[mr1303]

Hi everyone.

The Durham Uni website has a very good poor bridge of the week page, where those appallingly bad things we do get printed up so everyone can have a good laugh at our expense. What do people think about having something similar on here?

I would suggest that you can only put your own mistakes up to avoid causing offense, or not give names or something

Mark

[inquiry]

Well, as a moderator, I will say this.

1) You can post all your own hand where you screw up all you want.
2) You can post someone else's hand as long as....

• you don't identify the person playing the hand
  
• You were not an opponent/partnerr of the preson playing the hand (so nobody could easily look it up on myhands by looking for similar contracts at your table)

I will say, there is much to be learned at looking at bad plays, and figuring out why the bad play should not have been made as there is at looking at good plays (or bids). I posted on such hand today where a bidding disaster struck a lot of pairs....i was only kibiizer...so looking for me will do no good on the myhands site...so I felt comfortable posting it.

One thing for sure, we will have plenty of material for such post.... hands I have played since Christmas could keep us busy for the next couple of years with post.

Ben

[sceptic]

I hope it will be a seperate thread on its own server, I have a huge contribution to make to this thread.

[inquiry]

I guess threads where poor play are shown might include true disasters, like hands where you play in 6♠ in a 2-0 fit. Or they might include just ones where you can tell a funny story, or they might include just the point where a minor blunder is made.

I have posted one hand, where no one really showed much skill, and tried to point out what went wrong and why. I find those kind of hands more useful. We can all laugh at totally wacky.. but do you find hands like this useful learning tools.... espeicially if you have to see if you can spot the blunder (spot the blunder, that might be good name for a thread...)... on this hand, both EW pair are experts....

Scoring: IMP


West North East South

 1NT!  2♥    Pass  2♠
 Pass  3♣    Pass  3♠
 Pass  Pass    Pass

---

DQ DA D3 D2 == this would be DQx or DKQ doubleton, low ♦ was encourage
S6 S4 SQ SA
D6 D4 D7 DT == was ♦7 a random ♦? the lowest to force an honor?
SK S5 D8 S2 == partner has ♦JACK. and possibly ♦NINE
S8 SJ H2 S9 ==
HA H7 H3 HT == UDCA, so partners hearts look like 2 (also consistent with bidding)

What now? East has 4♠ tricks, 3♦ tricks, if he has another heart, he takes quite a few in dummy, if he has ♣Ace, he will endplay you for a heart or club entry to dummy. Did you find the right card?

C5 CJ CA C2 = nope.. this guy didn't. The right card is club king then club.
DJ DK H4 H9
C7 CK C4 C3 = endplayed self.... note if you exit club King and club, partner will score an eventual diamond trick.
C6 CQ C8 D5

The lead of a low club was careless. Don't you agree... Funny the player who lead the club was somewhat critical of the diamond "attitidue" signal at trick one. and I think never saw that he blew the defense... well down one was still worth some imps, but down two was worth almost 2 more full imps.

Anyway, I think hands along these lines are more useful than just totally silly ones.. but hey, I love the totally silly ones too....

[jikl]

There is a hand I would love to include from a book I have but it would probably be a breech of copyright. It involves Zia and Michael Courtney.

Sean

[nikos59]

If there is a real life deal I don't think there is
any breach of copyright unless you copy their
analysis. If you restrict your narrative to the
bare facts (he took three rounds of trumps
but he forgot to cash ace of diamonds, so he
was stranded to dummy without any easy
way back to hand) there is no issue IMHO.

nikos

[bearmum]

mr1303, on Jan 29 2005, 06:11 AM, said:

Hi everyone.

The Durham Uni website has a very good poor bridge of the week page, where those appallingly bad things we do get printed up so everyone can have a good laugh at our expense. What do people think about having something similar on here?

I would suggest that you can only put your own mistakes up to avoid causing offense, or not give names or something

Mark

HATE the idea

[Free]

I think it's a good idea, as long as you don't humiliate someone. This means NO NAMES, NO identities,... , even if it's you or your partner.

Having a laugh from time to time is healty, you'll live longer

[slothy]

Free, on Jan 30 2005, 10:56 AM, said:

Having a laugh from time to time is healthy (ed. i fixed spelling mistake, very reminiscent of spwdos posts) , you'll live longer 

Dear Frederico, hope this isn't a 'Road To Damascus' moment for you and you just realised this (and of course i am sure you didnt *) (although i believe you are comparatively young enough to be a lot of the posters' grandchild)

If (some) people, and i mean this seriously in an ironic, paradoxical oxymoronic sorta way, just step back a bit and see that the oven of bridge has room for a soufflé as well as a madeira cake, and that sometimes things said in humor are more instructional, memorable and absorbent than things grease-proofed with the seriousness of card combinations, safety-plays and probabilities, we will all live longer yes and be able to bug people more often and for more time telling them exactly this...

if anybody remotely understands this culinary metaphor than you doing better than me

Sloffy (MasterChef)

Culinary Thought For The Week: Oven Gloves protect you from getting burnt but make your hands look totally and pathetically disproportionate to the rest of your body

* walk any toll-roads in Syria, i mean

[mr1303]

Quote

I think it's a good idea, as long as you don't humiliate someone. This means NO NAMES, NO identities,... , even if it's you or your partner.

But I like humiliating myself

Why do you hate the idea Bearmum?

[jikl]

I will actually completely paraphrase the hand as an ad for the book "The Big Game", by Robert Sheehan. It is about the really high stake rubber bridge played at TGR in London. This game can see thousands of dollars change hands in the matter of minutes. They play Chicago, I am sure many of you know what this form of scoring is. They play for £100 a point, (about $200US dollars), so this means making 4♥ vulnerable is worth about $1240US dollars. So it is not the place for the faint hearted. Here is the hand...

Zia has a catch-phrase which starts 'There is no hand...' ('TINH'). He says it will be the title of his next book. He then adds the appropriate advice, e.g. 'where you would allow X to be declarer'. or 'on which Y would find an intelligent defence' (X being the worst declarer in the high TGR game, and Y the most wooden defender). Today's example illustrates 'where Michael Courtney is maximum for his bidding so far' ('TINHMC').

This is the deal that prompted his remark.

Scoring: Chicago

---

North South
Courtney Zia
2♠ (1) 3♦
3♥ 4♦
4♠ 4NT (2)
5♠ (3) 5NT
6♦ (4) 7♣ (5)
Pass (!)

(1) An Acol Two. His suits are rather straggly; however, if he had opened One Spade and been passed out, he could have been missing as high a contract as Seven Hearts opposite say:

---

(By the way, an Acol Two is a strong 2, just in case some of you didn't know - Sean)

(2) Zia admitted when he was recounting the hand to me that, because of TINHMC, he should have bid Six Spades at this point.

(3) Three aces.

(4) One king.

(5) This is the master bid. Zia meant it to say 'pick the right major-suit grand slam'. The point of Seven Clubs is to make North bid Seven Spades with:

---

when declarer may be able to cater for a bad heart break by establishing the diamonds or to bid Seven Hearts with:

---

when he can ruff a spade in dummy to cater fir a bad spade break.

But apart from TINHMC the bid was unwise, because it could lead to a major disaster. Remeber, Zia had not supported either of Courtney's suits at any stage. Courtney convinced himself Zia must have something like:

---

When Seven Clubs would be the best spot. With that hand I suppose Zia would have bid Four Clubs over Three Hearts, but when you adopt those confusing sequences, bad things can happen.

When Zia went seven down in Seven Clubs Courtney was unabashed; he pointed out his pass had cost only 300 - the spades were 4-1 and Seven Spades and Seven Hearts were failing also.

I stress that Zia and Courtney are two of the best players in the game, which is why it is instructive to see that even they occasionally have a disaster.




I hope you all enjoyed the hand.

Sean