[CSGibson]

I'm leaving out the crappy bidding, but I wanted to show you a really neat end position that occurred in our game - a triple squeeze with 2 extended menaces in dummy.

---

Edit: Also, I'm aware that different defense might have defeated this out of hand, specifically holding up the ace of diamonds a round, taking the 2nd diamond, and forcing declarer with a 3rd.

[JLOGIC]

Nice hand, normally west can get out of a progressive squeeze for only a 1 trick loss by unguarding dummies suit but here both of those give up 2 tricks.

Maybe that is what extended menaces mean (2 trick menaces)? Great hand.

[JLOGIC]

This is why bridge is way cooler when you bid ridiculously aggressively and get to some crazy contracts, and also why you see more great swindles in cardplay in the old days/old magazines (because they were more often in a bad spot), like making slam off the AKxxx of trumps by getting Hxxx to feel the need to legitimately ruff in 3 times.

[rhm]

JLOGIC, on 2012-June-18, 03:52, said:

This is why bridge is way cooler when you bid ridiculously aggressively and get to some crazy contracts, and also why you see more great swindles in cardplay in the old days/old magazines (because they were more often in a bad spot), like making slam off the AKxxx of trumps by getting Hxxx to feel the need to legitimately ruff in 3 times.

Not sure whether that holds. Bidding has improved, but probably more at the competitive level.
There was a recent thread on RGB
http://groups.google...45cf46e4f328141
on slam bidding at the USBC. The record seems not that great either.

I have my fair share of crazy contracts in the 21 century. (Some I know, will say no surprise here )
The ending above is nice, but declarer had nothing special to do or prepare except not giving up.
The truth is that 99 times out of 100 no triple squeeze will come to your rescue and will gain you 2 tricks when you are in a crazy contract like this.
Particularly at the slam level, the sad reality is that your losers normally tend to be inescapable.

Rainer Herrmann

[JLOGIC]

lol I had posted like 2000 words on every slam hand in the trials and then my browser crashed.... AHHH.

Cliffs: Many hands were teams down a lot swinging (for instance, board 119 where it went 3C p 6H by me with xx AQJxxxx AKQx --, if you really think this is a normal bid for me and not bid because with 2 boards left we were down 40 or so, then lol). Many of the hands were competitive auctions (eg, 1D 2C 2D showing hearts to greco and i, with xxxx ---- AKx Txxxxx bidding 6C, this is of course a tactical/competitive situation and a 2 way shot. At both tables they judged correctly not to bid 6H, and we bought poorly so that 5H is down and 6C is down. You can argue we made a bad bid but surely it is not indicitave of bad SLAM bidding). One of them was a brain fart by Garner who had KQx AKQxxx KQx Q and it went 2C p 2H showing 2 controls. This seems like a good system to avoid slam, but he in fact drove to slam...no doubt in his mind he was just thinking 2 aces. One of them was clee and demirev overbidding when they were likely steaming (had just had a bad board, were down 93 in the match, etc). Perhaps they showed their inexperience at that level of play in that moment by getting emotional and trying to get a huge board. It can be a tough experience playing one of the top teams in the country, being a big underdog, having thousands of kibitzers, and not tilting when you're down a huge amount and thinking "we can make it up with solid play, there's still 60 boards left, it's a long match!. Many of them were Hlall-Milner midjudging...I don't think anyone would argue them to be a top US pair, or even an experienced partnership.

The only reason this was posted was because of the spectacular hand where one person had x AKQ x AKQxxxxx and his aprtner had an ace, and Meckwell played GAME, Hlall-Milner played GRAND, Garner-Weinstein played 4N down a lot (some artificial 4N passed), and Gitelman-Moss played game! This is certainly a hand that oldschool would have gotten right, but to view it as anything other than an anomaly especially for G-M and meckwell seems erroneous.

The slam bidding overall was quite accurate if you take into account swinging actions (most of the swings seemed good). And look at the finals, where it was actually the 2 top teams playing a close match, it was excellent there. If you think that slam bidding has not improved over time I think that's really funny, especially if you are basing that on this RGB post without doing your homework.

[han]

Justin I love your post but I'm still going to ask you the following question.

In the Bermuda Bowl finals Hurd-Wooldridge had a series of poor slam auctions, sometimes missing very good slams (a 1C - 1S - 3S - 3NT* - 4H* - 4S auction comes to mind), sometimes bidding extremely poor slams (which sometimes made spectacularly!). I would certainly consider Hurd-Wooldridge a very strong and experienced partnership, with a fantastic record over the last couple of years. So how does one account for so many bad slam auctions? Was it an anomaly as well? Was it the pressure/tiredness combined with losing confidence after a couple of mishaps? Or were they trying to swing at that point?

If you don't want to answer this I completely understand, you were their teammates after all. If either of them has written any publically available analysis somewhere (bridgewinners?) I would love to know about it.

[han]

Lovely ending btw CSGibson!

[JLOGIC]

han, on 2012-June-20, 05:17, said:

Justin I love your post but I'm still going to ask you the following question.

In the Bermuda Bowl finals Hurd-Wooldridge had a series of poor slam auctions, sometimes missing very good slams (a 1C - 1S - 3S - 3NT* - 4H* - 4S auction comes to mind), sometimes bidding extremely poor slams (which sometimes made spectacularly!). I would certainly consider Hurd-Wooldridge a very strong and experienced partnership, with a fantastic record over the last couple of years. So how does one account for so many bad slam auctions? Was it an anomaly as well? Was it the pressure/tiredness combined with losing confidence after a couple of mishaps? Or were they trying to swing at that point?

If you don't want to answer this I completely understand, you were their teammates after all. If either of them has written any publically available analysis somewhere (bridgewinners?) I would love to know about it.

They were my teammates, and are also my new teammates heh. I'll just say I think if they improved their slam bidding by like 50 %, they would probably the best pair in the world. They make very few cardplay errors, and have fantastic judgement in competitive auctions, as well as a pressure style and a bid every game philosophy. I think they are pretty much great in every area except slam bidding (where I am not saying they are not bad, some hands just came up poorly for them in that event, but it is still their weakest area because of how exceptional they are in all other areas).

The Dutch certainly knew their systems better, and had better slam bidding methods than us, all around, and I believe that contributed heavily to our loss. They had several good slam auctions.

[y66]

From Joel W's In The Well article at BridgeWinners

Quote

What did you learn from your Bermuda Bowl experience? How does it compare with NABCs? What can you do to win the Bermuda Bowl next time?

The most important thing I learned from the Bermuda Bowl is that is pays to have firm agreements about slam auctions. Slam bidding is a lower percentage in bridge, since most of the time you're trying to get to the right game or fight for partscores, however because of that most people don't have excellent slam agreements. Even though there might be only 5 slam hands in the whole match (and less than that in a shorter match), getting those 5 hands right will make a huge difference. The other big thing I learned, which in part has to do with the slam bidding, is that when in doubt, you should bring your partner into the auction cooperatively. Too often people will say that the bid looked like the percentage call, but sometimes if you let partner take another call first he may change your mind (and it's often worth doing so).

Compared to NABCs, the Bermuda Bowl is very similar, the major difference being that instead of 4 of the 6 players on the team you're playing against being strong, it's more likely to be 5 or 6 of the 6. So that means you get punished more often for mistakes. There's also a fatigue factor since the tournament takes 2 weeks to complete. I'm not sure how big of a role that played. I didn't feel particularly worn out physically, but mentally I was a bit on edge. I was getting emotionally invested near the end and it was hard to remain calm. I think having it be the second time through will take away a lot of the concentration issues I had at least, and the partnership stuff is just up to practice and trust.
Dec. 9, 2011