September symbolizes transition from summer to fall, harvest and abundance, new beginnings and the balance of day and night at the autumn equinox.  Our club is much like the month of September; we are constantly beginning anew and hoping to achieve equilibrium with our finances!  We have been blessed with abundant friendships and celebrations.  And we have been blessed with benefactors who have bolstered our club!  One in particular made a sizable donation that has lifted my spirits and faith that we can continue to grow to the point of sustainability.  We have decided we should recognize the ones who have made contributions to the club with a special section of our website.  After looking back, we realized donations have been happening all along and all are important.  We will identify donors but not amounts.  Any amount is appreciated!  We also had a grass root campaign to recognize Marily Knatz and Kas Rangan for their contributions to building the Saturday game.  Each will have a game named for them at the Houston Regional Tournament!  These were paid for by donations from the players who love and admire them.  The first Saturday of September we will be celebrating the life of Bill Daniel who left us for eternity a few months ago.  His family thought it was fitting to have this at our club where he loved to play and mentor other players.  There will be a game and lunch furnished, so please come celebrate with us (details on the website).    Until next month....Janice Rush

What is the difference between a board designated "Not Played", "Passed Out" and "Fouled"?  On all three technically there is no point score because they have been taken out of the game in one way or another, however, the way they are figured into the overall game scoring is very different!  Note:  if a board is played 9 times, it has a possible 8 points maximum, if your score is higher than 8 other players.  You receive one point for every pair whose score is less than yours and 1/2 of a point for those you tie.  

With a "Not Played" board, the two pairs' scores are treated as if they played one less board than everyone else. in other words, it doesn't effect their end result because it isn't calculated into the final result. 

With a "Passed Out" board, it is compared to all other times it is played in the game and has a ranking as if it were a bid and played contract.  So if half the field did better and half worse, it would be an average.  In the above example of 8 boards, it would have a score of 4 (4 made more than zero and 4 made less).

A "Fouled" board usually happens when there are two board sets and one has a misdealt board.  In other words, the two sections are not playing the identical boards!   The board that shouldn't be in the game is deemed to be "foulded" and the other is not because it was supposed to be there.  Hopefully it is discovered early so that the fouled board can be corrected and continued to be played.  Unfortunately for the pairs that played the fouled board, there is no correction.  The board for them is fouled.   Their score on that board is then calculated on an average of the others who successfully played the board. Of course, the math is much more complicated than a simple average and thank goodness we have ACBLscore to automatically do this.  But the point is that the pairs are not damaged by a mistake beyond their control.

Cutting communications between defenders needed to make this contract!

S 1D

N 1NT (6-10 points and no 4+ card major)

Passed out.

East leads the 5 of hearts.  I switch to the North hand so I can declare.

I win the King, I expect that East has 5 hearts and West has 3 as that's how they usually split.  I can cut the communications between the defenders' hands by ducking the second heart.

I want to get the club going ASAP.

I run the Jack of clubs which loses to the Queen.  As Thomas Rush says, that's a good thing or the hand would be too easy.

East leads the Queen of hearts that I allow to win, and when East then leads the 3 of hearts communications are cut between the defenders.  I win the ace.

I play the 4 of clubs which West allows the dummy to win.  When I play the 8 of clubs, West takes the ace.

West plays the Jack of spades, won by the King.  I have taken 4 tricks and have the AK of diamonds and the King of spades for the 3 additional tricks I need to make my contract.

If West had exited with a diamond, I could play for split honors, finessing for the Queen and Jack and making 4 diamond tricks instead of 2,

A good defender would have won the ace of clubs a trick earlier to avoid being end played.  West could then safely exit with the 7 of clubs.

The Little Old Lady.  She appears frail.  She looks innocent.  She sounds sweet!

She learned how to play bridge from Dillinger.

LOLs invented Killer Instinct.  They are not mean, just highly competitive.  They don't win, they annihilate.  It's as if they spend their entire lives in a mock benign state, knitting baby blankets, baking apple pies, and patiently waiting for license to maim and destroy.

Sometime after the age of 50, they learn bridge and turn into Lizzie Borden.

You want at least two LOLs on your side in a team game.

Or World War.

Excerpt from the book "Bridge is a Contact Sport"  by Wendell Abern & Jarvis Fiedler

This month's featured "bridge player" is Charles Henry Goren, who became known as "Mr. Bridge." Most of us know who he was, but I don't think we know as much as we should about him.    

Goren developed the point count system and points for shortness most of us use today.  This revolutionized how bridge was taught and played, made the game accessible to millions of casual players as opposed to elite players in exclusive clubs, and popularized bridge in America. His system permitted opening 4-card majors and employed strong jump shifts, which are now out of favor, but his pioneering work is probably unequaled in its lasting effect. (He even pioneered the Precision method!)

Born March 4, 1901, in Philadelphia to poor Russian Jewish immigrants, Goren enjoyed sports as a boy and dreamt of a sports writing career. His bridge playing did not start until college (sounds familiar to many of us). By 1931, Goren was playing in tournaments. He won the first of his 43 national bridge championships in 1933, his first major national championship in 1937, and his only world championship, the Bermuda Bowl, in 1950. He won each of the major national events at least once.

Goren really became popular as he lectured and gave bridge commentaries on television.  He was one of the first bridge experts to embrace television as a way to popularize the game, helping bridge reach mainstream audiences. His "Championship Bridge" series ran on ABC on Sunday afternoons from 1959 through 1964. You will find several episodes on YouTube, and here is one where Houston's own JOHN GERBER appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgjOLiAbN5w&t=35s.

Charles H. Goren published nearly 40 books on bridge (the original was Goren’s Bridge Complete) and his books have sold over ten million copies worldwide. This makes him not just a great player, but perhaps the most successful bridge author of all time. 

In 1964 the ACBL presented Charles Goren the "Hall of Fame" award (with Ely Culbertson and Harold Vanderbilt), cementing his status as one of the game's all-time greats.       

Taking your due

Thomas Rush

PlayBridgeWithThomas@gmail.com

♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣

On the hand records we get at the end of the game, we'll find printed the number of tricks each side can make in each contract, and this is useful -- but there are two traps.

The first trap is looking at a hand and saying to partner, "You should have taken (some number of) tricks!"  Please remember that the numbers you see are for double dummy play -- that is, if both the offense and defense play perfectly for this particular lie of cards.  If there's a two-way finesse, double dummy always takes it the right way.  If there's a singleton king offside, double dummy plays the Ace.  If there's a squeeze or endplay, double dummy finds and executes it perfectly.  Before you accuse partner of not taking all his tricks, make sure it's reasonable for him to take that many tricks -- your partner didn't have the advantage of seeing all the cards!

The second trap is that it's easy to get lazy: "Oh, it says we can take 10 tricks and you did, good job partner!"  (Or, "good job, me!").  But your careful analysis should stop you from patting yourself on the back too soon.  After all, the defenders don't always find the perfect lead, let alone the perfect defense.  The following hand came up at today's (August 25) game at Bridge Club of Houston.  You and partner reach 4H on the auction

South West North East

3♥ Pass 4♥ All pass

Are you happy with the auction?  Your contract?  Take a moment to think about your plan as declarer, when West leads the diamond 4 (4th best leads from length).

How many tricks do you expect to take?   (Hint: Trumps are 2-1)

Are you happy to make 11 tricks with a pat on the back, when the double dummy solver says is your best result?

What's your plan as declarer with that diamond lead?

I suggest that you win the first diamond, then play the heart King or Queen to ensure trump are are 2-1.

When trump split, cash the diamond Queen, draw the last trump with a heart to the Ace, and cash the AJ of diamonds to pitch two clubs.  Now you can give up a spade, ruff your last spade, and claim.  That scores up 12 tricks, for +680, a much better score than settling for a mere 650.

The full hand is below:

There are a couple of traps on this hand for those content to leave tricks in the defense's hands:

• If you're going for 12 tricks when trump are 2-1, you can't afford to draw two rounds of trump before cashing the second diamond in your hand.  If you do, you give the opponents a chance to cash their two aces before you can get to dummy for your pitches (if, say, you lead a low spade intending to ruff the second round).  If instead, you cash two rounds of trump and then cash the second diamond in your hand, you could lead a third round of hearts to dummy's Ace -- but then you get seven hearts and four diamonds; you won't have a trump left in dummy to ruff your second spade! 
• Do cash one round of trump just to make sure they are 2-1.  Your plan may need to be adjusted if they are 3-0 -- I recommend you settle for 11 tricks, since lines to make 12 risk taking only 10 with 3-0 hearts when the club Ace is offside (sitting over the club King).

And a last comment on this hand -- I think that South is too strong for a 3-level preempt in 1st or 2nd seat.  Partner will expect you to have about six sure winners at this (equal) vulnerability, and your have seven (six hearts and a diamond).  This can lead to missing game or even slam quite easily.  On this actual deal, upgrade North's King of clubs to the Ace, and 12 tricks are a piece of cake on normal splits, but North will never think about bidding more than 4♥.  I recommend you open the South hand 1♥ red vs. red.  3♥ is reasonable (IMHO) red vs. white and meets the rule of 2-3-4 for preempts at that vulnerability.  

-----

Just a fun little hand from a club game, but there are important things to learn if you take a bit of time to analyze the hand after you play it -- and if you don't let the double dummy solver limit your thinking when you get less than the perfect lead or defense.  (Note: You can load hands from BCoH or most club games into BBO so that you can replay them with the double-dummy solver turned on to see how different leads and plays at each trick affect the result.)

♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣ ♠♥♦♣

Do you have other interesting hands from recent games?  One where you pulled off a coup, or you can't figure out how to take more tricks?  Send me an email with a description, and I may write it up in a future column.  PlayBridgeWithThomas@gmail.com

For Newer Players

Lessons, Lessons, Lesson & Practice, Practice, Practice

Beginning Bridge June 28th - October 23, 9:30-11:30 am. (online and in person) Click here for F2F Flyer

2 Over 1 Game Force System with Julie Halperin - September 24 - October 22 (Wednesdays), 2:30-4:30 pm, cost $80 plus Audrey Grant book.  Information and registration:  E-mail

bridgplyer2011@hotmail.com or Text 713-857-8004  Click here for 2 over 1 Flyer             

0-50 Bridge Game, every Sunday at 1:30 PM for $5
For more info:  BridgewithCarol@gmail.com, 936-650-8180

FREE Lessons with Susan Banks-Johnson every Tuesday at 9:30 AM

In Person at the club:

• Mentor Games:  2nd & 4th Tuesdays @ 10:30 AM
• 299er Games:   Every Saturday at Noon
• I/N Game less than 1000:   Fifth Tuesday of any month​​​

Check the BCOH website calendar for up-to-date information! 
Contact Kas Rangan at 539-210-1333 for info or a partner. 

Online at Choose Houston! (BBO)                                                                                         

• Mentor Games              1st & 3rd Mondays @ 7:00 PM
• Open Game                  Every Thursday @ 7:00 PM         
• 0-20 Game                   2nd Saturday @ 9:00 AM (usually)

BBO Virtual club games

When you play on BBO, we ask that you play in SE Carolina or Choose Houston games whenever possible.

Choose Houston has an open game every Thursday at 7 p.m. and a mentor/mentee game on the first and third Mondays at 7 p.m. To be a mentee, a player must have fewer than 300 masterpoints and must pay for their own entry as well as the entry of their mentor.  If you need a mentor or wish to mentor someone, please contact Mike Linkins via Email:  mlinkins@swbell.net.

The BCoH home page has a link to SE Carolina's website and a schedule for Choose Houston games.

And always check the BCOH Website for more!

 Regular Club Game Schedule                                                         

Special Events at BCOH in September

          Parties begin at 11:15 am unless otherwise noted with food - meat provided, please bring sides to share - games at noon.             

               Y'er next missive is due September 15 or ye'll walk the plank!