[Phil]

We played a pretty good BAM yesterday at Bridge Week but a few mental errors kept us one board out of a 3 way tie for 1st.

I really like what they are doing in District 23, and there are many unique events at Bridge Week. Its fun to go to a regional and not play in KOs every day.

Anyway, here was an interesting play problem I had early in the 2nd set:

Scoring: BAM

We bid: 1D - 1H - 2S - 3H - 3N - P

Where would you like to play this at BAM?

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I received the ♦Q lead and I chose to win. ♠ to Q lost to the King and two diamonds were cashed. A low heart fetched the 9, Q (with some irritation) and my Ace.

What now?

[ArtK78]

First, I think it is clear that 4♥ is a better contract than 3NT. But the best contract is the one that will avoid a diamond lead.

Playing in 3NT and having reached this point, my first thought was to lead the ♣10 from hand. If they duck, you can play the A and K of clubs. If the ♣Q does not fall, you can cash a high spade for your 6th trick and exit a club. Whoever wins this trick is going to have to play either a spade or a heart back to you, and hopefully this is good enough for you to make 9 tricks.

As a variation on this theme, instead of cashing one high spade, you could cash both high spades and exit a club, hoping that either the ♠T falls or the hand with the Q fourth of clubs has no more spades. If the ♠T falls and the hand with the ♣Q has long spades, you cannot cash the ♠9 before exiting in clubs.

However, it occurred to me that if you play the ♣10 out of hand the opponent with the ♣Q could win it and return a club, forcing you to win in dummy and hope that hearts are 3-3 or win in hand and hope that the ♠10 falls. Presumably, your opps would not make this play unless it was in their best interest to do so.

So, you have a couple of other lines of play:

(1) If hearts are 3-3 and the ♣Q is in LHO's hand, you can lead a low club towards dummy, hoping to win all of the rest of the tricks in dummy.

(2) If clubs are 3-3 or the ♣Q is doubleton, you can play A, K and another club. Either the clubs run (and you have 9 tricks) or the opponent who wins the third round of clubs has to make a favorable return to you.

I like line (2) best.

If the ♣Q is singleton, I think your best play would be to cash four clubs and throw an opponent in with the last club and try to take advantage of the return.

[TimG]

Phil, on Jul 10 2009, 01:21 PM, said:

I really like what they are doing in District 23, and there are many unique events at Bridge Week. Its fun to go to a regional and not play in KOs every day.

When this topic was raised in New England a few years ago, there was nearly universal sentiment to stick with the familiar schedule. The "changes" in our regionals have been along the lines of adding a couple of bracketed KOs, more single session events (Swiss teams and MP pairs) and bracketing the Swiss team events.

I'd be very interested in hearing about how your attendance has been for the "unique" events and for the regional as a whole. I personally am of the opinion that regionals would benefit from variety in the schedule, but that it might take a few years for new events to catch on and become popular. The break-in period is something that the organizers must commit to enduring rather than seeing first year attendance drop and abandon the experiment.