The New York Times-20080126-At the Tournament Table- Learning by Doing
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At the Tournament Table, Learning by Doing
Full Text (454 words)Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., gives an annual gift of sorts to its students. During the winter they are allowed almost a month away from regular classes to pursue a nonacademic subject. Some use the time to enhance their skiing and partygoing skills. But this year seven students -- Todd Bustard, Chris Chudzicki, Jon Dahlberg, Jason Griffith, Bill Jannen, Edward Newkirk and Bryant Renaud -- chose to pursue tournament bridge under the tutelage of Frank Morgan, the Atwell professor of mathematics.
After taking lessons and playing in a local tournament, on Jan. 18 they headed down to Rye Brook, N.Y., to compete for three days in the District 3 Winter Regional.
The diagramed deal was sent in by Newkirk, who commented that the bad deals were the ones that stuck in his mind. This suggests he will go far in the game.
South had a tough problem on the first round of the bidding. Most experts play that his chosen two-club advance would be nonforcing. But to cue-bid two diamonds and then to rebid a forcing three clubs would be space-consuming.
North and South at the table treated two clubs as forcing, so that an immediate cue-bid by South would promise support for North's suit.
With such a misfit and diamonds having been bid on his left, South probably should have settled for three clubs on the second round. But when he rebid three diamonds, North should have continued with three hearts to show his values in that suit. Then South would have converted to three no-trump, a decent contract on the North-South hands that fails in practice if West leads a heart (or an unlikely spade, which would be chosen if East chanced a sporting double).
At the table, North corrected three diamonds to four clubs, where matters rested.
A heart lead looks normal, but that would not have been effective. It would have taken a spade lead and heart shift to defeat four clubs, but one of the students unwisely led a diamond. Now declarer made five by discarding his spade loser on dummy's second heart and ruffing the third round of diamonds with dummy's club nine. South lost one diamond and one club. Plus 150 was the top score for North-South.
At another table the students bid as given, except that over three diamonds North unwisely repeated his spades. South, expecting at least a seven-card suit, passed. The bad spade break sent this contract down one. Minus 100 was worth 4.5 match points out of 12.
So Rye Brook and the class are over, but the Williams students already have plans for two duplicate games next week and an eye out for the next tournament, which is in Schenectady, N.Y.
[Illustration]DIAGRAM