From the Club Manager

Dave Dodgson

Shuffle and Deal (S&D) is for Everyone! S&D is a growing community of players improving their skills in a friendly, low-pressure environment. If the pandemic kept you away from duplicate and you’re looking for an easy way to get back to the table, join us on Wednesdays from 9:30-11:30 a.m. for “casual bridge” with teachers and mentors on hand to answer your questions. Please come and join the fun for only $5 per player!

Game Fees. Effective September 1, 2022, game fees will increase to $12 for members and $14 for non-members. Special games, such as a STaC will be $1 more. Shuffle and Deal will remain at $5 and the online games will remain at $5.50 for standard games and $6.50 for special games.

NAP Qualifying. We will be running NAP qualifying games for the rest of August. This is your last chance to qualify. NPenn will be hosting some of the NAP finals in October.

Longest Day Donation Results

It’s a wrap! The 2022 final tally of funds raised by our North Penn DBC through donations and fees totaled $2,705! What an awesome accomplishment and it’s all thanks to those who contributed to fighting Alzheimer’s Disease and honoring those who have been affected by it.

Partnership

To add your name to the player list or to request a partner for a game, please send an email to [email protected].

Limited game players…please continue working with Mitch Snyder for the Tuesday and Friday morning games.

Click here to see a file you can enlarge.

Education

Fall Lessons:

Defensive Carding - September 12, 19, 26 and October 3, 9-11 a.m., in person at the club. Teacher: John Dickenson. Click this link for details.

Overcalls and Declarer Play Deception - September 12 and 19. Teacher: Joann Glasson. Classes are at 10 a.m. on Zoom. For details contact Joann at [email protected].

New Beginner Bridge Classes - October 17 for seven consecutive Monday evenings from 7-9 p.m. Teacher: Deb Crisfield. Please contact Deb at [email protected] or 973-769-9619 to sign up. Click here for flyer.

Tidbits

Partscore Doubles

“Fierce partscore battles are waged at matchpoints. In tough events, such battles frequently lead to doubled contracts. Many matchpoints hang in the balance. The experts follow this general rule: if it is your hand and you feel you are being pushed around, you must double the opponents or suffer a bad result. You must be willing to risk the possibility that the doubled contract will make. The argument goes like this. If the opponents make their doubled contract, your score won’t be much worse. But if they don’t, your reward will be much greater.”

From How the Experts Win at Bridge

by Burt Hall and Lynn Rose-Hall

Deal of the Week

by Rex Saffer

The Bitter End

I am writing this article from Baltimore, MD, where I am attending the District 6 Regional Tournament. Sadly, the tournament is not very well attended, with a table count that is projected to be about 35% of that at Hunt Valley in 2019. This Sunday’s Daily Bulletin from the Fast Results Help Desk reported a paltry 691 total tables through the end of play on Saturday, 08/27.

As most of us already know, tournament attendance is down across the board since play resumed last year. This Baltimore tournament might well set a new low by its end. I should note that masks are mandatory here anywhere inside the playing area. ACBL protocols call for mandatory masking if the risk level is Red (High). After the large number of positive COVID tests during and after the Providence NABC (some 140 or so), District 6 adopted a more conservative masking policy, even though the current risk level in Baltimore is Orange (Medium). One might speculate about the effect of mandatory masking on attendance, but that would indeed be speculative lacking representative member and attendee surveys, so enough said about that.

The Deal of the Week

In this week’s Deal, South was endplayed on a critical board that determined the outcome of a Thursday Team match. On that day there were A/X, Midflight, and Gold Rush Teams contests, and an Open Pairs event. In Midflight Teams, no player could hold more than 3000 MPs, and with one member just above that, the team featured here had to play in X against significantly more experienced opposition. No matter; much more interesting and instructive to play up rather than down.

It was the last board of the last match of the second session, where our N/S protagonists had drawn an accomplished E/W pair from our own North Penn Duplicate Bridge Club, friends and sometime partners all around! While it can be difficult to know the running state of any match, it felt tight going into the final Deal. Here it is:

The bidding was straightforward, and after the final pass North pondered her options. Given the strong auction, leading either major seemed unproductive at best. On a club lead, South would win, and a shift to a spade would irretrievably sink declarer’s battleship. But instead, the ♦4 hit the felt, declarer called for the nine from dummy, and declarer’s ace decapitated South’s king.

Declarer cashed the ♥A and watched North’s jack fall. Hoping that it was from jack–ten tight, she continued a low trump to the king and found she had a heart loser as North pitched the ♦8, upside down (I didn’t mean it Pard!). Taking advantage of dummy’s sole likely entry, she passed the ♠J to North’s king. Once again, a club return would have scuttled the contract, but a passive spade continuation set the stage for the looming endplay.

Declarer won in hand and cashed the ♥Q, then she ran off her spade and diamond winners, coming to this position just prior to South’s play to trick nine:

Knowing that the only remaining spade out was the ten, South carelessly (or perhaps exhaustedly) discarded the ♠9. Oh no!! Declarer put him in with his trump winner, and he had to lead into dummy’s club tenace, handing declarer her 10^th trick and +620. At the other table, E/W had bid to the same contract and gone down one for –50. The 12 IMP swing sealed the Deal, as it were. N/S did take considerable consolation from the knowledge that one of the E/W players on the opposing team, also a friend from a nearby PA club, made Life Master with her team’s 3^rd place finish. Well done!

Closing Thoughts

Dear Reader, as we make progress in our Bridge journeys, we are introduced to the expansive landscape of endplays. These can take many forms, but the essential elements are to strip an opponent of so–called “exit cards”, then to “throw them in” by leading a side suit in which they have the only remaining winner. In a suit contract, this frequently presents the defender with Hobson’s Choice, forced to select between a ruff–sluff or a lead away from what otherwise would be a winning honor. In a notrump contract there is no choice at all, and the defender must necessarily lead away from an honor.

What we much less frequently learn, or are taught, is how to break up or avoid an endplay. As the prospective victim, one does so by hanging on to an exit card at all costs, so that when thrown in with a winner in a side suit, the return of the exit card preserves the defensive tenace, leaving declarer to lead the suit herself. Here, if South will only discard a small club on the ♦J at trick nine, then when he is put in with his high heart he can return his remaining spade. Declarer will have to ruff it with her last trump, and South will take the last two tricks for down one.

Now in all things Bridge, we do not play in isolation, and Pard can also break up an endplay by leading the suit with the defensive tenace earlier in the play of the hand. But in this week’s Deal, although North had two opportunities to lead clubs through dummy, in The Bitter End South did himself in by his own hand and must accept full responsibility for his team’s demise. In the spirit of full disclosure, your author sat South and self–immolated, hopefully having learned a valuable lesson.

All the best,

Rex

This one fellows loves to psyche, but his partner has his fill and tells him that from now on he is going to fine him 20 dollars every time he psyches. The 'psycher' agrees and everything is going along just fine until the psycher winds up playing against a guy he hates. The psycher is the dealer. He says to his partner: " By the way, here's the 20 dollars I owe you, one spade!"

Tue, Aug 02

Tue, Aug 16

Wed, Aug 17

Wed, Aug 17

Tue, Aug 23 

74%

70%

74%

72%

75%

Peggy Michaud & Ross Currie

Don Baker & Michael Carver

Mitch Snyder & Estelle Ronderos

David Dodgson & Kenneth Salter

David Dodgson & Tom Salter