Tags Bridge Nationals bidding play  Chip Martel  Lew Stansby  Larry Cohen  David Berkowitz  Reisinger BAM  CA  San Francisco  Which grand? How Grand!  bridge hand 

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How to be greedy and win a bridge hand. Bidding and play tactics in the Reisinger.

By chip  Featured Noozer
Published: 13 December 2007 05:33 pm

- The Reisinger Board-a-Match (BAM) Teams is one of the toughest events on the bridge calendar. Since the National Swiss teams runs in parallel to it, only the most serious players tend to enter.  At the recent San Francisco nationals the Reisinger  was won by Jimmy Cayne,  Michael Seamon and, Italian stars Fulvio Fantoni, Claudio Nunes, Lorenzo Lauria and Alfredo Versace. My team, Lew Stansby, Aubrey Strul-Mike Becker, Larry Cohen-David Berkowitz, finished second several boards back.  Last year Lew and I were also second, though then by a more painful margin of less than one point.

In BAM scoring its important to outscore the other team even if only by a small margin. This can lead to bidding problems on hands that would be trivial at IMP or rubber bridge scoring. Consider the problem I faced in the second day of the the Reisinger:



After partner's 4h opening it was routine to check on aces (since a suit of say QJTxxxxx was possible). Once he showed an ace it was clear would be a good contract, and it would have been routine to bid it at IMPs. At BAM scoring I had to worry about scoring an extra 10 points for playing 7NT. Partner was likely to have 7 or 8 hearts, so I had at least 12 top tricks and perhaps 13. A side king or the would also provide 13 top tricks. A worst case hand such as xx AQJxxxx Jxxx - however, would provide almost no play for 13 tricks. There was no way to tell for sure, but it seemed the odds favored being greedy, so I tried 7NT.




The was led and partner produced a suitable dummy. 7N was easy if clubs split (a 2-1 prospect) and had chances otherwise. Also, my hand was unknown to the opponents, which can be useful. I threw the 2, cashed the minor suit aces and led to the (so the first four tricks were won by aces). I then ran the hearts coming down to



If either opponent started with 4 clubs and the they would be squeezed (to hold the diamond king they would have to throw a club). Note that cashing the early was important to reach this ending. This ending also allows me to play RHO to have started with Jxxx or Txxx of clubs (if LHO dropped an honor under the ). That was why I kept both of dummy's clubs.

On the actual hand the clubs split, so there was no problem. Our score of 1520 for 7NT won the board since our teammates were -1510 for . On a bad day the cards could have been unfriendly and beaten 7NT. On a worse day, the other table might have stopped in so just bidding the safe would win the board. Fortunately, this was a better day than that.