11 Point Balanced Openings?

The capability or decision to open 11 point balanced hands was key in the semi-final of the NEC Cup on Friday in Japan, between the Italian Lavazza team and the Netherlands.

The match was tied when board 15 arrived, near the end of the first of two segments.


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The Dutch South passed, West opened the 11 point balanced hand, and then there was a quiet auction to 3NT, making.


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In the open room South opened the 11 point balanced hand. This left West with no good call, so he passed, and now North had a weapon available: 2D to show 5+ spades, 4+ hearts, less than invite values: a form of "Reverse Flannery by Responder". North South settled in two spades, down 1, for 7 IMPs.

Two boards later, in the last segment, the closed room East opened a 11 point balanced hand and a quiet auction got to 3NT, making.


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At the other table, the Dutch East passed, and now South opened light in 3rd seat.


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This got North South to a 2H contract before the opponents could compete, and then a takeout double and 2NT scramble got to 3D, down one, for 10 more IMPs to the Italians. Team Lavazza won their semi-final match by 7 IMPs, 41-34, and as the bulletin remarked, this was a very low scoring 32 board match for top level bridge.

The NEC Cup bulletins were excellent, as usual, the editors/writers being Rich Colker and Barry Rigal.

Board 15 is on page 30 of this bulletin, and board 17 on the next page:

http://www.jcbl.or.jp/game/nec/necfest10/nec2010_data/bulletins/blt5.pdf

Check out the bulletins after that for the exciting Lavazza-Zimmermann team final, at the NEC Cup Bridge Festival bulletin site:

http://www.jcbl.or.jp/game/nec/necfest10/nec_bul.html

I'll get to that changing your mind posting in a couple of days, if I don't change plans once more.

Bread N' Butter Part IX

This is Part IX of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

The last of the round robin matches for USA2 was against Russia, with both cold war teams here running hot and ready to qualify for the playoffs.


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On board 1, Meckstroth opened 1D with the balanced 13, Rodwell bid 1H, Meckstroth rebid 1S where some approaches prefer a 1NT call with a balanced hand, 2C was fourth suit game forcing, and in their methods 2NT showed either 4-2-4-3/4-2-3-4/4-1-4-4. 3NT was a push.


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On board 6 we see once more the 1D-2m;-2H sequence to show the 11-13 balanced hand type, and now 3D artificially showed 6+Cs and 4+Hs, game forcing. Against 3NT South led a spade, and Meckstroth played club ace and another just making. In the other room in 3NT, the lead was a diamond, won in hand and on a club up Zia, South, played the club king, just getting one club trick. Russia had a couple of overtricks for 2 IMPs.


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On board 8, Meckstroth overcalled 1NT (15-18), and now opener's reopening double showed four spades in their methods. 2H was down 1. In the other room a 2D Flannery opening had East overcalling notrump at the two level, down 1, and the two +50s gave 3 IMPs to USA2.


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On board 10, Meckstroth opened a 14-16 1NT, and South's double was majors or strong single major or very strong hand. Since doubler could be weak, Rodwell did not initiate any runout sequence, and the opponents soon got to 4H, the contract in the other room. USA2 had an overtrick for 1 IMP.

The match score was 40-19 in IMPs, 20-10 in Victory Points. USA2 finished fourth in the round robin, and that it meant it would play who ever the top three teams didn't pick to play. Italy finished first, and picked Russia, who finished 7th, to play against, even though China was 1 VP lower than Russia. Norway picked China, and Bulgaria picked Germany. I love the picking of teams format for the playoffs since it produces motivation: the picked-on team says "you think we're easy pickings do you, let's change your mind". Before we get to the quarterfinals, and USA2 against the dangerous Dutch team, we'll look into issues of changing your mind in the next post.

Meckwell were 25th overcall in the round robin Butlers, a comparison of all pairs by results on each board across all matches. However different pairs play different matches, and Meckwell play all the tough ones. If we eliminate the matches that Meckwell did not play in, and take out a pair that had fewer than 5 match results left, we get:

1 Boye BROGELAND - Espen LINDQVIST Norway 0.82
2 Claudio NUNES - Fulvio FANTONI Italy 0.71
3 Alexander SMIRNOV - Josef PIEKAREK Germany 0.69
4 Kalin KARAIVANOV - Roumen TRENDAFILOV Bulgaria 0.68
5 Weimin WANG - Zejun ZHUANG China Long Zhu Open 0.61
6 Alejandro BIANCHEDI - Ernesto MUZZIO Argentina 0.58
7 Antonio SEMENTA - Giorgio DUBOIN Italy 0.57
8 Vadim KHOLOMEEV - Yury KHIUPPENEN Russia 0.54
9 Ulf Haakon TUNDAL - Glenn GROETHEIM Norway 0.51
10 Michael ELINESCU - Entscho WLADOW Germany 0.48
11 Zia MAHMOOD - Bob HAMMAN USA 2 0.42
12 Victor ARONOV - Julian STEFANOV Bulgaria 0.39
13 Kazuo FURUTA - Dawei CHEN Japan 0.36
14 Georgi KARAKOLEV - Diyan DANAILOV Bulgaria 0.30
15 Peter BOYD - Steve ROBINSON USA 1 0.29
16 Eric RODWELL - Jeff MECKSTROTH USA 2 0.28
17 Juei-Yu SHIH - Chih-Kuo SHEN Chinese Taipei 0.25
18 Huub BERTENS - Ton BAKKEREN Netherlands 0.23
19 Sjoert BRINK - Bas DRIJVER Netherlands 0.17
20 Simon de WIJS - Bauke MULLER Netherlands 0.09
21 Lixin YANG - Jianming DAI China Long Zhu Open 0.06
22 Per Erik AUSTBERG - Erik SAELENSMINDE Norway 0.05
23 Georgi MATUSHKO - Alexander KHOKHLOV Russia -0.04
24 Pablo RAVENNA - Carlos PELLEGRINI Argentina -0.37

The last figure is the average IMP gain per board played. If we then further take out the two easy matches that Meckwell had, we have:

1 Weimin WANG - Zejun ZHUANG China Long Zhu Open 0.69
2 Boye BROGELAND - Espen LINDQVIST Norway 0.63
3 Claudio NUNES - Fulvio FANTONI Italy 0.60
4 Kalin KARAIVANOV - Roumen TRENDAFILOV Bulgaria 0.59
5 Antonio SEMENTA - Giorgio DUBOIN Italy 0.51
6 Victor ARONOV - Julian STEFANOV Bulgaria 0.49
7 Alejandro BIANCHEDI - Ernesto MUZZIO Argentina 0.45
8 Zia MAHMOOD - Bob HAMMAN USA 2 0.42
9 Vadim KHOLOMEEV - Yury KHIUPPENEN Russia 0.41
10 Michael ELINESCU - Entscho WLADOW Germany 0.25
11 Peter BOYD - Steve ROBINSON USA 1 0.24
12 Ulf Haakon TUNDAL - Glenn GROETHEIM Norway 0.22
13 Eric RODWELL - Jeff MECKSTROTH USA 2 0.22
14 Alexander SMIRNOV - Josef PIEKAREK Germany 0.21
15 Sjoert BRINK - Bas DRIJVER Netherlands 0.21
16 Juei-Yu SHIH - Chih-Kuo SHEN Chinese Taipei 0.18
17 Lixin YANG - Jianming DAI China Long Zhu Open 0.16
18 Simon de WIJS - Bauke MULLER Netherlands 0.09
19 Georgi MATUSHKO - Alexander KHOKHLOV Russia 0.06
20 Per Erik AUSTBERG - Erik SAELENSMINDE Norway 0.05
21 Huub BERTENS - Ton BAKKEREN Netherlands -0.04
22 Kazuo FURUTA - Dawei CHEN Japan -0.05
23 Georgi KARAKOLEV - Diyan DANAILOV Bulgaria -0.11
24 Pablo RAVENNA - Carlos PELLEGRINI Argentina -0.37

Bread N' Butter Part VIII

This is Part VIII of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

One of the nice features of the Just Sayin' blog (see Memphis Mojo link to the right) is that it sometimes features poker magazine covers with a player quote from that magazine issue. With Meckstroth the star of balanced hands in this match, here's the bridge equivalent, the cover of the ACBL Bulletin, February 2010:


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In the interview, when asked about prep for the world championships, Meckstroth replied:

I try to take the week before off to get my head in the right place for the upcoming battle. Eric has taught me some visualization techniques that seem to work pretty well…

In this match we will see Meckstroth visualize a couple of notrump openings that some others would not attempt. Perhaps it's because, as Meckstroth answered when asked what his strong points were:

I am completely fearless. I'm not afraid to look silly, which I have done many times.

Well he might occasionally look silly, but his fearless style has a 99% genius, 1% silly ratio based on results. As Taylor Swift sings in her title track Fearless, "I don't know how it gets better than this".

Meckstroth's was in action with a balanced hand on board 1:


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Meckstroth doubled the 1C opening, which could be as short as two (1D by East would promise 4) - given he has only 3-2 in the majors, this double must have been meant as value showing instead of pure takeout. Rodwell bid 1D, and the Meckwell partnership like to show support in these situations, Meckstroth here bidding 2D. West tried a takeout double, and got to 2S, making. At the other table, the same 2S, but this time played by North: the bidding started P-1D-P-1H;-P-2H, and now South doubled, and North bid 2S to find the 3-3 fit, for down 2 and a push. Neither South player in this match wanted to make the 1NT overcall.

On board 9, Meckstroth decided to treat his hand as balanced, a mild 3rd seat psyche - 1NT showed 14-16, but here he upgraded his 11 count! West led fifth best, the ten of clubs, and this was down 1. In the other room, the auction was P-P-2H-3C;-3H-Double-P-5C, and that was down 1 for 4 IMPs to Argentina.


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On board 10, Meckstroth treated us to a four card major suit overcall:


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This would almost be the perfect Lawrence example (from The Complete Book on Overcalls, a must-have book for any bridge library): great suit, length in opponents suit opened, competitive values. Rodwell made an overtrick in 1NT, good for 1 IMP compared to -100, 1NT by East down 2, at the other table, where South kept out of the bidding.

On board 11, Meckstroth decided to treat his 2-5-4-2 hand as balanced:


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2NT by Rodwell was Puppet Stayman, 3H showed five, and they got to 4H, making 5 (a spade lead allowed the spade jack to be set up for a club discard). In the other room, they also opened 1NT, but here North just raised to 3NT, down 1 for 11 IMPs to USA2.

On board 12, Meckstroth competed with a double, but didn't having anything more to say, letting the opponents play in 3D for two overtricks and +150.


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In the other room, a Flannery auction got the opponents into 3NT, doubled, for -800, and 12 IMPs to USA2. With Lebenshol over takeout doubles, 3C promised some values, and that was just enough to get into trouble.


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On board 15, Meckstroth opened the 11 point balanced hand, and next made a support double, but Meckwell picked a good spot to stay conservative, 2D still down 2, -200.


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In the other room not opening the South hand got them to game, after Hamman overcalled 3C opposite a passed Zia.


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This time 3NT was down 4 for -400, and 5 IMPS to USA2. Even with all those nice results, it was still Argentina prevailing 39-35, 16-14 in VPs.