Bridge ultrasound: Listen to where the cards are

PORTLAND, OR – After three full days in Portland, OR, at the annual convention of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), I needed a break from combustible dust exposure and nanotechnology, so I looked for a duplicate bridge game and found the Eastside Bridge Club, where they don’t have hand-held scoring computers, but cute hand-made wooden bidding boxes.

After all, Portland is the heart of the logging industry and the town’s new soccer team is called the Timbers. The club is not located in the very best part of town and a female panhandler with some obvious substance abuse problem knocked on the window of my rental car asking for change as I looked for a place to park. But that keeps the rent down and it costs only $6 to play.

Club President Paul O’Brien couldn’t make the game but lined me up with his regular partner, tournament director Doug Jansen, a retired foundry executive who is of Norwegian origin despite his Dutch-sounding name. So Doug got stuck playing with me while attending to directors’ calls (something about “ethical questioning”), setting up the computer and making the coffee, but I don’t think he minded too much.

We both had our lapses during the evening and wound up with a 48.81% game good for fourth place among the East-West pairs and just out of the MasterPoints race, but we definitely got $6 worth of fun.

Doug introduced me as a visitor at the beginning of the evening and asked all the players to be nice to the guest from Philadelphia, but his request was roundly ignored. The hand records distributed at the end of the evening told the story of our just-less-than-average game against a strong field: 10 results better than what the computer software program Deep Finesse said they should have been, 4 pars and 14 below-par boards.

My worst moment came when I left my partner in a most unfortunate 3 Diamonds contract and let him go Down Five for a minus-250 point score for an absolute bottom. I should have rescued him and bid 4 Clubs, which would have gone Down only

One and might have been a top as a good sacrifice since our opponents had 3 Hearts. That would have earned us some MasterPoints and I can use that hand for a column.

For that failure to save my partner, I’ll turn myself into my column’s anti-hero, Flustered Flo, and my partner Doug will become Flo’s partner, Loyal Larry.

The hand

South Dealer; neither side vulnerable

The bidding

Opening lead: 10 of Clubs

How Flustered Flo played it

The key to bidding success in bridge is to be able to accurately visualize your partner’s hand, not only based on what your partner might bid, but especially on what he or she does not bid.

At a recent duplicate game with her partner Loyal Larry, Flustered Flo was unable to correctly visualize her partner’s hand. As a result, she left him in a disastrous 3 Diamonds contract with the North hand that went Down Five for a minus-250 score and an absolute bottom. All Larry was able to collect was one trick in each of the black suits, plus a couple of Spade ruffs.

“Sorry, partner,” Flo told Larry after the debacle, “but with just 6 high-card points, I thought anything else I’d say would just make it worse.”

“I understand,” said Larry, always loyal to Flo. “Don’t worry; it was just one of those computer-dealt hands that don’t let you make anything.”

Flo was pleased with the absolution she got from Larry, but she was not pleased when she discovered at the end of the evening that her pass had given her an absolute bottom.

And she got flustered again when she saw that her nemesis, Smug Sam, who’d also played South, got a top by bidding 4 Clubs and going Down only One for a minus-50 score. He lost only one trick in each suit. Most other North-South pairs had meekly let East-West play 2 or 3 Hearts and make it, so Sam’s minus-50 was tops.

“How did you dare go to 4 Clubs with only 6 points?” Flo asked Sam. “That was a lot of chutzpah, wasn’t it?”

“Nothing to do with chutzpah,” explained Sam, smug as always. “Just damage control.”

“But how did you know you had a fit in Clubs?” Flo insisted. “Your partner might have had a singleton in Clubs just like you had a singleton in his suit.”

“No he didn’t,” Sam explained patiently. “You’ve got to listen not only to what your partner bids, but also to what he doesn’t bid. If he’d had a four-card major Spade suit, he’d have bid it after West’s 2 Hearts pre-empt. So the most he could have in the majors was 3-3 in Spades and Hearts. If his Diamonds bid was a 5-card suit, he had to have at least 2 Clubs, so a 5-2 trump suit is better than a 5-1 trump suit. And that’s worst-case scenario — he probably has more Clubs.”

“But what if he had 6 Diamonds and just one Club?” Flo asked, still not giving up on the defense for her pass bid.

“If he has six Diamonds, then he can rebid his Diamonds at the 4 level and I’ll gladly pass – at least I tried to warn him away from it.”

“Are you sure you don’t have X-ray vision that let you see what your partner had?”

“No X-ray vision,” said Sam. “Just ultrasound, listening to where sound bounces back to me – and where it doesn’t.”