BRIDGE TIP FOR JUNE LIBRARY CORNER Why You Lose at Bridge Good judgment is required to be S. J. Simon successful at sacrifice bidding. In the book’s introduction, the author bluntly states the two primary reasons why we lose at bridge: lack of technical skill and losing tactics. First published in 1945 and updated sev- William Root eral times since, this book offers ways to avoid common tech- nical errors as well as how to improve your psychology in DON’T FORGET playing the game. Chapters on points lost refer to such losing ways as ignoring the odds, misplaying the dummy, misman- aging trumps, misdefending, and overbidding/underbidding. Please remember to wear your Chattanooga River One of the author’s major pieces of advice in the second half City Regional buttons at all upcoming tournaments — of the book is, “Don’t teach your partner.” There is a lot more We need to promote our July to learn about the psychology of the game in the latter half of 2012 River City Regional at the the book, making it a good choice for those of us who want to Chattanoogan! win more often than we lose at the game we love so much. UNIT 206 CHIT CHAT Volume 3 Issue 6 Monthly Publication of ACBL Unit 206 June, 2012 Editor: Sandy Cervantes Assistant Editor: Cheryl Whitfield Staff: Teresa Moore Features Editor: Marcia Lanphear Myra Reneau MEMORIAL DAY SECTIONAL SUNDAES ON SATURDAY Summer is here and the weather is hot … what better way to cool down than with a nice bowl of ice cream — and if it’s decorated with nuts, hot fudge, whipped cream, and cherries, well, what could be better. On Saturday, June 30, the CBC will celebrate an- other Sundaes on Saturday with an 8-Is- John Enough game at the club. The four members of the team need to have no more than 8 combined points calculated as follows: 0– 500 1 C 500-1500 2 B Pictured at the top clockwise are Keith Honnold, Kathy Ellis and Bert Shramko. In the photo below are 1500+ 3 A Sophie Field and Nevin Ozkaya. We owe a very big thank you to our Tournament Coordinator Jody Plum- Sign up at the club today — the cost is $20.00 for mer for a job well done. See more photos on page 4. a four-man team. A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: How wonderful the Internet is. Several months ago, when I was looking online for information on snapdragon doubles, Bob Sen- dall’s page from the Tahoe Bridge Club popped up. Bob has archived a number of articles on bridge topics that are well written and informative as well as providing food for thought. I contacted him to see if he would be willing to share his articles with us. He was happy to do, so and this month we present his first article. In communicating with Bob, I asked if he would share a little about himself so we could get to know him. He sent me the following message. Sandy My favorite partner at Tahoe is the club manager’s husband so she knew I wrote many notes on bidding to define what I play with better partners. A few years ago they asked me if I would write a weekly column that would be of general interest to the members for the club Web Page. After thinking about it, I decided the area where most players could improve the most, regardless of their bidding systems, was Intruding on Opener’s auction. It is a very important part of competitive bridge, and while it is an area where you get better as you devel- op an appreciation for the whole table, it is really important to know the basics. The articles written so far have been on “Intruding and Advancing” at the competitive bridge table. I have personally gone back and reviewed many of the articles which tend to depend on the previous articles. I found it difficult to keep the articles down in size to basically one page and keep them bite size without referring to the earlier foundation articles. Mike Lawrence is the author who has done the most and best writing in this area. The past year has been difficult for me as my wife of 52 years died of cancer in April 2011, and I could not get myself to do much of any- thing. I am a student of the game, but my career and life have been in the high tech world of infrared military and advanced electronics for night vision and missile guidance. Most of my career was two terms at Hughes Aircraft Co. in Southern California. I had a wonder- ful wife, and we have three children and four grandchildren. While I worked hard, we played hard together and all that interrupted my bridge game. Bridge and work were the only things Joan and I did not do together so now I am trying to play more but am clearly getting old and lose focus more than usual. I started playing bridge in college (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) being influenced by the Whale (Paul Heitner) before he went from straight A student to failing in our second year and now being honored in the Bulletin for starting Swiss Team games. I played in SoCA for a few years in the early ‘60s against many good players (and played at the North Hollywood bridge club the night Bob Hamman won his 20th point; a bigger deal back then than now) but gave up the game because of the demands of my job. In ’74 a young man from U of M came to Hughes and wanted to play tournament bridge and develop a partnership. As he asked around he found me and would not take no for an answer. He said a new bidding system was now available called the Chinese club (Precision), and we should learn it and play seriously. I finally succumbed, partly because of my interest in information theory. K. Scott Nelson and I played together for almost 10 years before we decided we were both two busy. There were a large number of very good players in the LA area at the time and we had some very good times but gave up Precision as not being worth the effort when played against good opponents playing match points. (I really enjoyed Bob Hamman’s book because of the discussion of the players at that time). I retired in ’93 to play golf at Incline Village and after a year or two an old doctor determined I had played some serious bridge and drew me out of retirement. The game had changed again but the big changes were “no smoking” and bidding boxes and zero tolerance (all im- provements). Also 2/1 GF was now almost standard. Max Hardy had written his Yellow Book which is much more readable than the earlier Red and Blue books. (I had played against Richard and Rhoda Walsh at local sectionals in one of my earlier bridge lives). Anyway, now I had time to play bridge and started playing in the Reno Area… Dr. John Faulkner and I had some good games winning the senior Swiss at the Reno Regional two years in a row. It was fun to see some of the old players like Mike Shuman playing in the events. The next phase of my bridge was online. My old partner from the ‘70s retired and moved to Escondido. We joined OK Bridge and started playing regularly. Scott is now playing quite a bit in the San Diego area. He and I play online and at least once a year at a tournament somewhere. In the past few years I have become active playing BBO tournaments. While I enjoy the online bridge I really do not believe in the masterpoint payout for many of these events…especially BBO speedball and robot games which are such crap shoots. Anyway, I am not a professional bridge player or writer and have had a good life with bridge coming and going. I now play a rather com- plex 2/1 of a major Game Forcing convention card. BALANCING Another form of intruding that we did not discuss last year is “Balancing.” This is when you are in the pass-out seat and you chose to intrude at a low level. It is a very important and special form of intruding on your opponents’ auction, and we will briefly introduce it now. The most basic case is when an opponent opens and that bid is followed by two passes. You have to decide whether to pass and let the opponents play the contract or to compete. This is not a trivial decision, and in 1980 Mike Lawrence wrote a whole book totally devoted to the subject: The Com- plete Book on Balancing. This article will attempt to cover some of the more im- portant concepts. In the basic case your left hand opponent (LHO) opens one of a suit which is fol- lowed by two passes. You know responder is broke and that you and your partner hold almost all of the points that opener does not have. You also know it is much easier to play a hand when all the opponents’ points are located in one hand. Be- cause partner did not overcall or double, he is either balanced or has strength in opener’s suit. If responder has anything it is most likely in a suit lower than opener’s suit.