for Tuesday and Friday limited games should go directly to Mitch Snyder.

If you are in need of a partner for a Monday, Wednesday or Thursday Open game, please email northpennpartner@gmail.com. We will do our best to match you up with others who are looking for someone to play with.

Upcoming Tournaments

February 11 at 3:30 p.m. - District 4 Online Tournament. Half red and half black points will be awarded.

February 12 - 18 STaC week.

February 23 - 25 the Wilmington Sectional.

Education

January 31 Shuffle & Deal 9:30 a.m.

Sunday Shuffle and Deal. 12 noon to 2:00 p.m

King of Prussia Bridge Club Lessons. For lesson details go directly to the Latest News item on their website: https://www.bridgewebs.com/kop.

Calendar

Click here to see a file you can enlarge.

Ask the Expert

You are 1st seat, all white at imps holding:

AQx 864 K9xx Q9x

The bidding goes:--p - p - p - 1C

p - p - Dbl - 2C

Is this worth a 2D or 2S call?

John Dickenson: I am conservative at imps. Partner is a passed hand as am I and we certainly don't have game. 2S is silly - if partner had 5 spades he would have bid them. 2D has merit but could be a disaster if partner has only 3 and LHO has a stack. I don't like 4333 hands for offense. I would pass 2C and hope for a plus score on defense. If partner doubles again (unlikely) I will take it out to 2D.

Bill Bauer: I vote for 2D. I might consider 2S if I had a ruffing value. 2D is our best shot for an 8-card fit. The general guidelines are:

1. Advance in your longest suit,

2. When partner doubles in balancing seat, subtract 3 points when you are advancing (so you need 12 points to jump.)

Dennis O’Brien. This is tough. Partner couldn't find a 5 card major fit so even in diamonds he might be trump short quickly. Also, declarer will probably be playing out of her hand the whole time and it looks like we have 4 tricks. I would pass the double and hope.

Elaine Clair. Partner is balancing so your side probably has about half the points but with no clear place to go I would pass. I think any bid is likely to get you in trouble.

Mitch Snyder. 2D is better than 2S, but I'll shoot it out in 2NT.

Email your questions, or a pesky hand, or something you’d like to know about bidding or playing to Toysie at toysiewalker@gmail.com. She will forward them to the panel, one will be chosen, and the question and answers will be printed in the following week’s newsletter.

We update our Facebook page regularly so be sure to check it out. It’s a great way to stay in touch with all the happenings at North Penn.

Tidbits

“Tips to Avoid Mistake 11

(Making unsound overcalls)

There are many good reasons to make an overcall, but you have to draw a sensible limit.
When you are vulnerable, do not risk going for a large number in a dubious cause. Weigh up the potential advantages of your overcall against the possible cost.
When your hand is very shapely and you are considering a dubious overcall, remember that bad breaks may cause the opponents to go down, left to their own devices.”

From 52 Bridge Mistakes to Avoid

by David Bird

Deal of the Week

by Bruce Schwaidelson

(bruschwade@aol.com)

Have You Met Margaret Mundane? She's Anything But!

You are South in 1^st chair, all white, holding ♠763 ♥KJ7432 ♦98 ♣K4. After opening 2♥, your opponent overcalls 3♣ and your partner ends the auction by jumping to 4♥. West leads the ♠K and here is the full deal from one of our Thursday games:

Surprise, surprise, your partner’s spades are AQ-5^th so you quickly grab the trick with dummy’s Ace and begin to plan your play. Looking at all 4 hands, it is easy to see that a diamond lead would have beaten your contract (East will play a club through your King after getting in with the ♦K and you will also lose a spade), but can you round up 11 tricks after the favorable lead of the ♠K?

While you are pondering that challenge, you may already know one of our eldest and most cordial members at North Penn, Margaret Mundane, or simply “Maggie” as she prefers to be called. Maggie is one of those “middle of the road” players who never makes an outrageous pre-empt holding J-7th, nor underlead an Ace against a suit contract. Her bridge skills, however, are truly impeccable and unlike the (slightly paraphrased) line in that old Bangles song, she is definitely not “just another Maggie Mundane.”

Did you solve the puzzle yet? It was kind of a trick question. If you actually play the ♠A at trick one, there is no longer a way to make five. When Maggie received the ♠K lead, she looked to her right and saw Edward Scissorhands’ cousin, Nick Dangerhand, sitting East, anxiously awaiting the chance to lead a club through Maggie’s King. After a few moments’ thought, Maggie calmly called for the ♠2 from dummy. She knew that she had to keep Dangerhand from winning a trick. West shifted to the ♦3, but it was too late. After Maggie popped her Ace, the rest was easy -- and Dangerhand never got his chance to play a club.

Maggie played ♥A-K to discover that trumps were 3-1, which meant she needed spades to be 3-2, as they were, to make 11 tricks. She drew the last trump and ran the spade suit pitching 2 of her 3 losers. She gave up a trick to the ♣A and claimed +450.

This was not the end of our story, however. Maggie is known for playing her very best bridge on Mondays. In fact, her regular Monday partner, who happens to be named Tuesday, has nicknamed Maggie “Monday Mundane.” Not surprisingly, our Deal of the Week features a board that Maggie declared at North Penn’s Monday game:

Ignore the 2♣ overcall for a moment. At most tables the auction was simple and without interference: 1♦ – 1♥; 2♥ – 3NT; 4♥ all pass. The 3NT call gives North a choice of games, and with 4 hearts and a doubleton club, the 4♥ decision seems clear. After a trump lead, Declarer can see 4 potential losers, 2 diamonds and 2 clubs, and particular attention should be paid to the diamond suit in isolation.

If the diamond King is onside, only 1 diamond loser is a sure thing, but it appears that if it’s offside, there will definitely be 2 losers. There are a couple of ways to improve the odds, however. One possibility is to start the suit low from dummy. If your RHO holds the King without the Jack, he may be reluctant to play low, afraid you hold Jx. If the King doesn’t appear immediately, you can finesse the Queen when you play diamonds a 2^nd time.

Another way to play the suit is to lead from your hand and if LHO plays low, play dummy’s 9. If West holds the ♦J10, the 9 will force the King; if the 9 loses to the 10 or J, you can finesse the Queen the next time you play diamonds. On the other hand, if LHO plays the 10 or J the 1^st time, cover it, and if your Queen loses to the King, the next time you can finesse the 9. This assures only 1 loser whenever (1) the ♦K and/or (2) the ♦J-10 are to your left, giving you about a 75% chance of losing only 1 diamond.

In the actual deal, since the King is onside, both suggested methods result in the loss of only a single diamond. Unfortunately, the ♣A is offside for 2 more losers, so you are making 4♥ on the nose.

When Monday Mundane stepped to the plate, she had the advantage of her LHO’s interesting or perhaps inadvisable 2♣ bid in the middle of the auction. Her RHO was once again Nick Dangerhand, this time playing with dear, sweet Ova Bitter. Following the 1♦ and 1♥ bids, Ova Bitter, as her name might suggest, jumped into the fray with her 2♣ overcall with a paltry 10 HCP’s and the dreaded 5-3-3-2 distribution. Truth be told, Ova never met an “Ova-call” she didn’t like.

Perhaps Ova intended 2♣ to be lead-directing, but had she been doubled, she would have been down 500 or 800 for a sure bottom. Frank Stewart, ACBL Bulletin and syndicated newspaper columnist, would have been appalled by her bid, but he would have been proud of what happened to her next.

After a trump lead by Ova, Maggie contemplated the Ova-call and the fact that once again Dangerhand was to her right. She needed to keep him off lead as best she could. That’s when she recalled the earlier Thursday deal. It was obvious to her that even Ova wouldn’t have made her 2-level bid without the ♦K, so she won the opening lead in hand and immediately played a diamond to the Queen, Ova playing the 6.

Now for the part that would have delighted Stewart. When Maggie finished drawing trumps, she played 3 rounds of spades ending in her hand, noting that Ova had followed suit to 3 heart and 3 spade tricks. Ova’s distribution had to be 3=3=2=5 with the doubleton ♦K6 to go with her 5-card club suit. Maggie led a diamond from her hand and when the King popped, as predicted, Maggie ducked!

Ova was endplayed, holding nothing but clubs. The ♣A followed and Maggie collected her King next and ruffed her 3^rd club in dummy, thereby making a very well-deserved Ova-trick by holding the defense to just the ♣A and the ♦K. Once again Maggie had succeeded in keeping that Dangerhand from obtaining the lead, this time with the help of her opponent’s unwise Ova-call. Since the conservative-bidding Stewart is frequently accusing players of making unwarranted bids that give their opponents much too much information, he would have been Ova-joyed with the outcome. In fact, he would probably have observed that this Mundane board was Ova-easy, undoubtedly leaving West with egg on her face.

Postmortem: The Mamas & The Papas would have also loved Monday Mundane, but for a different reason. Ova could have held the contract to 10 tricks by playing the ♦K the 1^st time the suit was led, thereby avoiding the endplay. Monday Mundane’s objective in leading a diamond at trick 2 was to preclude Ova from realizing that an endplay could be forthcoming. Maggie knew that if she waited too long to start the suit, Ova may well have foreseen the endplay and put up her King immediately. As Ova lamented (go ahead, sing along):

----Monday Mundane, you gave me no warning of what was to be

----Oh, Monday Mundane, I won 2 tricks instead of three.