I am pleased to report that, in view of their many years of support for the club, Honorary Life Memberships have been awarded to Hamish McDonald, Vera McDonald, Arthur Stanley, Eileen Staney and Joan Mitchison. 

I am also pleased to report that the club now has 100 members.  At the end of October we had more people playing on a duplicate bridge evening than we have had for a long time (if ever).  There were 30 players on Monday 25 October and 34 played on Thursday 28 October.

Competitions

The Criddle Cup was won by John Wilcox and Malcolm Dawson on 15 October. 

The draw for the Knockout Trophy has been made andi s available both on the club notice board and on the website.  Please play your matches by the stated dates.

The club took part in the Children in Need Simultaneous Pairs competition on 18 November raising £103 during the evening.  The club winners were Andy Brown and Joan Benton.  By a strange quirk of the scoring system Robert Missenden and Maggie Bennett were the top Ashby pair nationally.

The club supported a Charity Bridge Drive that was held at Willesley Golf Club at the end of October.  The Bridge Drive, which was organised by Joan Benton, raised £320 for St Helens Church’s project to develop the Cottage.

The club competitions over the next three monthsare:

Tuition

Before the start of the season, prospective membersof the B team, and those less experienced at Teams Bridge, were invited toattend two training sessions organised by Loughborough Bridge Club,specifically aimed at their B team.  Thesessions covered the differences between Teams and Duplicate scoring and theway in which this affects both bidding and play at the different forms of thegame. The sessions, which were organised by Malcolm Dawson, were well attendedwith around 10 members attending from each of the clubs on the two evenings.

Also prior to the season starting a practice matchwas held between the Ashby A and B teams with the A team winning comfortably.

A series of6 tutorials was held at the Cottage during September and October coveringvarious aspects of bidding and playing. Around 20 to 25 players attended each of these sessions, which were runby Pat Dunham. 

Teams

The resultsfor so far this season for the A team playing in Division 2 of theLeicestershire Leagues are:

Whilst the11-1 defeat against Loughborough may seem large it was, in fact, a reasonableresult against a team containing an England international and seven countyplayers. The A team is in 6th place in Division 2 but has played one match fewerthan some teams.

The resultsso far this season for the B team playing in Division 5 are:

The B teamis in 3rd position in Division 5 but has played one more match than some teams.

The full tablesfor all Divisions can be found at the LCBA website.

Miscellaneous

The clubhas bought four nearly-new tables. Members can buy one of the tables that are now surplus to our requirementsfor £10 by contacting Pat Dunham.

The Club’sannual dinner and presentation evening was held at Willesley Golf Club inSeptember.  Our thanks are due inparticular to Claire Lewis for another very successful and enjoyable evening.

We havebeen discussing the best way of communicating with members regarding thecancellation of a club session as a result of bad weather.  We have concluded that where an eveningsession is to be cancelled we will aim to let members know by 5 pm by email andby a message on the website.  If you donot have internet access and you are in doubt about a session you should phonesomebody who has an internet connection. Given that weather conditions can change quickly and that we also needto be aware of the likely conditions at the end of a session we may not alwaysbe able to let members know before 5 pm.

Finally, Iwould like to place on record my thanks to all the members of the committee forthe work they do on behalf of the club. In addition I would like to give special thanks to two non-committeemembers for their work.  Both Pat Dunhamand Maggie Bennett spend many hours keeping the club running on a day-to-daybasis.  As an indication of theirimportance to the club their names appear on the website as the primary pointsof contact for new members for the club.

MalcolmDawson has contributed another article for the newsletter and this appearsbelow.

GeorgeStrang

9 December2010

Duplicate Scoring.

Severalmembers have recently told me that they do not understand how the scoring worksin Duplicate Pairs. If you are looking to improve your percentages then it isimportant that not only do you know how the results are calculated, but alsowhat you need to do to score well. Unlike Rubber Bridge and Chicago, whichscore cumulatively, Duplicate scores are calculated relatively. By this I mean,it is not how many points you score on a particular board, but how thatcompares with what others have done.

 If you play golf you will know that there is adifference between medal play and match play. In a competition, you halve the 1^sthole in par and then the next 8 holes are a disaster. Your opponent carries onscoring par whilst you are 3 over on every hole. After 9 holes your opponenthas hit 36 shots and you a dismal 60! You are losing by 24 shots. But after theturn you manage to birdie every hole whilst your opponent carries on hittingpar shots. At the end of the round your scores are 87 and 72. You have hit theball 15 times more but if it is a match play event you still win because youhave won 9 holes to your opponent’s 8!

Rubber andChicago are the Bridge equivalent of medal play whilst Duplicate is like matchplay.

Here is anexample. Playing Rubber Bridge you pick up a 23 point hand with six spadesheaded by A K Q J. You are quite excited by this but even more so when yourpartner opens 1NT with 12-14 points. You are going slamming. It’s just aquestion of whether it’s a small slam or a grand. On discovering you aremissing an Ace you end up in 6 Spades and after losing the AH lead, you make 12tricks. Because you are playing Rubber you remember to claim your Honours! Thisearns you 1780 points on top of those you had already. That will take someclawing back. Similarly in Chicago your score of 1430 gives the opposition amountain to climb. They will need a slam of their own or to get a few doubledcontracts down to get back into the match.

Now imagineyou have the same hand playing Duplicate. You make your 6 Spades and enteringyour 1430 on the traveller are horrified to find it’s a bottom. Everyone elsehas bid 6NT scoring 1440 and you score 0 match points (MPs). It’s only 10points less on the traveller, but it’s an absolute bottom.

The scoringworks like this. At the end of the evening the scorer ranks the pairs in orderand allocates MPs according to where a pair is in the rankings. This is doneseparately for N/S and E/W. A pair receives 2 MPs each time they score betterthan another pair in the same seats. They get 1 MP when another pair achieve the same score. For example:

In thisexample N/S Pair 1 get 10 MPs for getting the best score (they have beaten fiveother pairs on this board) and N/S Pair 3 score 0 MPs for the only negativeresult. N/S Pairs 5 and 6 didn’t bid game but made the same tricks and so eachget 3 MPs, 2 MPs for beating pair 3 and 1 MP for tying with eachother.  The E/W scores are the reverse.

The numberof MPs depends upon the number of tables. With 5 tables the top MP score is 8(for beating four other pairs) and with 9 tables the top score gets 16 MPs (forbeating eight other pairs) etc. At the end of the evening each pair’spercentage is calculated so if the total was 180 MPs from a possible 270 thepercentage would be 66.7%.

Understandingthe scoring should influence your decision making. You should be looking forthe best score not necessarily just making a contract. Overtricks andsacrifices, doubling, extra defensive tricks will all help get you that topboard. But remember the other tables influence your score and sometimes nomatter what you do, you are destined for a bottom or near bottom. When thishappens credit your opponents!

Here are afurther couple of examples to illustrate this point.

Most E/Wpairs play in NTs and make 8 tricks. Pairs 13 and 14 play in 3 Clubs. Making 9tricks is not enough as 110 is a bottom but making an extra trick is enough toget a top. (In effect the overtrick is worth 9 MPs as without it pair 14 wouldhave only scored 1 MP – equal with pair 13.) If you only ever play to make yourcontract and don’t bother about overtricks you will be losing MPs! But maybe itwas a defensive error!

Why goingoff may be a winning strategy.

It is oftendifficult for players new to Duplicate Pairs to accept that it can beworthwhile bidding a contract you know is going off. Indeed some people almostfeel it is unethical. Surely the point of bridge is to bid and make the bestcontract. Well it is but at Pairs the best contract is the one that gets youthe best score – not necessarily the one that makes. Look at this traveller:

On thishand all N/S pairs bid the vulnerable game. Pair 11 fancied their chances ofgetting this off so doubled. Pairs 13, 14 and 15 decided to sacrifice in a nonvulnerable 5D. Pair 4 bid on to 5S.

An analysisof the final traveller shows the winning strategy on this hand. Those E/W pairswho chose to sacrifice gained. Despite going 3 off doubled, pair 15 scorebetter than the E/W pairs who allowed N/S to make their contract. Pair 4 lostout by bidding on and should have settled for getting E/W down. Doubling wouldhave been even better. Pair 11’s decision to double cost them 3MPs when thecontract made. Pair 3 by not doubling gave pair 13 the opportunity to go 9 offand still get a good score at Pairs (8MPs as -450 would still have been the 2^ndbest E/W result.)

Pair 4might be cursing getting a bottom on this board but it was E/W and theirsacrifice which pushed them there.

Twothoughts to leave you with about Duplicate:

1. It is where you are in therankings that matters. Scoring 420 when everyone else has 430 is the sameas getting -1400 when everyone else scores + 50. Both are bottoms and atthe end of the night are worth the same.
2. Look to make the most of yourhand. It’s not what cards you get but what you do with them that matters.It may be fair comment at Rubber Bridge to say “we haven’t had the cards,”but at Duplicate you get the same ones as your real opponents. That oneextra trick whether as declarer or defender can make all the difference toyour position at the end of the evening.

If you aretrying to improve your scores on Mondays and Thursdays, look at the travellerson the website. Are there patterns emerging? Maybe you fail to bid game toooften. Maybe you don’t make enough overtricks. Maybe it’s your defence. Andremember sometimes it’s just bad luck and down to what happens on the othertables. But whatever the reason, don’t let it spoil your enjoyment of the game.

MalcolmDawson