OzOne

Tonight I'll be playing an exhibition match against the OzOne team on BBO. I'll be playing with David Grainger, Bart Bramley, and Jay Stiefel.

A wealthy donor founded the OzOne project in order to increase the standard of the Australian teams sent for international competition. They have recruited some of the best talent in Australia to work on their partnerships and become great, much like the Dallas Aces of old. Part of their training is playing exhibition matches on BBO which they do regularly.

Our opponents tonight will be Richman and Nagy with Hans and Nunn at the other table. I met both pairs for the first time last year in the Cavendish and have since seen them at NABCs (North American nationals). I even got to play a session with Hans on BBO.

Richman and Nagy play a variant of MOSCITO, a system that I have never played against since it is illegal in most of the tournaments I play in. As far as I can tell it is a very active strong club system with transfer openings, 4 card majors, and weak NT. I am really excited to play against this system and I think it will be a good learning experience. You never know, sometime in the future I may be playing against this system at a world championship so practicing against it could turn out to be very useful.

Needless to say I don't know the best way to defend against MOSCITO or the 1-level openers, so if anyone has any suggestions let me know before 7:00 central tonight. Thanks!

Update: We won 53-13 in a 20 board match. I'll try to post a match report at some point.

Bridge Documentary

A few years ago there were always cameras following my friend Gavin Wolpert around at bridge tournaments. Eventually I learned that a documentary was going to be made about him and his partner Vince Demuy. That didn't seem too exciting as I often hear about potential bridge documentaries and movies but the project always seems to fizzle out.

Not this time. On April 7th the documentary aired on CTV. Wait, CTV is Canadian! I was lucky enough to get to see it about a week ago in Gatlinburg when Gavin brought it on DVD. I was very hopeful that it could increase the visibility of bridge and enhance its image if done correctly.

For those of you masochistic enough to be loyal readers, you will remember that my concept of the best way to do something like this is to have almost no bridge content at all. The atmosphere and drama need to be the focus with actual hands playing a very small role so that even non-bridge players can watch and enjoy a movie or documentary on bridge.

In The Cards did not disappoint, the whole story being about a young partnership trying to prove themselves in a world of established professionals. Once they did that and got hired onto a major team they had to perform. All the while they had to maintain their friendship and partnership, a very hard thing to do. There was little talk about bridge. This is perfect because if someone who doesn't know how to play bridge watches the documentary they'll think, "That was really interesting, I want to learn bridge and become a part of that world. Bridge seems like a cool game." There was drama, big money, fierce competition, and highs and lows.

I really think that this documentary is great for the game. The only problem is that all the Americans and Europeans and Asians who don't have access to CTV may never see it. Because of this Alan Crank has put the documentary on YouTube. Since it's about a 45 minute documentary and YouTube can't handle videos that large he has cut it up into separate 9-10 minute segments.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
  

So far only the first 2 parts are up, but as he gets more of them up I will update the list. I encourage everyone to watch the documentary and show it to all non bridge players they can, preferably young people. I also encourage all bridge bloggers to add links to the YouTube video. I really think that if bridge is going to try and get the attention of my generation it needs more media coverage of the young stars and their exciting lives. This video is a great start and we need to capitalize on it by giving it a lot of exposure.

Update: Part 3 is now up.

Update 2: Part 4 is up.

Update 3: Part 5 is up. Part 4 is apparently having some technical difficulties, but will be working again shortly. Gavin has also written his thoughts on the documentary. If you enjoyed it, I recommend reading what he has to say. If you have any relatives or non-bridge playing friends please tell them to watch this.

Ira Chorush

Ira Chorush is known and feared by almost every top expert player, yet few others know him. For most of his life he was predominately a rubber bridge player in Houston, going to few tournaments. He did manage to win a few nationals in his spare time. Let's take a look at why Ira is so feared.

You hold: KQJT6 Q52 Q84 Q3. Playing rubber bridge, the auction starts on your left and you hear the opponents bid 1-2-2N-3-4. The 2N bid showed extra values. Your partner leads the 5 of spades playing fourth best and dummy comes down with 984 KJ7 AJT3 KJ2. What's your plan? Decide before reading on.

We can place partner with a doubleton spade from the lead (declarer would likely have bid spades with 4 of them) and declarer with all the high cards. Declarer's shape will be 3-5-2-3 or 3-5-3-2. This pretty much means he has either Axx Axxxx Kxx Ax or Axx Axxxx Kx Axx. We need the declarer to take his finesses into us, and to do that we must let him think our hand is the safe hand. Since declarer cannot read the spades, we can make it look like partner has the five card spade suit. So we win the first spade with the king, and return the jack. Note if we played the ten and then the jack declarer would figure out the position as partner wouldn't be underleading the KQ of spades. The queen followed by the ten or the jack followed by the queen would also work. Declarer, taken in, runs the heart ten into you. Now the key moment, you must NOT cash your spade. Just exit another trump keeping up the image that you have a doubleton spade. Remember, partner led the 5 and then played the 2 so it is a very believable ruse. Declarer will pull trumps, ending in his hand. If he has the first hand we are sunk as he can test clubs before finessing a diamond into us. But if he has the second hand, with 2-3 in the minors, we have him. Declarer will confidently play the king of diamonds and a diamond to the jack planning on discarding both black suit losers even if this finesse loses.

This is exactly how events unfolded at the table, declarer's hand being A63 AT984 K2 A75. Who can blame declarer for falling victim to this great deceptive defense by Ira? Ira is known as a great technician, but his deceptive game matches up with the very best.