Matchpointer Online
(Serving Tournament Bridge players in A.C.B.L. Unit 430:
Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast)

Welcome to Unit 430's Webpage!
New to the site?  Click here to jump down to an explanation of what Matchpointer Online is all about.

• Puget Sound Regional in Lynnwood WA, about 1½ hours drive from the border  Attendance was up significantly over last year — the biggest Puget Sound Regional since 1997!  The Daily Bulletin page has all the links to Bulletin issues, pair game board-by-board results, and hand record sheets.  Posted so far:
  • Bulletin issues: revised version of Wrapup issue now posted: masterpoints, Sunday results
  • (The original version of the Wrapup issue had a much shorter list of masterpoint winners, because one of my scripts to convert ACBLScore output to tabbed output for the desktop publishing program had a bug in it which would delete you from the list unless you had managed to win some red and some gold points! Fixed and revised now...)
  • Pair Game board-by-board results: all now posted.
  • Hand Records: Copies of all hand records in pdf now posted.
  • Photos uploaded here, captions now added.
• Tournament flyers posted for September and October events: the Fall Future Stars is back on the schedule after a big turnout in this year's Spring Future Stars.
  • September 10-12 Evergreen Sectional flyer
  • October 23-24 Fall Future Stars Sectional flyer
  • October 31 Fall FUNdraising Game flyer
  • SPECIAL ALERT: The FUNdraising Game is on Saturday October 30, not the 31st.  We'll update the flyer when we get time.
• David Yu and Evan Zhuang win the 15-team August Monthly Unit Game!
• August Game Results
• 2010 Trophy Race Standings
• Next Monthly Unit Game: Saturday, September 4 - 7:30 pm (pairs).
• 2010 Monthly Unit Game dates (gametime: 7:30, all matchpoint pairs unless noted): September 4, October 2 (Swiss Teams), November 6, December 11.  Only the December game is off the normal "first Saturday" date, because of the Fall NABC.
  • Complete 2010 MUG Schedule
  • Recent Results and Hand Records
• Greg Morse has begun a Unit 430 blog.  Check it out if you want to comment on some of the things Unit 430 is planning.
• IMP League playoff results: Litwin wins the Flight A Final (over Takemori), Lochang wins the Flight X Final (over Lai), Stone wins the Flight B Final (over Meyer), and Boyce wins the Flight C Final (over E-Team).
  • Masterpoints (all black points, based on regular season results only: playoff results are for the trophies):
  • Flight A/X (Match award: 0.77 per win)
  • A1: Litwin -- 15.87
  • A2: Martineau -- 11.90
  • A3: Takemori -- 8.93
  • A4: Stock -- 7.32
  • A5, X1: Lochang -- 7.95
  • X2: McMullin -- 5.96
  • X3: Moffatt -- 4.47
  • X4: Lai -- 3.67
  • Flight B/C (Match award: 0.57 per win)
  • B1: Stone -- 6.29
  • B2: Carr -- 4.72
  • B3: Meyer -- 3.54
  • C1: E-Team -- 4.19
  • Complete masterpoint awards: click here
• Mentoring Program gets its own page on Matchpointer Online.  Check it out here!
• Get ready for the 2010 North American Pairs!
  • Flights: A (unlimited), B (up to 2000 MP), C (up to 500 MP and non-Life Master).
  • Stage One: Club Qualifying (June 1 - August 31).  Clubs may hold up to two qualifying games each month for every weekly sanctioned game that they hold.  Games can be stratified games of all flights, two of the three flights, or limited to one flight only.  Masterpoint awards are half-red, half-black and at the same rate a sectional tournament pays: first overall in a large game may win as many as five points or more!  To qualify for Stage Two you need only finish at average or better, or in the top half of your strat.
  • Stage Two: District Final.  The District Final this year will be held on December 11, in conjunction with the Tacoma Sectional (Fircrest Community Center, 555 Contra Costa Avenue, Fircrest WA).  It begins at 10:30am, so you'll need to get up early!  If you qualify at the club level, you may play with any other qualified player in the District Final.  There is no Unit Final as there had been in previous years.  The top three pairs in each flight will be invited to participate in the next stage...
  • Stage Three: National Final in Louisville KY at the Spring 2011 NABC.  Pairs who qualify by finishing first or second in the District Final and who play in the National Final will receive a subsidy from the ACBL.  Subsidies from Unit 430 for local players are also available to players who play in the Unit 430 Fall FUNdraiser on October 31 (which raises funds for the NAP and the 2011 GNT).
• New article: Give Me A Hand, by Joerg Schneider, on the Matchpointer Articles Page, here.
• New article: Short Shorts, by Greg Morse, on the Matchpointer Articles Page, here.
• Bridge in 2010: A list of Bridge events in 2010 of interest to Unit 430 players has been released.  It contains:
• Local Sectional dates with event schedules and times
• Monthly Unit Game dates
• NABCs (OOPS!  The original printed version has an error, repeating last year's locations for the Summer and Fall 2010 NABC.  The actual locations are New Orleans, Summer 2010, and Orlando, Fall 2010.  The online version has been corrected and a new version has been printed, but we still have a few copies out there of the previous version...)
• Canadian Bridge Federation Events: International Fund Regional, Canadian Bridge Championships and entry deadlines, STaC, Rookie-Master games
• DINO Regionals
• Other nearby Regionals: District 18, 20, and most of California
• Other DINO Sectionals
• Sectional Tournaments at Clubs
• Multi-Level Event qualifying periods and District Finals.
• Local Special Events and FUNDraising games.
• You can view the document here.  (To print this file, you will need legal-sized paper, or you'll need to use the 'Fit to Printable Area' option in the Page Scaling area of the print dialog box within Acrobat.).
• Three New Articles by McBruce, some parts somewhat acerbic (here):
  • Arrow Switches and Why I Use Them
  • Sectional Flyers and Why I Think People Really Want Them
  • New Starting Times for the 2012 Vancouver Regional That You Will Hate (But Shouldn't)

We've changed the look of the site slightly and will continue to tinker.  By far the most common complaint about Matchpointer Online's look is the different-coloured background images behind the main text, which in some cases made it difficult to read the text in front of it.  We switched to a consistent and lighter, less-intrusive background, with the colours in the headlines and the outlines of the page.

This is the Start Page of the Home Area, the front page of the site.  Above, under the headline you can see the nine Areas making up this Web Site.  Click on a coloured rectangle above, or on a single-lettered bid-box in the graphic, to go to the Start Page of that Area.  The pages we expect to be most frequently accessed are in the 32 clickable links in the back of the bid-box over to the left of your screen.  If you hover your mouse over any of the bid-box links (back or front areas) for about a half-second, you'll see a short description of that page.  You'll find many more tips on site navigation on the Help! page.

You may also wish to add this site to your browser's bookmarks or favorites.  If the site becomes unavailable for an extended period of time, Matchpointer Online editor Bruce McIntyre will add most of the content to his own personal web space at this link, which you may also want to add to your browser's bookmarks or favorites.

Matchpointer Online editor Bruce McIntyre edits District 19 Regional Daily Bulletins, except for the Alaska Regionals.  Currently working on: preparation for Puget Sound Regional, Lynnwood WA, August 23-29, 2010.  I can be reached by e-mail.  Daily Bulletins are posted online at this page, along with McBruce Bulletins from previous tournaments.

The October 3 - 5 visit of Mike Lawrence, for two days at the Marine Drive Golf Club and a day at the Vancouver Bridge Centre, was well-attended, well-received, and well-organized by a small group of people headed by David Dilkes.  Mike Lawrence has been writing eye-opening books about bridge since Ira Corn (who included Mike in the original Aces team that trained together and won the world championship) ordered him to start writing!  A wealth of experience, knowledge and analysis go into his bridge classes, and players are gently stretched to the next level.  A single dose of the Mike Lawrence magic on a bridge cruise was enough to convince David Dilkes that an event in Vancouver would have no trouble drawing a suitable group of people.  David set about and succeeded in making it happen.

The first two days at the Marine Drive Golf Club were divided into a morning class on a single topic, followed after lunch by an afternoon class on competitive bidding with audience participation.  Graciously invited by David but unable to escape from other commitments, I'm only able to report that the Leonard/Roxburgh room was filled with 80 players both days.  The Saturday morning topic was on responding to a takeout double, which is a excellent section of his second book, Judgment at Bridge, that I remember reading over and over as a bridge rookie, marvelling at how obviously correct Mike's advice was, and also how much of an advantage this would be to me, since it was apparent that few other bridge rookies knew this stuff!  Sunday's topic was on bidding after the opponents pre-empt, another common problem topic for intermediate players.

Following Sunday's class, Mike and David visited the Bridge Centre to check out the preparations being made for Monday.  The plan for the VBC day was to have 14 tables of players play two sets of ten deals, followed by a discussion of each deal.  The deals were designed by Mike to have all four seats involved in bidding and play decisions over the course of the set.  On Monday morning when I arrived at starting time, I found an eager group of people ready to learn.  Most of the group had been at the lectures on the weekend and were ready to test their skills against Mike's hands.

Asked to introduce Mike, I had to quickly come up with an introduction, and I recalled something I had noticed when I bought a Mike Lawrence book for the first time (the one referred to above).  The word judgment is often (especially in Britain) spelled with nine letters, adding a central 'e'.  The reason it is usually (in America) and often (in Canada) spelled without the central 'e' is because of President Ford, who, in a speech (pre-written by his speechwriters but unseen), perhaps thinking of 'firmament' or 'sacrament' or maybe even 'Sacramento', pronounced the nine-letter version with three syllables: JUDGE-a-ment.  Immediately, recognizing the power of Presidents to shape the English language (despite the ridicule of H.L. Mencken, 'normalcy' became a common English word, replacing 'normality,' after Warren Harding used it in several speeches), American usagists banded together, contacted Ford's speechwriters, and decreed that the central 'e' had to go.  And at just about this time, Mike Lawrence's second book appeared, called Judgment at Bridge -- with eight letters!  Clearly this was a modern book with the latest in bridge judgment!

 Mike has a way of dispensing with the rote learning and ironclad rules that players blindly follow, instead focussing on using intelligence and judgment to come to the correct solution of any bridge problem.  It's a unique style of bridge writing that works just as well in a teaching situation, and at any level it makes bridge feel like a far more interesting game than the one played by the rules-followers.  As the players played the deals, he visited every table and watched for a while, making sure that events did not get too far off course.  His advice was always given in a simple and supportive tone, and he was quick with praise when a hand was well-played.

In the interactive presentation of each of the ten hands from the first set, Mike stood in the centre of the room (next time we'll ensure that he has a microphone and a larger whiteboard, against the wall instead of on a shaky stand) and reminded me a bit of Garrison Keillor: tall, soft-spoken but assured, a smooth voice of authority and confidence that doesn't use or need volume to make a point.  On several occasions Mike would find an impromptu way to make a point to a questioner unsure about the answer he had given.  For example, to a player who seemed to find something wrong with every possible bid, he wrote this hand (approximately) on the whiteboard:

K72
AQ4
KQJ5
JT8

What is your opening bid?  The player in question found nothing wrong with a 1NT opener.  "But you can't open this hand 1NT," said Mike.  "This is what will happen.  The opponents will lead a club through whatever partner has in clubs and a spade back through your king.  By the time you knock out the ace of diamonds, they'll have six black-suit tricks set up."  And after a few minutes of silence, during which the player began to re-think the 1NT opening bid, Mike continued.  "Don't believe that.  This is a perfectly fine 1NT opener.  But no bid comes with guarantees.  For every time the opponents beat you when you open this hand 1NT, there will be a hundred times when the 1NT call helps get you to a decent spot.  The point is that you can construct a nightmare scenario about every bid, and there is always a chance that it will happen.  But if there is no other reasonable alternative, you have to take the chance.

(Disclaimer: Mike almost certainly said it better than I remember it.)

Many deals had squeeze or endplay possibilities, and without getting too technical, Mike delved into the cardplay and the thinking that should be done, both by declarer and by the defenders, in a similar manner to the way he discusses hands in books.  Usually, his presentation was complete enough to leave very few questions from the audience.  A few questions led to interesting side issues; others led to interesting exchanges.  When Mike asked Ev Hodge about her reasoning for a bid, and suggested that she was afraid to make the recommended call, Ev told him, "I'm not afraid of anything!"

The shortest answer of the day was a response to a question on Jacoby 2NT.  Can you do it with three-card support?  Mike's answers were always very detailed and clear, but in this case it was a single word: no.

In the discussion of the second set of ten deals, following an excellent VBC lunch, Mike said that he had written enough bridge hands for the BridgeClues website that there were enough daily hands to go for months and months before cycling back.  We also got a preview of an article that will appear in the ACBL Bulletin (Mike's are written well in advance) in 2012 or so:

In notrump with unlimited entries and no danger in other suits, you need one trick from the spade suit, which is 7 6 5 in your hand and K J 4 2 in dummy.  How do you play this suit?

Most suggested running the five.  LHO of course covers with the eight and you need to decide whether to play the king or the jack.

You try the jack, and RHO wins the queen.  In again, you play the six and LHO covers with the ten.  Now what?  King (hoping that LHO has the ace) or low (hoping that RHO has doubleton AQ.)?

The king is the odds-on favorite here.  But it loses.  You get the lead back and lead the seven; LHO now shows out (so ducking wasn't going to work either).  Do you still have a chance to make a trick in this suit?

Yes, a 100% chance: play the deuce from dummy, losing to RHO's nine. RHO's last card is...the three.  Your four-spot is good!

At the end of the day, Mike remained available to talk to people and suggest books and software to those interested in further improvement.  It was an amazing day, and for those who were in on all three, it must have been a very instructional weekend.

It would be wrong for me to end this article without mentioning again that the event was set up and organized primarily by David Dilkes, with the help of Rita Dodge, Anne Smith, Ann Hung, Gerry May, Bev Hall, Sachi Yamakami, and Mona Blusson.  Their efforts helped make this all possible: thanks!

[Correction note: I corrected the KJ42/765 example above, after Mike e-mailed to let me know that I had it slightly wrong.  He also adds: "I had such a good time up there.  Hope to see everyone again."]