Real Matchpoints

Play bad bridge and you lose  –  Robert Hamman

It is in human nature that conservatism increases in proportion to uncertainty. After World War II and The Great Depression, anxious parents filled piggy banks and taught their kids to save their pennies and the dollars would take care of themselves. Of course, we can now see that they would have done better to borrow to the hilt to buy stocks in devastated and discredited companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan.  

It was a time when Charles Goren was the King of Bridge. He was known for not doing anything flashy – he left that side of the game to his partner, Helen Sobel. While his bidding system is a thing of the past, his books on card play are still worth reading. Today’s attitude is more upbeat, and the current King of Bridge is the aggressive and inventive Jeff Meckstroth, who plays a system that remains a mystery to the uninformed masses.

In his book, Secrets of Winning Bridge (1969), Jeff Rubens gives his opinion that matchpoint game does not qualify ‘real’ bridge, because one’s score on a given board depends on how one’s results compares with the large number of pairs who play the same cards as you do. I ask, ‘what’s wrong with that?’ It’s like major league baseball: over a long season you must score well against the poorer opponents while holding your own against the better ones. Situations arise that are beyond one’s control, however, and overall it’s technique that determine how well you will do.

In a matchpoint contest each board is scored on the basis of a ranking from best result to poorest result. The rankings are added over all the boards. This gives a statistic based on the sum of ranks, a perfectly valid indicator of achievement. A board passed out, defended at 1NT or bid to 7NT carry the same weight. So what does the final statistic measure? At best it measures your overall efficiency in all aspects of the game, at worst how well your opponents played against you. Bridge is a game, the rules are arbitrary, and your score, for better or worse, is what you live with until next time. Don’t take it personal.

What is the relationship between the results at the tables and the double dummy results? One would like to believe that the two are highly correlated. Achieve the double dummy result and you should score well. That is not guaranteed on any given board. More often the results at the table reflects how closely the bidding has conformed to the bidding system most favoured by the majority of the players, in my club 2/1 GF with 5-card majors. The bidding system possesses a certain degree of accuracy but the design is geared to seeking high scoring contracts like 3NT and 4 of a major that will succeed under normal circumstances. Go down in 3NT with 25 HCP and you are assured of not having suffered a bottom score. It is even worse than that. Here is what can happen.

Eight pairs got to 3NT uncontested after West opened 1NT. One East, Blaster Bob, merely raised 1NT to 3NT, whereas 7 others went through an invitational sequence, having subtracted a point due to the poor 4-3-3-3 shape as they had been taught to do. At these tables the bidding proceeded as follows: 1NT – 2♣; 2♠ – 2NT; 3NT – Pass. There are 2 advantages to this long-winded  approach: East will be absolved of blame no matter the result, and the opening leader may be deceived into thinking East holds 4 hearts for his Stayman enquiry. At one table an expert pair did better (in theory) using the delicate sequence that follows.

Against the field’s adherence to 2/1 bidding with a strong NT, Sid and Sam were playing a weak NT system in which a 1♦ opening bid promises at least 4 cards in the suit.  Without interference 2♦ would be a transfer, but after an overcall it could best be described as ‘nonforcing but constructive.’ Which is to say, any squeak for an opponent reduces their elaborate structure to natural rubble. Similarly, in an uncontested auction opener’s 2♠ rebid would be a strong reverse and 2NT would show a standard strong NT opening bid. After interference with diamonds established as trumps, 2♠ was merely forcing to 3♦. Sam evaluated his cards in the light of these developments. A return to diamonds would not show his true worth, and he had a weakness for playing in 4-3 major fits, so he gave a raise to 3♠, ending the auction, but arriving happily at the optimal EW contract. Three rounds of hearts were lead, declarer discarding a club on the 3rd round. Sid gave a sigh of relief when both defenders followed to the ♦A and ♦Q.

‘Phew,’ exclaimed Sid, ‘lucky the diamonds were 3-2. 3NT is down off the top on the heart lead, so we should score pretty well’. As with most statements made immediately following the play this was misguided wishful thinking, for pairs in 3NT were making 9 or 10 tricks even on a heart lead. S&S scored 1 out of a top of 8.

Five pairs in 3NT made 10 tricks on the fourth-best lead. Two players led the ♥A to look at the dummy. In one case South played the ♥2, upside-down attitude, blocking the suit, but getting an above-average score. Immediately upon checking the score this pair agreed the method which they were trying for the first time was superior to standard hi-lo they had been playing together for 20 years. At another table South unblocked the ♥T, but North continued with a low heart, giving declarer his 10th trick.
South: What’s wrong? I was unblocking.
North: You played the Ten, denying the Jack
South: So what’s the difference? Just cash your King.

Blaster Bob’s partner, Passive Polly, once more unlucky, was the only declarer to go down when two Grandmasters got it right, partly because they approach all games bid by Bob with an appropriate degree of suspicion.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a contract by any other route may not be a good. It depends on what information has become available to the defenders. Probabilities are not fixed stars in the firmament, they move around as information becomes available. Probability is linked to information which is linked to choice.

On aggregate Sid and Sam may gain on their use of the weak NT, but there will be hands where the strong NT puts declarer in a better place because of the uncertainties remaining. Here Sid could have been more crafty. Once Sam raised to 3♠, Sid could guess the field would be playing in 3NT on a heart lead. If he aimed to minimize his loss if he were wrong, as suggested by Kit Woolsey in his book, Matchpoints, he would have bid 3NT despite the opponents’ actions, faking a stopper. It might have worked. How often the opening lead against a freely bid 3NT is not in the suit bid and raised by the opponents. Instead he aimed to maximize his gain, expecting the vast majority to be going down in 3NT. He was unlucky on this hand because the ♥A and ♥K were with the opening leader rather than divided between the defenders. Crudely speaking by going against the field Sid had a 2 to 1 chance of a top score.

There should be no grounds for complaint if 1 in 3 times one scores poorly. Indeed, we should all be glad to play a session where on two-thirds of the hands one starts with an advantage over the field. Just playing the cards well and counting out the hands is the mark of a consistent winner in a mixed field, but there is no virtue in resting on one’s superior abilities in that regard. Although there is safety within a crowd, it is regressive to suggest that there is an advantage to be got from bidding as badly as the majority. There is such a thing as progress, after all, even though there remains uncertainty in execution

Were We Fixed?
A common lament from also-rans is that they lost because they were fixed by some silly action by the opponents. My partner might say likewise, but I don’t think that way. Here is a recent deal where the defenders bid strangely to our great disadvantage.

 As she put down the dummy, Connie apologized for her bidding, something I always avoid before the results are in. ‘I know this is wrong,’ she said, ‘but I had one of my hearts in with my diamonds.’ If she hadn’t said that I would have congratulated her on her fine bidding, but one can’t congratulate someone for their poor eyesight. You see, she was apologizing for bidding the hand correctly, that is, against the standard matchpoint procedure of always doubling a spade overcall when you hold 4 hearts. Naturally by bidding correctly the pair outbid the field to an ice-cold slam and handed us a bottom.

There are lessons to be learned. Perhaps I should have passed and awaited developments? Naaa. Maybe I should add another convention to the card and adopt Roman Jump Overcalls? Naaa. Maybe, partner should have jumped to 3♠ on nothing? Get real, these things happen. I don’t blame Dame Fate in the guise of a nice lady for our falling one short in the rankings. There were two other hands where we scored poorly when the opponents bid to 6♥ with 13 tricks off the top. Painful, perhaps, that the field offered us no protection against competent bidding, but if on the last round I had counted out a hand correctly we would have ended in first place. So, control what you can control, and forget about what you can’t.