Free Bridge Lessons

For those of you who are interested, Turtle Creek Duplicate Bridge Club is having free lessons on Friday nights (from 7-9pm) starting this week (6 weeks). You can check their website (assuming its up .... its not right now) or email vmhi1@yahoo.com. (I also have a phone number, but I think it's a personal #, so email if you want it.

Bridge over Bexar County

Today I (and my partner) came in 4th out of 28 for the Flight B North American Open Pairs Unit Finals. (The Unit, in this case, is San Antonio & New Braunfels). In both the morning and afternoon session we had a 58% game, which is reasonably good. (50% is average, ~60% can win, ~65% usually wins). Each session was 26 hands, so the total playing time was about 6.5 hours (plus a lunch break). Particularly nice is that the Unit picks up the costs for this, so today was free bridge plus free food.

Here are the hands and the score.

The district (which is basically Texas) finals are in January ... I'm not sure if we're going to play. (It's probably in Austin, in January, I think). I was shocked at how many people qualified to go to Ausin, I figured it would be top 25% or so, but it was over half.

Here's your declarer play problem You open one spade (in third position), your left hand opponent overcalls 2 clubs, and partner dumps you in four spades.

Dummy has
S-KQJxx H-98xx D-A8xx C-void

You have:
S-Txxxx H-AT7 D-Q9 C-AQ9

LHO leads a small spade. Your right hand opponent wins the ace and returns a spade (LHO discarding a the club six. What do you do now? (I'll post the answer in the comments tomorrow).

Incidentally, the Turtle Creek bridge club now has weds night games, which I'll probably start attending semi-regularly.

Free Bridge tourney on Saturday

FYI, the Turtle Creek Duplicate Club will be having a free session tomorrow. It starts at 12:30 (these things usually go 3.5 hours) but space is limited, so you'll probably need to show up (with a partner) at 11:30.

Notes from an Exhibition

Let's see ... Sean and Scott played a series, including half an exhibition game!

Sean brought a new person in, Mike.

We mainly played Race for the Galaxy and Bridge. Bridge can take a while to get to the point of comfort, and then you spend forever getting better. So here are some links to try to get towards comfort...

1) Richard Pavlicek's site has good lessons. The 5th Chair Foundation also has a reasonable series of bidding lessons. I can't vouch for the American Contract Bridge League's "Learn to Play Bridge" software, but it's probably pretty good. (Click on the "Free Lesson Software" link).
2) You can play BridgeBaseOnline for free. There are beginner tables, and you can just watch some deals. It has some lessons somewhere, too.
3) The Turtle Creek Bridge Club is local. In general, I advise calling and asking about classes or novice games. (They do have a novice game on Tuesdays at 1).
4) I have several introductory books on card play I can loan out. Sadly, I don't have any books that summarize bidding that are appropriate. I may swing by used book stores to see if I can find any.... you can also try the library for the ACBL sponsored "Club Series" (by Audrey Grant).

In general if people want to play bridge I'm happy to teach, although I'll try to just set it up and answer questions. I have plenty of first hand experience about how "playing bridge" is basically following instructions for your first X hours. That's not really that fun, I know. I'll try to reduce the bidding basics further.

Bridge ... to Monday

So at 10:05 am this morning J said "Oh, I'm taking the kids ... have fun!" So I decided to go to the local bridge club. (I thought about seeing if anyone was available, but I knew that Trinity had commencement and Rule #1 was still in force, I think).

Anyway, I made a call to ensure I'd have a partner and moseyed over. And then "Oh frabjous day" ... today is the yearly free game. (Normally to play bridge you'll wind up paying 'card fees' which mainly cover rent, etc). Needless to say, it was packed.

Overall I did OK. Basically an average game, excepting one disaster caused by having only discussed bidding system with a new partner for five minutes, and a few errors of judgement. (So a 44% game). I'm still annoyed that the Turtle Creek Bridge Club doesn't have a Weds night game (when I could consistently play), but I think I'll try to get in a game every other friday or so. I know that Dennis and Michael play, but I've also got 3-4 others. If people want to learn I don't recommend going to a duplicate club to do it (unless you can make the novice game) but I can teach and recommend/loan a few books.

Anyway, the amusing story, during those five minutes my partner and I came up with the following conversation.

Partner -- "Are we playing Bergen raises?"
(FYI -- Bergen Raises are 3C or 3D over a 1 of a Major opening).
"Fine, but I normally play reverse Bergen raises."
(FYI -- This flips the meaning of 3C and 3D).
"That's OK. Actually, Bergen himself originally played reverse, but someone else reversed them and that's the one that got named Bergen, so Reverse Bergen Raises are actually normal."



.... 2 hours later....

I open 1 of a major and partner bids 3D. I alert.
Opponents: "What is that?"
Me: "Bergen Raise."
Opponent: "How many points?" (Which is equivalent to asking "Regular or Reverse?")
Me: (Thinking back) -- "Uh, I'm not sure. We agreed on Reverse Bergen but then partner said reverse was not reversed. I think she was just stating an etymological curiosity, so uh, Reverse."

Fortunately it didn't matter .... partners bid was enough to get me to game (and not to slam), no matter whether it was reversed (7-9 pts) or not (10-12). It did annoy my opponent though, mainly because we didn't suffer. (And partner actually had an ugly 10, but downgraded the hand).

For the curious, we suffered by not discussing our system to deal with NT interference where I wound up in 3NT down when 4H was cold for 5. All the other mistakes were real (bidding judgement or play). Anyway, I may actually go on BridgeBase more often. (I'm "TaoGaming"). There's a sectional in San Antonio the first weekend of June...

I'll be at DLair on Monday at the typical bat-time (around 5:30).