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Our club is fortunate to have many of you supporting our club and getting back to live bridge! Isn’t it great to visit with friends and enjoy an afternoon of bridge. We are going to be losing a few more to cooler climes in the next couple weeks. I hope our local players continue to step in!
This week’s games are all extra point games supporting ACBL’s Grassroots Fund. This fund gives money back to the local units. And don’t forget next Sunday’s unit Swiss Team event! Lots of extra points and good experience for the following week’s Tampa tournament, if you are going.
— Pamela
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At the club this week
Learning opportunities
Game notes
All 12:30 games this week will support the Grass Roots Fund. The game fee will be $9 with the extra fee going to our District to fund support for the district's Grand National Teams and North American Pairs representatives. Extra masterpoints will be awarded.
Kim Dean revived our mentoring program and has directed the Tuesday 12:30 Mentor-Mentee games. Many thanks for championing this important program. While the official mentoring program on hiatus until the fall, Paul will be directing this weekly game beginning this Tuesday. Everyone is invited to play in this game, but we want to continue the tradition of this being a mentoring game. Therefore, we will review a few interesting hands from last week's game at 12:00. If you need a mentor or want to be a mentor, let us know and we will do our best to pair you up.
This Sunday, May 29, we will host a Unit Swiss Teams. It will start at 1:00. At 12:30 there will be a short presentation of Swiss scoring (IMPs and Victory Points) for those new to Team games. Since this is a team game, you need a partner and two teammates. If you are in need of teammates, we will do our best to "pair you up," Team games are great fun. We hope to see you there.
Congratulations
The following players at our club achieved a new rating in April:
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Mina Harkins
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Junior Master
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Linda Thompson
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Club Master
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Bruce Philipoom
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Sectional Master
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Charles Schropp
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Sectional Master
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Vernard Adams
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NABC Master
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Kevin Conway
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NABC Master
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John Lowry
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NABC Master
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Bryan Harper
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Bronze Life Master
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Sally Lusk
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Silver Life Master
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Debbie Thomas
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Ruby Life Master
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FYI
One of our Friday players has tested positive for Covid. If you note symptoms of a cold, please stay home until you feel better. We wish them a speedy recovery ❤️🩹
When things go wrong
Did someone lead out of turn? Did you forget to Alert something? Do you think there was a revoke? Do you think that someone did something that might be against the Laws of Duplicate Bridge or the ACBL regulations? Call the director. Let me repeat that: If something strange happens, call the director. Do not make the ruling yourself and most importantly, do not intimidate the opponents by telling them what to do.
Do you have a strange and wondrous partnership agreement? This might be an explicate agreement — you and your partner have discussed the agreement — or, it might be implicate — you have not discussed it but you know what is going on by prior experience. In either case, you have the duty to make sure the opponents are informed.
Claims and Concessions
First, let us define the terms. A claim is saying that you will take a certain number of the remaining tricks. By the Laws, it never applies to a trick currently in play. As an example, eight tricks have been played. One of the active players (either defender or the declarer) says “I will take four more tricks.” That is a claim.
A concession is saying you will lose a certain number of tricks. The claim above includes a concession of one trick.
When you claim you need to do the following:
1. Put your cards face up on the table.
2. State how many tricks you will take.
3. Explain your play in detail.
Failure to explain your play will often lead to an unhappy ending for the claimer. For example, if you fail to mention that you will draw trumps (assuming one of the opponents still holds one or more trumps) means that you can not lead a trump until you have no more non-trump cards to lead. There is a good reason for this. It is assumed that you forgot there was an opponent’s trump still in play. After all, if you knew there was a trump out, you would have stated how you would handle it in step 3 above.
If you are a defender, your claim cannot state that your partner will play a certain card at a certain time. Your claim must include such details as unblocking a suit (example: dummy holds the QJT9 in clubs and you hold AK3 in clubs. Your explanation should include something like “I cash the ace and king of clubs followed by the small club to dummy.” It cannot be assumed that the claimer will not make a careless mistake. However, the claimer cannot be forced to do something that is not a normal, if inferior or somewhat sloppy, line play.
For example, If the claimer says I am going to draw trump, it will be assumed they will draw trumps by leading trumps from the top down. Similarly, if the claim includes a ruff, the claimer cannot be forced to underruff. In fact, if the claimer intends to underruff or to underlead a higher trump (yes, sometimes those can be the best play), the claimer must clearly state this. Note that dummy is not allowed to say anything (yet).
Once the claim is made and explained, the opponents can either accept or reject the claim. If a defender claims, dummy is part of the process. Both opponents must accept the claim. If either one has a problem with the claim, they should so state and if claimer does not revise the claimed number of tricks, we move to the next step.
If the claim is rejected one of two things happen. If and only if a member of the non-claiming side suggests continuing the play of the hand and if and only if all the players agree to this, the hands are picked up and play continues. None of the cards that were exposed become penalty cards and a player can use any information gained by seeing an opponent’s cards. Note that there is no reason for the non-claimers to expose their hands.
Both opponents must accept the claim. If either one has a problem with the claim, they should so state and if claimer does not revise the claimed number of tricks, it is time to call the director or to play the hand out. If all four players do not agree to play out the hand, the director needs to called. The claimer will be asked to repeat their claim. It is important for the claimer to repeat their claim as exactly as possible. You do not get to “improve” your claim at this point; to do so is highly unethical and subject to a procedural penalty.
The director will adjudicate the claim and make a ruling. This ruling might be delayed if the director needs some time to review the hand. Once the director is called, the players cannot decide to play out the hand. Continuing the play would only occur if so, ordered by the director.
Here are two examples of how a ruling might be made:
Dummy holds AKJT54 facing declarer’s 983. If declarer, the claimer, did not state whether they will finesse for the queen or play for the drop, the director will allow the claimer to win six tricks in this suit only if the queen is on-side doubleton or singleton. In other words, only if the claimer would have won these six tricks on any reasonable play of the suit. The claimers protestation that “Of course, I would have cashed the ace first to guard against the stiff queen offsides.” or “I always finesse in this situation.” or similar statements should be ignored.
Dummy holds AJ97 facing declarer’s KT86, declarer will be assumed to misguess the location of the queen if this was not correctly specified in the claim.
There is more to the Laws regarding claiming, but this is (more than) enough for one article.
Bridge trivia answers
Question 1: In what movie did James Bond rig a bridge hand?
Moonraker
Question 2: When were indices added to playing cards?
The indices were first used in the 1860s.This is usually considered one of the United States' greatest inventions ranking with such important innovations as Spam, bourbon, and Twitter.
Question 3: What is the Muiderbergh (usually misspelled Muiderberg) convention?
This is one of many similar conventions which use two of a major to show a weak hand with five of the bid major and four or five card in either minor.
Questions for this week
1. There are two related facetious Rabbi's Rules.Do you know either?
2. What is Hamman's Law?
3. What is the Rule of Seven?
Word of the week
Two-way finesse
definition: a card combination giving one the choice to finesse either opponent for a specific card (often the queen),
Example: Dummy holds the AJ2 and declarer hold KT3 of the same suit.Either defender can be finessed for the queen.
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