North Penn Bridge News

Greetings to the

North Penn Bridge Community!

Week of 11/22/2021

Director Appreciation Month

Dennis O’Brien. Dennis became curious about bridge when he observed fellow students playing in college at Renssaler Polytechnic Institute. When he was younger, his aunt taught him to play Whist, but no one in his family played bridge. When he got to grad school at the University of Maryland, he read a bridge book and practiced bidding hands with another student. His first duplicate game was at the Student Union. Now he was hooked, so he and a partner began attending open club games in the Washington D.C. area. At this time there was no stratification!

As he began mastering the game, Dennis and a partner started to play the Blue Team System, which was developed by Benito Garozzo and was popular in the 60's. It was a strong club system with step responses (controls) 1D, 1H, and 1S were 12-16 hcp. They used 4 card majors and the Canape method where the 2nd bid suit was longer than the first. 1NT was 13-17 hcp and 2D was 17-24 with 4-4-4-1 or 4-4-5-0 distribution. Dennis and his partner at that time attended tournaments in the D.C. area. Sometimes they ventured further to regionals.

After grad school, Dennis paused his bridge playing to concentrate on work - teaching Environmental Engineering. When he left teaching to do biochemical engineering research in the 80’s, he began playing seriously again in a Monday night game run by Alan Brooks at the Plymouth Meeting Mall. Alan eventually moved his game to Boehm’s Church in Blue Bell. Most Monday nights there were 19 tables! It was during his ten year stint at this club that Dennis met and played with Seymour (Sy) Lubetkin, who Dennis considers his mentor.

Dennis went on to become a director when he and his brother took over the BCDC Bridge Club in Drexel Hill. Dennis has continued directing to give back to the wonderful game of bridge.

From the Club Manager

Dave Dodgson

STaC Results. Congratulations to the following North Penn players who did well in the STaC tournaments:

Monday: Gail Kirrstetter - Stephen Greenwell, 6 in C
Wednesday: Kenneth Salter - David Dodgson, 2 in A
Thursday: Bruce Schwaidelson - Larry Umphlet, 6 in A
Thursday: Dara Dinner - Dave Dresher, 7 in B
Friday: Everyone who finished in the overalls (we were the only 0-750 game)

Happy Thanksgiving!! We hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the club is closed so you are stuck spending it with your family (or watching football.)

Proof of vaccination and face masks will remain a requirement at our F2F games until further notice.

Calendar (click here to see a file you can enlarge):

Non-Life Master December Sectional

(0-750 Stratified Pairs)

There will be a Non-Life Master sectional at the King of Prussia bridge club on Saturday, December 4, 2021.

See the flyer for this event here.

Education

Shuffle & Deal for Newer Players. Shuffle & Deal has moved to Thursday mornings from 9:30 to 11:30 am. There will be three more sessions this year: 12/2, 12/9 and 12/16. In the new year, S&D will move to Wednesday mornings. Everyone is welcome - no partner needed. A mentor will be available to answer whatever questions might arise as you play. $5 per person per session. No scoring, no pressure!

Beginner Lessons: The last two beginner lessons with Deb Crisfield will be December 8 and 15 from 9:30 am to 11:30 am.

Beginner lessons will continue in January. They will be held on Mondays from 9-11 am. Dates are January 1/3, 1/10, 1/17, 1/24, 1/31. These lessons will be taught by John Dickinson. The fee will be $100 for all five sessions.

Contact Deb at: [email protected]

Contact John at: [email protected]

Facebook

Be sure to check out our Facebook page. It’s a great way to stay in touch with all the happenings at North Penn.

Tidbits

“If you use Drury and partner shows no interest, you should never try for game and if the opponents start bidding, you shouldn’t compete without super values, which always starts with four-card support.”

From Bridge Tips

by Mike Lawrence

Deal of the Week

by Rex Saffer

Kick Back and Relax

In our wonderful yet sometimes maddening English language, to “kick back” can mean to recline, take it easy, chill out, unwind, hang loose, or take a load off. On the other hand, a “kickback” is graft, a payoff or bribe. The term is not frequently encountered in bridge, unless you play “kickback” as a keycard ask on the way to a potential slam. We present here an outline of the main elements of the method. See the sources provided in the citations at the end of this article for comprehensive details.

The kickback convention has been around for quite a while, ever since Jeff Rubens introduced it as an example of his Useful Space Principle (USP)¹ in a series of articles in Bridge World magazine in late 1980 and early 1981. Rubens was Bridge World co–editor with Edgar Kaplan from 1967 and took over as editor and publisher after Kaplan's death in 1997.

The USP makes perfect sense once articulated: Available bidding space should be assigned by a system to those conventions that can best use it.

Why Should I Kick Back?

Roman Keycard Blackwood (RCKB) violates the USP by its very nature, as the 4NT call is always used to initiate it. But in any suit but spades, a RKCB response can take the auction beyond the level of safety, which is five of the trump suit. Here is an example²:

Scooby finds himself off two aces and up Slam Creek with no paddle. He can’t even sign off in 5NT, as that would be a king ask. The problem here is that there is not enough room above the keycard ask to sign off in five of the trump suit if the advancer must respond 5♥ or 5♠. The problem becomes progressively worse for lower ranking suits.

Is There a Solution to the Problem?

Minorwood (four of the trump suit) is such an attempt when trumps are clubs or diamonds, but that would not help if trumps are a major suit. Kickback RKCB solves the problem for any suit by denoting four of the suit above the trump suit as the keycard ask. This reserves enough Useful Space above the trump suit for all responses, which are returned as steps above the ask suit. The king ask is five of the kickback suit. The queen ask is the next step above a 1^st or 2^nd step response (either 0314 or 1430). If trumps are spades, 4NT remains the keycard ask, with enough steps above it to sign off safely in 5♠ if necessary.

In the deal above, a 4♥ call over 3♦ would be kickback, and if playing 1430 the responses would be:

Shaggy’s 5♦ response shows that two keycards are missing, and Scooby can safely pass.

Kickback Comes with Issues of Its Own

The basic kickback structure is straightforward enough, but as Norman Pestaina’s 20–page signature article⁴ shows, continuation responses and special cases can be a waking nightmare. The truly masochistic may want to consider Robert Munger’s 104–page publication, Kickback: Slam Bidding at Bridge⁵. One might ask if it is worth the investment of rapidly diminishing cognitive resources to adopt the entire framework. Who hasn’t forgotten a new convention, or gotten its response structure wrong the first few times? Partnerships should expect a few glitches, and poor scores to go along with them, until they iron out the kinks. This has happened to your author, and not just once.

Another drawback is that the kickback suit is no longer available as a control bid or a splinter. A partial solution is to agree that 4NT be taken as a control bid in the kickback suit. Of course, this doesn’t work for spades, since 4NT is kickback for spades. We know of no solution to address the splinter problem.

When is a call of four of the kickback suit not kickback? The usual agreement is that if the kickback suit has previously been bid naturally, it is not. In this case, the keycard ask reverts to 4NT.

Karen Walker’s outstanding article⁶ on the adoption of new system treatments specifies these considerations:

Value – The purpose of any system change should be to improve your ability to get to the optimal contract.
Frequency – When evaluating a new convention or treatment, consider how often it’s likely to occur.
Simplicity – How much time do you have to practice and work on your system?
Compatibility – How does it fit with other elements of your system and your partnership style?

Closing Thoughts

As Karen remarks at the close of her article, “The most important point to remember is that bidding systems don’t win events. Good judgment does. No matter what system you’re playing, if you know it well, make good basic decisions, and commit fewer errors than your opponents, then you’ll probably win.”

Finally, here is a little teaser – stay tuned for a forthcoming installment of the DOTW. It’s a tale of a kickback fall from grace and subsequent redemption.