Winners of Fall NABC Robot Individual Practice Tournament #1
Last weekend, November 9-10, ACBL BBOers were invited to play in the first NABC ...
Bridge conventions are FUN! The ones we use and master become our identity, and the opponents don't know squat about them, and they sure don't know how to defend against them! Now, if we could only remember them ourselves.
So last Saturday in the 8PM Speedball, South tried a "Cappelletti" 1-suit 2♣ overcall/my 1NT, but we had a firm agreement - OR DID WE??
Vickie promptly forgot it and tried 2♥ = transfer to 2♠!! I was not totally ready to play, having scrambled through a hard half-hour Jeopardy TV quiz, and then an impossible Final Q - something about marsupials, or wombats (not my specialty.) So I was scatter-brained myself.
♥s? or ♠s?? - couldn't quite remember - and I was 2-2 in the majors. Hmmmm... I took the transfer to 2♠ justincase - and croaked when I saw dummy. Had I blown the bid or did Vickie? I ran into a 6-2 trump break, and after I took a few tricks and they took more, I saw that the clock was ticking down to 3 minutes left!!
AAAACK:) I made a snap battleground decision: Noticing we were not vulnerable, for the first time since I started playing pairs on BBO over 10 years ago - I quickly pounded the "CONCEDE ALL TRICKS" button with about 5 tricks left!
I don't know if I'da taken 1 or 2 (you can roll the movie and see that I will take 2 more ♣s) but I barely saved board 3 for us to get it back - at the cost of maybe 2 extra IMPs of the -4.5 IMPs we lost.
I felt like a budding SUPERHERO - maybe an AVENGER! 🙂 Let's meet our destiny!
They came out firing on board 3, our "Mulligan." This time Vickie opened 1NT and North Cappelletti-ed us again with 2♣! Of course we didn't have a chance to sort out our last fiasco, so has Vickie come to her senses? Or maybe I was wrong?? I shouted out a confident 2♥, trusting what Vickie did on board 2 and prayed for salvation.
After South's 3♣, poor Vickie faced exactly the same dilemma that had terrified me on board 2 - two equal 4-card majors! She decided that she had erred on 2, but I had already switched to her opinion! 🙁 So she shouted out "3♠" - not appreciating the disaster-avoidance bids of 3♥ or even 3♦, to allow me to correct! 🙁
Maybe I vaguely recalled another of our precious conventions : "TRANSFUSALS" (in several opening 1NT or 2NT sequences, we often refuse to accept transfers when we have only DOUBLETON. support for the major - "Nobody tells ME what to bid, dammit").
So I let her play 3♠, praying for 5♠ + 2♥. That ran into a 6-1 trump-split buzzsaw, for -500, when 3♥ was cold and 4♥ only -100.
DIZASTER! We lost -15 IMPs on two boards and collapsed into oblivion.
The CONVENTION CURSE gave us the appearance of the BLIND leading the BLIND 🙁 Will we ever get woke?
On the first board, since W bid a natural 2H, presumably 2D would have been natural and non forcing. Why would that use ever be preferable to “systems on”?
Vickie forgot that we play X/2C = Stayman, and transfers on + lebensohl, surely the best way
Vickie forgot that we play X/2!C- Stayman, and transfer son, + lebensohl, surely the best way
Thumbnail: UNLESS you AND your partner have a specific, defined treatment for continuations AFTER a conventional overcall (Cappeletti, Landy, Dont, etc) of your or partners 1NT, treat ALL followon bids, (by YOU or partner) as NATURAL and non-forcing. This allows for a saner thought process in such competitive auctions, and avoids the "do-it-yourself" disasters that CAN (and do) occur!!
The link in my post above should have been http://www.charlesandgerry.com/bridge/constraints.html#theirNT
This specter can be greatly obviated when a pair makes a policy decision: We will not take a new convention to the table without first rehearsing it thoroughly at a BBO bidding table using a constraint file that causes us to get many hands within the genre of the new convention. See for example http://www.charlesandgerry.com/bridge/constraints.html#1NT
1nt bidder cannot bid again unless forced to do so. B2 pass 3c
oh, please! If you have them "beat" in your hand, you should X, and if you have 4 trumps you should always raise, regardless of vul. That's bridge Mister (and the Rule of Total Trumps)
oh, please! If you have them "beat" in your hand, you should X, and if you have 4 trumps, you MUST raise even to 3 level - "That's bridge, Mister" and, the Rule of Total Trumps!