North Penn Bridge News

Greetings to the

North Penn Bridge Community!

Week of 07/03/2023

From the Club Manager

Dave Dodgson

Vaccination Policy. Effective July 1, 2023, and in accordance with ACBL policy, the NPDBC vaccination requirement will no longer be in effect. If your opponents are masked and request that you wear one too, please comply with the request.

Summer Instant Matchpoint Game. On July 10, there will be an ACBL-wide IMG game. You will be able to see your score for each hand as soon as you play it. There will also be a video analysis by experts on the most interesting hands and a written analysis on all hands. Section tops will receive GOLD points. Click here for details.

KOP Regional. Congratulations to the following players who did well in the Regional.

Monday

Gold Rush Pairs

Seventh: Jane Pelullo & Charlotte Garber
Fifth in B: Brendan O’Malley & Marc Topaz
Sixth in B: Karen Batchelder & Barbara Daly

Midflight Pairs

Fifth: Lee Stanley & Gilbert Deleeuw

Topflight Pairs

Second in X: Steve Gewirtzman & Clifford Wilson

199er Pairs

First: Wawa Ingersoll & Gwen Bryant
Third: Nancy Adelman & Sue Ellen Masty
Fourth in C: Diane Basile & Dominick Basile

Tuesday

Flight 1 Mon-Tue Bracketed KO Teams

Fourth: Carl Berenbaum, Barbara Kepple, Saleh Fetouf, William Seqraves

Bracketed Teams 3

Second: Al Fitzgerald, Stephen McReynolds, Russell Poppleton, Andre St Omer Roy
Third: Evelyn Melchiorre, Carol Roden, Natalie Weinstein, Lynn Lonker

Bracketed Teams 5

First: Jane Bonenberger, Peggy Greenawalt, Eileen Vass, Katherine Link
Second: Brendan O’Malley, Linda O’Malley, Steve Binnick, Marc Topaz

Gold Rush Pairs

Third: Don Baker & Ross Currie
Fourth: Roberta Steinberg & Len Saffren
Eighth: Christine Sgro & Diane Luedtke

Topflight Pairs

First: Tom & Ken Salter
Second: Dara Dinner & R. David Walker
Sixth: Andy Kaufman & Douglas Dye

199er Pairs

Fourth: Sue Ellen Masty & Nancy Adelman
Fifth: Diane Basile & Dominick Basile

Wednesday

Gold Rush Pairs

Second: Don Baker & Ross Currie

Midflight Pairs

Sixth: Rex Saffer & Betsy Cutler
Eighth: Lee Stanley & Gilbert Deleeuw

199er Pairs

First: Sue Ellen Masty & Nancy Adelman
Third: Jackie Zelle & Michelle Clemens

Thursday

Wed-Thur Bracketed Teams 1

Second: John Dickenson, Andy Kaufman, Sue Lan Ma, Peter Petruzellis

Wed-Thur Bracketed Teams 2

Second: Bill Bauer III, Susan Morse, Ken Salter, Tom Salter
Third: April Uhlenburg, R. David Walker, Sheldon Per, Carolyn Per, Gary Hillenbrand, Ed Spitzer
Fourth: Cathy Strauss, Margot Lebovitz, John Schwartz, Jane Havighurst

Wed-Thur Bracketed Teams 3

Second: Al Fitzgerald, Stephen McReynolds, Russell Poppleton, Andre St Omer Roy
Third: Alison Shoemaker, Lisa Mita, Lynn Hamlin, Gail Yoh
Fourth: Toysie Walker, John Early, Gerry Jawer, Art Seidner

Wed-Thur Bracketed Teams 4

Fourth: Kay Garrity, Richard Godshall, Nancy Parke, Anne Cheney

Gold Rush Dupli-Swiss

First: Brendan O’Malley, Linda O’Malley, Steve Binnick, Marc Topaz

Mid-Flight Dupli-Swiss

Fourth: Betsy Cutler, Lee Stanley, Craig Bailey, Gilbert Deleeuw

Top-Flight Dupli-Swiss

Second: Bruce Schwaidelson, Al Ronderos, Everett Young, Richard Morgen
Fifth: Elaine Clair, Peter Kyper, Evelyn Rosen, Joel Myers

Open Pairs

Second: Ed Leach & Barton Buffington
Eighth: Dave Dresher & Dave Dodgson
Fourth in B: Dave & Jack Willgruber

Friday

Gold Rush Pairs

First: Peggy Michaud & Ross Currie

Top-Flight Pairs

Third: Andy Kaufman & Kelley Hwang
Fourth in X: Lisa Mita & Mark Cohen

Saturday

Friday-Saturday Bracketed Teams 1

Fourth: Carl Berenbaum, Barbara Kepple, Saleh Fetouf, William Seqraves

Friday-Saturday Bracketed Teams 2

Fourth: Dara Dinner, R. David Walker, Ed Spitzer, Gary Hillenbrand

Friday-Saturday Bracketed Teams 3

First: Rex Saffer, Cheryl Rouge, Robin Siegel, Mindy Goldberg
Third: Brendan O’Malley, Linda O’Malley, Katherine Link, Eileen Vass
Fourth: Toysie Walker, Don Baker, John Early, Barry Daubenspeck

Bracketed Teams 1

Third: April Uhlenburg, Michael Roberts, Riki Tulin, Shannon Cappelletti

Bracketed Teams 3

First: Roger Milton, Beth Milton, Leslie Degeorges, Wendy Miller
Second: Jeff Rohrbeck, Lou Primavera, Dave Willgruber, Jack Willgruber

Mid-Flight Pairs

Third: David Silberman & Al Fitzgerald
Fourth: Ed Ritvo & Everette Harris

Top-Flight Pairs

Second in X: Al Ronderos & Estelle Ronderos

Sunday

Bracketed Teams 2

Second: Dara Dinner, R. David Walker, Dave Dresher, Dave Dodgson
Third: Ed Leach, Barton Buffington, Jeanne Gehret, Todd Thorsen

Bracketed Teams 3

First: David Silberman, Bruce Lieberman, Milind Vaze, Janis Kritzer
Second: Brendan O’Malley, Linda O’Malley, Deb Crisfield, Susan Morse
Fourth: Rex Saffer, Catherine Strauss, Judy Robbins, Jon Manerchia

Bracketed Teams 4

Second: Ross Currie, Don Baker, Peggy Michaud, Joyce Levin

July Schedule:

There will be NAP Qualifying games the weeks of 7/3 and 7/24
There will be Club Championship games the week of 7/10
The ACBL-wide Instant Matchpoint Game is on 7/10
The Robot Individual is on 7/22
The next STaC is July 31-August 6

Upcoming Tournaments:

July 13-23 – NABC Chicago
July 27-30 – The online regional, Virtual Vacation. Click here for details
August 21-27 – The Baltimore Regional

Education

Shuffle & Deal--.Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m.

Tuesday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m.

2/1 Class with Lisa Mita at North Penn Bridge Club. Beginning Saturday September 30^th and running through October 28^th on Saturday mornings. Stay tuned for details.

New Fall Beginner Class with Deb Crisfield. Beginning Sunday September 10^th and running on consecutive Sundays through October 15^th from 12 noon to 2 p.m. Stay tuned for class details and spread the word! The first two classes will be free!

Partnership

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

Calendar

Click here to see a file you can enlarge.

We update our Facebook page regularly so be sure to check it out. It’s a great way to stay in touch with all the happenings at North Penn.

Tidbits

“Do not be trapped into believing that all doubles at high levels are for penalty. In fact, level plays a secondary role in determining the meaning of a double. A good rule of thumb is: When partner has not yet made a bid, most doubles are for takeout.”

From Points Schmoints

by Marty Bergen

Deal of the Week

by Bruce Schwaidelson

([email protected])

Three Cheers for the RED, WHITE & BLUE!

Dateline July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

What a momentous day in Philadelphia -- the signing of the Declaration of Independence! All the Continental Congress bigwigs were in town, Hancock, John and Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Culbertson, Jacoby, and the one and only Benjamin Franklin, the eldest member of the troop.

Not all the conversation that day was centered around the Declaration itself. Congress was not only planning for the Revolutionary War ahead, but also how they would distinguish their brand new country as they freed themselves from Great Britain’s rule. One impending controversy: what should their new flag look like? Should the fledgling United States of America continue to utilize the red, white and blue colors of the mother country or should it showcase independence by displaying yellow, green and vermilion, for example?

Another hot topic was the issue of breaking away from that horrible British ACOL system of bidding, the one that opens 4-card majors and bids 1 NT with 12-14 HCP. When the Brits discovered that those upstart colonists had developed their own Standard American system, they immediately issued an edict to outlaw such nonsense. You may recall the big hubbub in Massachusetts when the colonials, totally outraged by the Intolerable Acts, refused to unload the chests of playing cards from the British East India Company ships and instead dumped them into Boston Harbor in protest.

Naturally with the coming of Independence, the bidding system edict would be history, but perhaps Standard American would be too. Ben Franklin, always the tinkerer, had come up with an innovation that he was promoting. In fact, some of the bridge players at Ben’s college in Philly, the very first in Pennsylvania, were already embracing it. His new-fangled concept was to force to game immediately whenever you bid a new suit on the 2-level over partner’s major suit opener, as long as the opponents haven’t interfered. To accommodate this method, responder would sometimes use a “forcing NT” when he wasn’t strong enough to force to game.

Franklin envisioned that after a 2-level response, jump raises to game would show no slam interest, whereas raises below game would indicate just the opposite. This approach provided bidding room to explore for slam before reaching game itself, a most novel idea. He used the example of this uncontested auction: 1♠ – 2♣; 2♥ - ? A raise to 3♥ would show a stronger hand than a “fast arrival” jump to 4♥! Outrageous, some thought, but as bridge history would show, Ben was definitely onto something. He pointed out that after a game force, jump rebids and jump-shifts promising extra values were to be avoided unless they showed a very specific type of hand.

After the signing ceremony at the Hall, Franklin invited everyone over to the college bridge club for some duplicate. John Hancock asked him if he was referring to that very tiny room on South Street, the so-called South Penn Bridge Club that Hancock had once visited. Franklin laughed and revealed: “We outgrew that space, Johnny. We moved to the other end of campus and renamed it the North Penn DBC. I think you’ll really like it.”

Once all the signatories had arrived at the new club, they not surprisingly played a 13-table duplicate with 13 rounds. In the ultimate round, partners Franklin and Hancock (EW) squared off against Thomas Jefferson and his partner, Samuel Adams, who of course would be providing the post-game beer.

Always looking for a way to earn a penny, Ben suggested they lay a side wager of a penny a point on the final deal’s score. That much-discussed board happens to be our Deal of the 18^th Century:

The 2♦ bid was game-forcing per Ben’s new bidding plan, and after Hancock’s jump to 3♠ set the trump suit, 4♣ and 4♦ were control bids. When Ben denied a heart control by bidding 4♠, Hancock was certain that most of Ben’s points were in the black suits. He therefore bid 4NT, a recent Franklin invention dubbed Key-Card Ben-wood. The 5♠ bid revealed that Ben held 2 of the 5 keycards (the 5^th keycard was the trump King) in addition to the trump Queen. Hancock had no problem bidding the excellent small slam.

Before leading, Adams (South) asked the meaning of the jump to 3♠, noting “I thought your system was designed to avoid jumps at the lower levels.” Ben’s reply: “Some jumps are allowed, Sammy, but only when they are specific picture bids. The 3♠ call indicates that John holds good 3-card spade support and a very fine diamond suit, often a 6-bagger.” In truth, Ben expected to see the A10x of spades, along with pretty solid diamonds, and he was fairly certain the slam would be a laydown.

Adams led the 3 of trumps and when Hancock tabled his dummy, he mentioned “the spades may not be as good as you’re expecting, Benjamin, but I think you’ll like the diamonds. Best of luck!” Fortunately, luck was really not needed, since the 30-point slam would succeed against any lead. The trump lead went to North’s Ace, and Jefferson returned a 2^nd spade. Ben had no problem playing a 3^rd round of trumps before unblocking the ♦J and claiming, stating that he would pitch his 3 losing hearts on the ♦A-K-Q.

When Jefferson opened the traveler (no, Ben had not yet invented electronic scoring), he discovered that his opponents were the only pair to bid the slam. Thus, it was 980 pennies for John and Ben to go with a well-deserved top.

Jefferson could no longer hold his tongue: “My dear Mr. Franklin, is your system that good that no one else can figure out how to bid a laydown slam?” Ben consoled him with the fact that “the 3♠ bid was the only way to get me interested in slam, Tommy m’boy. My hearts were poor and my stiff ♦J was of uncertain value, that is, until I heard the 3♠ bid. Then I knew that if my partner held (say) the ♠A and a stiff heart, I should have no problem making 12 tricks. His singleton ♥A was a most suitable alternative.”

Still dejected, the future 3^rd President commented he was glad that he and Sam were RED and the opponents were WHITE, and not the other way around, but “owing you only 980 pennies rather than 1,430 -- while getting a cold bottom -- still makes me very, very BLUE.” To which Ben responded: “Well, I think that settles it. As far as I’m concerned it’s three cheers for the RED, WHITE and BLUE -- I believe we should maintain those colors for our new USA flag. I will let Betsy know immediately!” And then he couldn’t help adding: “And don’t forget, T-Jeff, a penny saved is a penny earned!”

Postmortem:

(1) Ben Franklin was clearly ahead of his time. In fact, some 211 years later, Mike Lawrence, in his Workbook On The Two Over One System, wrote that if the auction begins 1♥-2♣-2♦, a jump to 3♥ would be a “well-defined jump” showing “good hearts, good clubs and more than a minimum response. It is a strong hint towards slam.” When this exact same board appeared in The Common Game almost two and a half centuries after Franklin and Hancock played it, only 7% of the EW pairs bid this laydown slam. If the field only knew about Franklin’s (and Lawrence’s) jump raise suggestions, perhaps more pairs would have found their way.

(2) Wondering what Ben decided to call his new bidding system? He had been pondering that too. As a matter of fact, one evening around midnight some guy named Revere went galloping by on horseback while bellowing out this suggestion: “One if by part-score, Two if by game,” but Franklin finally decided that All-American Two Over One would suffice.

Happy Independence Day Everyone! July 4, 1776 was a truly great day… for bridge!