Monday, April 22, 2013

Guest post from Jennbridge

One of the fun things about following blogs is you meet new friends, and cyber-friends become real-life friends. I don't remember how I discovered Jennifer Jones blog (see here), but later I met her at one of the North American Bridge Championships. When the NABC came to Memphis, she went out to dinner with Kate and me.

Jenn has offered to do a guest post here in MOJO-land discussing her favorite topic: losing trick count, so here we go:

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I never get tired of writing about losing trick count. Here's a hand I held recently at the club (spot cards approximate). With no one vulnerable, I had: A K Q 8 4 -- A 3 2 8 7 4 3 2. I dealt and opened 1.

Left-hand opponent overcalled 2 and partner jumped to 3. RHO bid 4 and it was my bid.

Although partner has shown a weak hand, now that we have a known fit, I can confidently employ losing trick count. This will enable me to properly evaluate my hand in order to decide what to do.

Although my hand has only 13 high-card points, it is a fairly powerful hand with only five losers (four and one-half after adjusting for aces and queens). Partner will have nine or more losers. With eight losers, he would have invited game. All things considered, it looks like 4 has a good chance of making, so I bid it.



Curiously, the A was led, followed by a diamond shift. It's a good bet that the ace of clubs was singleton and West is trying for a club ruff. After winning the K, I came to my hand with a spade and pitched a club on the A. I exited with a club (LHO showing out) and RHO won and returned a trump (they were 2-2). I crossruffed and the long club in my hand was my 10th trick (seven trumps, two diamonds and one club).

I was a bit surprised to see that plus 420 was a tie for top. Looking into the matter, I learned that only one-third of the field bid 4. The use of losing trick count principles should make bidding the game easy, despite only having 18 high-card points between the two hands.

As Ron Smith points out in his new blog regarding my losing trick count booklets: "I'm glad Jenn is doing what she is doing. Point count has been done forever, but it only works on balanced hands. When you have distributional hands, point count doesn't work. I evaluate using Losing Trick Count in almost every hand." Ron's blog is here.

My blog, with information about the losing trick count booklets is here.

See you at the table!

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Thanks for the deal, Jenn. For readers who don't know, Jenn did a series of articles on LTC for the Bridge Bulletin. Visit her site for more interesting deals.

7 comments:

  1. Nice visitor. Only criticism I have is her willingness to hang with old reprobates.

    Jenn, in poker we get our hand history's stored and can view them at leisure. It is often a blog topic. I have said that there are few that can bring a HH to life. Looking at this post, I'm sure I'd add you to the list -- should you take up poker. It is interesting because the best person doing hand histories that I knew was also a woman.

    I played bridge in college -- way back in time. Trying to make heads or tails of Mojo's excellent bridge posts causes me pain. He speaks over my head and probably would have then. You I could easily follow. That is what I meant about the HH part.

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  2. Okay, you are a poker and a bridge player. And you're very funny. Perhaps you ought to write a book on "How to play poker or bridge." You'd help lots of folks like me learn the ropes.

    "learn the ropes"! See you are funny!

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  3. This post really was about prostitution, right?

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  4. Don't worry about Sparky36, Jenn. He the only one who's ever been to Vegas and never saw a prostitute. It is wistful thinking.

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  5. Seems like you didn't need to bid 4S. Just put the red card on 4H, and take 2 spades, 2 diamonds and a diamond ruff, with possibly another heart trick in the wash. If people aren't bidding 4S your way, why take the risk?

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  6. @Buffmeister: Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure doubling with a void is a good idea.

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  7. Bridge sounds so interesting, I will have to try learning how to play one of these days!

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