BAM!

Our heroes return for their semi-regular bridge blogging excursion! This time, it's after the NABC's in Boston, where Jon now lives, and to where Alex made his triumphant(?) return. After watching the painful (physically and emotionally) Yale-Harvard football game and spending an exciting weekend with college buddies, we entered the Mitchell Open BAM with Oosman (a current Yalie and international bridge star) and his online friend Doug. For those of you who don't know, BAM is basically team bridge with pair scoring--if your team scores better than the other team on a board, you get a point, if you score worse, you get 0, and if you tie, you get 1/2. It's matchpoints on steroids. In addition, the Open BAM was the main event at Nationals for the first Sunday and Monday, so all the world's best players were playing in this event. Needless to say, we didn't expect to do well in this event (and we didn't, particularly), but it was a great time, and we got a chance to play against some of the world's top players.
There were interesting hands throughout the event, but the most memorable for us were the ones we played against the experts. In the first set, vul against not, you hold the following hand:

S: 83
H: AKJ
D: AQJ8
C: KQ87

Partner opens 1D, and righty bids 3H. What's your bid?
At Alex and Jon's table, the expert thinks for a minute and bids 6NT, then her partner thinks for a couple minutes before passing. At Oosman and Doug's table (playing against Tor Helness and Geir Helgemo), they have a different auction, making it to 7D. Given that partner's hand is:

S: AKJ7
H: 8
D: K654
C: A965

and clubs break 3-2, both NT and D make 7. Win 1! Oosman was (understandably) very excited to get to bid and make a grand against one of the best pairs in the world, while another expert pair was unable to find it. Unfortunately, this was the only point we got against expert pairs, and one of only 20.5 points (26 average) we got all day.

Our other most memorable boards of the day were in the second set. A pair of men sat down against us, and, after bidding 1NT, Jon took a look at their convention card. He saw Meckstroth-Rodwell, and figured they're playing a Meckwell-type strong club system. He then realized that he was looking at the "names" line. We were playing against arguably the best pair in the world, who were playing with Zia Mahmood and Bob Hamman on arguably the best team in the world (and the team that ended up winning the event). On the first board, you (as Alex) hold:

S: T9765
H: 9
D: 7
C: KJT543

Partner opens 1NT (15-17). What's your plan?
After Meckstroth passed, Alex bid 2H (transfer). Rodwell doubles, Jon bids 2S, and Meckstroth bids 2NT. Alex bids 3C (would you bid or pass here?), and after Rodwell passes, Jon asks Rodwell what Meckstroth's bid means. At this point Rodwell says, "I don't think we've discussed it." Alex successfully avoided laughing--this pair is known for having a fantastic, comprehensive bidding system, and we managed to find a bid they didn't know! Jon decides to bid 3D, and Alex bids 3S. Jon decides to take a shot a 4S. Jon's hand is:

AQ2
643
AJT654
A

and 4S goes down 2. Some reasonable auction happens at the other table, Oosman and Doug end up in a reasonable contract going down, and we lose the board. We also lose the next board when Alex is unable to find the switch that Zia finds that would set 3NT. Alex thought about it, and decided to lead the wrong spade, while Zia instantly switched correctly to the jack. Alex still thinks he should have gotten it right, but takes some solace in the fact he thought about it.

After the eventful Open BAM, Jon did Physics on Monday, while Alex played in a Bracket 13 (out of 13) Compact KO with 3 Californians. When a teammate tried to switch us to the top bracket after the brackets had already been made, the director told him, "If you had come 11 minutes ago and said, 'We're snobby juniors and we want to be in the top bracket.' I would have done it, but it's too late." We responded correctly to this response by winning our first match by about 60 IMPs, then steamrolling through the rest of the bracket to win it (for a grand total of 4 masterpoints!)

On Tuesday, Alex played with Jon Pines in a 2 session fast pairs, putting up a 60% in the 1st session and a 40% in the 2nd. With the exception of about 5 hands in the 2nd session, we played very well--if not for 3 hands that we misdefended after pushing the opponents too high, we could've had a 53%. So it goes.

Meanwhile, Jon played with Belinda in the 0-5000 Blue Ribbon pairs. Blame it on being tired (Jon didn't sleep so much the couple nights before this), blame it on having a kibitzer, but they did not play particularly well, putting up a 45% and a 40% in 2 sessions. Toward the end of the second session, there was, however, one hilarious hand. With Alex watching over Jon's shoulder, Jon and Belinda pass throughout the auction as opponents get to 3NT with some auction like 1D-1H-2NT-3NT. As Jon, you hold:

S: KJ642
H: J52
D: 5
C: 8432

Partner leads a low spade and dummy comes down:

S: T
H: KT63
D: 984
C: AQJ95

Jon goes up with the jack, declarer takes it with the queen of spades. Declarer leads the 7 of clubs, partner plays the 10, and dummy plays the queen, winning as Jon plays the 2. After thinking a little bit, declarer plays the club ace from dummy and pitches the 2 of diamonds from his hand, as partner drops the club king! Jon sits there looking confused. Either Belinda made a very weird play of a king under the ace, or someone has reneged. Sure enough, the jack is played from dummy, declarer pitches the 7 of spades from his hand, and Belinda pitches, too. As the play of the hand continues, declarer pitches the 8 of spades and the 6 of clubs from his hand, eventually making 5. When the 6 of clubs was pitched, no one at the table seemed to notice, but it took a huge effort for the kibitzer not to say something. Upon explaining to Jon what happened, we realized that declarer gave up tricks by not playing clubs to get pitches in his hand. Sure enough, most people were making 7, and-460 was good enough for 23 matchpoints out of a 25 top!