North Penn Bridge News

Greetings to the

North Penn Bridge Community!

Week of 08/08/2022

From the Club Manager

Dave Dodgson

August Schedule:

August 8-12 Super Club Championships - triple points for no extra charge!

August 13 Robot Individual - quick online game.

August 15-19 STaC Week - earn extra silver points!

August 22-September 2 NAP Qualifying - last chance to qualify for the North American Pairs at the club.

September 5 Save the Date - holiday bridge and lunch.

Bobbie Gomer Club Challenge. Congratulations to two North Penn teams for winning the Club Challenge again! Our team of Brendan O’Malley, Linda O’Malley, Ed Leach and Bob Muhlhauser came in first and our team of John Dickenson, Ellen Luchette, Dave Dresher and Dave Dodgson came in third.

Road Closing. Wissahickon Avenue is periodically closed for construction at Beaver Street. If it is, just continue on Sumneytown Pike, turn right on Church Street, turn right on Wisshickon and right into the driveway to the club.

Partnership

Partnerships are the building blocks of a thriving bridge community. Accordingly, North Penn is developing a centralized database containing names and contact information of players wishing to be contacted when either looking for a partner or when someone else is looking for a partner.

If you are are interested in being on the list, please send an email with your name, contact information and any questions you might have to: [email protected].

Likewise if you need a partner for a game, send an email to [email protected] and let us know what day you wish to play.

You will be contacted by email with the names of available players and you can then reach out if you wish. You will also be contacted when someone else is looking for a partner.

Limited game players are encouraged to continue working with Mitch Snyder to coordinate partnerships for the Tuesday and Friday morning games.

Thanks in advance; we hope to see you at the tables soon!

Calendar

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. Teacher: John Dickenson. See this link for details.

New Beginner Bridge Classes - October 17 for seven consecutive Monday evenings (time to be determined.) Teacher: Deb Crisfield. Please contact Deb at [email protected] or 973-769-9619 to sign up.

And be sure to spread the word! Tell your friends who are still working that they'll want to learn the game before they retire!

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

“To sum up team bidding, there are several ways you can make a real difference in the outcome of a match:

Compete for partscores since sometimes they alone can decide the match. You have a little more leverage in teams because seldom will the opponent have the nerve to double you in a partscore contract. But, against good players be discrete when you are vulnerable.

Bid your games and slams optimistically when vulnerable and do so consistently.

Whenever possible disrupt the opponents’ bidding machinery.

Take out insurance on highly distributional hands - bid one more.”

From How the Experts Win at Bridge

by Burt Hall and Lynn Rose-Hall

Deal of the Week

by John Dickenson

Minus 1100 in a Swiss Match - A Disaster?

Playing with my Vancouver partner Shelley Burns in Providence at the NABC, I picked up a lousy hand with 5-5 in the reds. LHO opened 1D, partner overcalled 2C, negative double on my right, pass, pass! Opener had converted the negative double to penalty! We were vulnerable at IMPs so I am thinking this cannot be good, but it got even worse when partner jumped to 4S, and RHO slapped the red card onto the table in about 10 nanoseconds.

Here is the entire deal:

With perfect defense, 4S can be beat 5 tricks for -1400 our way. East led the diamond ace to get a look at dummy, and shifted to the spade ten, won in my hand by the jack. Shelley led a club, and West fell from grace by hopping up with the ace – it is often right to play second hand low even if dummy or declarer has a stiff in the suit! Now they could only set us by 4 tricks. West further erred by leading a low club for her partner to ruff – better to pursue a forcing defense, not shorten East’s trumps. Shelley put in the 6, ruffed by East with the 3, who led another trump, won in hand by the ace. Now it got really weird – Shelley left the ace of trumps face up on the table and the rest of us turned our cards over. Now East put the spade 8 on the table!

The director was called and West started complaining that it was all our fault, declarer confused her partner who thought Shelley had led the spade ace to the next trick and he was just following suit. The director would have none of this, said it was in declarer’s rights to leave her card face up to preserve her right to examine the trick, and besides East should have known that the spade ace had not been led as the previous trick had not been “quitted” and besides, there is only one spade ace in the deck. So the spade 8 became a major penalty card, and Shelley now led a low club from hand and East was forced to ruff. At this point, she had trump control and could have held the contract to down 2, but she was rattled by all the craziness and the fact that West kept whining that Shelley had somehow tricked her partner (we should have called the director back at that point) that she lost track of trumps and went down 4 for -1100.

Our teammates Ken Salter and Dave Dodgson came over to compare, their opponents also played 4S doubled at the other table and they were +1100! We won the match by a narrow margin of 5 IMPs but could have won by 17.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Peter Leventritt, a famous bridge player, is teaching a beginning class at the Card School in New York. It is now the fifth lesson and one of the regulars is sick. Peter is forced to ask this fellow in the class who has not said one word since day one and is only there because his girlfriend bugged him to try to learn the game to fill in. Reluctantly the fellow sits down and is given a set hand that Peter uses to teach beginners. The fellow has 14 HCP and a nice five card heart suit, and everyone is waiting for him to bid something. Silence. Peter asks him how many points he has? Silence. Well, Peter teaches him how to count points and says you have to open something. Silence. Peters says, "it's o.k open anything you want." The guys says" O.K, I'll open for a dollar."