November 30th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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About five years ago a friend, Sara Eisner, who I’ve known for many years asked if I could send her any any tips on bridge. I proceeded to write and send one daily for almost two months. Many of them are conventional knowledge, and some are solely my ideas. Some have stories or hands.
Bridge tip # 1 Especially when defending against good players make sure every card you play comes from the middle of your cards and not the end. If you don’t do that an excellent declarer may notice and know you are out of a suit. You must be thinking his how you think declarer will play the hand. If you anticipate constantly how declarer will play the hand and, you may have have to shift the positions of your cards frequently. If you think the declarer is watching from which position you are taking your card this is especially important to refrain from taking a singleton honor from the end.
Of course, you can take countermeasures if you think declarer is watching from which position you are drawing. For instance against a good, but not top declarer who you think is watching the location from which you are drawing when you have Qx of trump when you think declarer has to guess the location of the queen, take the small trump from the end so declarer, who normally play for the drop may play you as having started with a singleton trump. Since it is unethical the declarer to have been looking at the location from which you drew your card, there can be no complaints. If you take all the cards you play as suggested this would not apply.
November 27th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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When I was once asked for my favorite hand this is what I chose:
I was playing against friends who at one time been considered among the best pairs in New England. Here is the bidding:
S W N E
1C P 1D P
1H P 3C P
3NT P P P
OL – SJ
Dummy came down with –
K42
7
AKQ863
Q64
My hand was AQ42, KJ54, — J10985
3C was forcing by our partnership agreement. The opening lead of the spade jack attacked my
only sure communication so I decided to abandon the diamonds to attack other suits. As long as my opponents did not know I was void in them, the hand with four diamonds would surely keep them to prevent to prevent their being run, and I might have be able to endplay him later to gain access to the dummy.
I won the spade king in dummy, and hoping for an accident I called for the queen of clubs. Lo and behold, it went ace on my right and king on my left. After many dirty looks, East led a small heart. Knowing I couldn’t afford to lose this trick because I might get endplayed and have to lead hearts out of my hand I smoothly went up with the king.
It won. I then ran my clubs. West, who had started with J1093 in spades, not knowing I had length in the suit discarded his spades. To protect his hearts and diamonds, On the subsequent run of the spades West discarded hearts . East, seeing his partner discard the queen of hearts, unblocked by throwing the ace of hearts so I made six by taking my twelve tricks which were four spades, four hearts, four clubs and no diamonds!
November 26th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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Around 1970 the high stakes game played in Philadelphia’s Cavendish Club was three man auction pinochle. Bob Jordan dominated the game. I would say a night in which he won a thousand dollars might be disappointing to him. Norman Kay would play in it occasionally, but I think he preferred partnership pinoche which is very much like bridge.
For a while a man in his fifties whose name I don’t rember played in the game and also lost, of course. I’ll call him Phl. One ne night we happened to go out to dinner. He told me in the fifties he had lost a small fortune to John Crawford in bridge, pinochle and gin rummy. Crawford had been considered one of the best bridge players in the country at that time.Until he married a rich woman he made a living hustling.
One day Phil and Crawford were driving in the same car and passed a tennis court. Crawford suggested they hit a few balls. Unknown to Crawford Phil was a very good tennis player. As they vollied Phil told me he could tell Crawford was intentionally playing badly. For once, Phil, who had always been a mark, decided to hustle him and didn’t reveal how good he was. He let Crawford keep increasing creasing the stakes until they played for ten thousand dollars a game which Phil won In spite of that win Phil told me he lost a lot of money to Crawford.
November 26th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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The late national director , Jerry Machlin told lot of stories. Like many he started out as a player but became a director. He used to explain why he never wanted to be an expert. Once he was playing with the creator of the cue bids named after him, Mike Michaels. An attractive, buxom young lady in a lowcut dress came to their table. She wound up playing the hand. Evidently she was not very experienced at duplicate as each time she had to play from dummy she leaned over attempting to play a card. Every she did so Jerry’s eyes grew wider.
After the pair had left their table Jerry asked his partner, “Did you see what I saw?”
“Yes”, said Mike. “She could have made an overtrick.”
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Another favorite was about Sy and Betty Haddad. They had played together in the first evening session of a Washington sectional. With more planned.. As they were getting ready to go to bed Sy kept talking about the hands. Betty was very tired and knew they had more sessions planned in the coming events. She dreaded spending hours going over the hands.
She said, “We can talk about the hands or have sex but not do both. Which do you want to do?”
Sy hesitated for a while and said, said, “Alright, board one.”
November 23rd, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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Many years ago Dick Katz took his girlfriend, Kathy Evans, who was a novice, to play bridge at the local duplicate club. On the way he gave her instructions on opening leads.
“The game of bridge is a simple game. We lead our suits, not their suits. Aces were meant to take their kings. ” Kathy was made to understand that she was not allowed to lead to lead aces, trumps, singletons or doubletons.
On the second board of the evening she found herself on lead against four spades with the following hand, xx,AQ109xxx,xx,xx
She mentally reviewed her instructions. She placed the nine of hearts on the table. Dummy came down with the jack third of hearts. Declarer had the king third of hearts. Dr Katz ruffed the opening lead, and declarer still had to lose two heart tricks giving Dick and Kathy a top. Given the instructions he had given, Dick couldn’t say anything
November 23rd, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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Here are two short entries that are very alike. I think they date from the ’70’s. It seems to me that I was at the tournaments when they occurred.
Mike Lawrence was playing in the Life Masters’ Pairs in the Summer Nationals with a student. Mike felt they needed a good last round to qualify for the finals. Unfortunately, his partner got to play the hand on the final board and did not give it its best play, to say the least.
As Mike explained it afterwards, “I was so upset with my partner’s play I dropped my whole hand. Most of the cards just happened to land in my partner’s lap.”
New York City expert, Paul Trent, was playing with a partnert who so misplayed the hand that Paul grabbed the cards and tore them to bits. His opponents, seeing this, screamed for a director.
When the director reached their table, the opponents pointed to the bits on the floor and complained. The director asked, ” Paul, did you tear up these cards?”
Very meekly, Paul responded, “No, I dropped them on the floor, and they broke.”
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November 21st, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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Though I wasn’t born there, I learned to play in Philadelphia and lived there for almost fifteen years. Most of them happened before I was playing regularly so I can’t attest to their truth:
One spring day internationalist Bob Jordan agreed to play with fellow Philadelphian, Bob Sitnek, in an open pairs in a sectional in Trenton, New Jersey. As they were driving there Sitnek asked Jordan, “What do you want to do if we don’t qualify?”
Jordan replied, It will be a snowy day in April if we don’t qualify in Trenton.”
Late that afternoon they drove home in the snow.
Bob Jordan was playing with fellow Philadelphian. Dave Warner. On the first hand They reached and made 3NT. Which made principally by his running a long minor suit.
They played the next hand and seeing his opponents just seeing his opponents just sitting there, Dave switched the boards saids and said.. “Come on. We have to play the next hand”. Bob and Dave reached 3NT again Having just played the board Bob was able to guess a queen he hadn’t done so earlier. As he played the hand one of his opponents said. Here come those damned diamonds again!”
Although he had made an overtrick this time because he knew all Bob filled out the pickup slip +600, and it was initialed with nothing said .
Long ago In an Atlantic City mixed pairs Bob Jordan, Norman Kay and his usual partner, Sidney Silidor were all playing in the mixed pairs. They couldn’t get sigle rooms for themselves so they agreed to share a room. Unfortunately, the room had only two beds and the management provided a cot. The three decided that the low score among the three would have to sleep in the cot..At the end of the second session Norman was third overall in the event. He had to sleep on the cot.
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November 19th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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The late Ron Anderson could be a good friend or dedicated enemy. He was commonly called the Hog because of his resemblance to Victor Mollo’s Hideous Hog as well as his appearance and behavior. Here is a typical auction Ron had with Kathy Evans in Madison, Wisconsin fairly early in his career but not too soon for his porcine traits to have emerged to be fully dominant.
The opponents passed throughout.
KE HOG
1C 1S*
1NT 2S**
2NT 3S***
3NT**** 4S*******
P
*with a slight snort
**giving partner a hard look
***really starting to snort in earnest
****putting her hand on the table with finality
*****slamming his hand on the table
They were in a four four fit!
Once he and Kathy Wei were playing against me and my student, Seymour Liebowitz in the finals of a regional KO in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When we had a break Ron took me aside and said,” It’s like a ping pong game. Every time Seymour makes a mistake Kathy does.”
From then on every time one of our partners would make a mistake Ron would say “pong” or “ping”. While the others would ignore him not realizing what he was saying , I had to keep a straight face.
One night we were returning to Chicago from a tournament in Iowa, we came to a toll booth, and the person who had tossed his money in missed! Immediately Ron started pounding his horn and shouting at the poor motorist things like, ” You should be more careful,” and “It’s certainly big enough. How could you miss it?”
The flustered motorist had to get out of his car to retrieve his change and finally put it in the basket and drove away. Ron pulled up. And with a grand gesture tossed his change in, but he also missed! Immediately, the car behind us started blowing its horn. Still sitting in his car without turning around , Ron said, “Sir…
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November 14th, 2008 ~ Mark Blumenthal ~
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When I lived in Kansas City I heard stories of hustling even in bridge. I remember one particularly. Dave Carter was one of the midwest’s best players in the 60’s. He usually lived in St Louis, but moved to Kansas City for a while. Maybe the best hustler there was Ayers Bombeck. One day Bombeck and Carter were playing golf on a course that belonged to a ritzy country club. In the locker room they heard two men discussing how good they were at bridge. Bombeck approached them and managed to steer the conversation back to bridge. He arranged to get them to agree to play a high stakes game on the next day. As they were heading to the match Bombeck warned Carter that their opponents were not experts, and he should not reveal they knew much about the game let alone they were much better than their opponents. Two hands went by uneventfully, but in the third Carter and Bombeck reached three no trump. Seeing he had little chance to make it Carter proceeded to play it in fine form making it by executing a complicated double squeeze.
The two pigeons, not knowing what had happened, looked at each other in amazement. Bombeck asked if they could be exused for a brief time.
He motioned to Carter step away wth him. Bombeck angrily said to him, ” You should not have played the hand that well. ”
Carter said, “It was nothing, just a simple squeeze.”
“Just remember”, snarled Bombeck, “There’s a lot of money there. From now on there will be no squeezes, no endplays, and damn few finesses!”
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