IAC vs ACOL - New Match Sunday April 3rd

[kenberg]

It's not over 'till it's over. Oh, it's over?
Nah, we can do it again.

[Curls77]

It's not over 'till it's over. Oh, it's over?
Nah, we can do it again.

That's the way to think Ken! 

Warm thanks to all that participated : )  And a huuuuuge hug to our subs!
Congratulations to IAC winning teams:
"Enough 4 now!" : Holden47 & Deepkhnh + Ipiggle & Draculea.
and
"Dream Team" : Quarky & ne v en + DonnaS & Darrell74

You'll find PDFs of full matches, as well as all travellers (with copiable LIN) in IAC Drive, link is https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz

Start prepping teams, I hope we'll have same event(s) on Sunday May 1st.

[wackojack]

This was B6 2nd match
Opps vul


North
♠ Q 6 5 4
♥ K 9 7
♦ 10 7 4
♣ A 10 8

South
♠ K 9 8 2
♥ A J 5
♦ A K 5 3 2
♣ 7

East opens 1
1 ! - (dbl) - pass - (1 )
pass  -  (2 ) -pass - (4 )
all pass

So North plays in 4  and East leads K .

If I were playing against 2/1 I would guess that East most likely has an unbalanced hand with clubs but could also have a balanced 12 14.
It is interesting that playing against Acol weka no trump I can be almost certain that East is unbalanced with clubs. Why?

If East had a balanced 12-14 then East would open 1NT.  If East had a balanced 15-19 East would open with 1M if she had a 4 card major and rebid in no trumps.  So since we have 24 in the NS hands we conclude that she either has a balanced 15-16 3334 or unbalanced with at least 5 clubs.  It appears almost certain the latter. 

So how to play the hand:   

 1. E ♣ K 7 2 A  East leads K , You take with Ace and west follows with the 2. 
What can I deduce?  Most likley East has  KQJxxx and West 3 small.  It looks also highly likely that east has a singleton spade or diamond.  So what should my plan be? 

If trumps split 4-1 then maybe I should play on diamonds before drawing trumps.  If diamonds split 4-1 then maybe I should play on trumps first.  I am rejecting trying the heart finesse at this stage,  Is that right? 

Any suggestions?   

[kenberg]

Having played the hands, it's tough to look at this abstractly. But a thought or two.

Surely E has the A on the auction. So if he has a stiff it's the A. So I think I would start by winning the A at T1 (of course) and then leading a small from the board. If E produces a non-ace then probably, or hopefully spades are 3-2  and, since I agree that the non-1NT opening by acol suggests some shape, you tread carefully with the suit. And of course you can hope E we dealt the A doubleton, in which case you could hold the trump losers to 1. If the A flies at T2, then very likely W held 4 and you will be losing 2 tricks. Meaning the losers have to be held to 1. But if indeed are 4-1 then there is a better chance that are 3-2. E has shape but he doesn't have to have 2 stiffs.

That's my thinking, trying to put aside what I know of the actual layout.

Added: If are 4-1 then when E wins his A he has to lead something. This could help. Say he leads a . One route to 10 tricks could be: The A, 2 ruffs in hand, 2 top !Ds, 3 tricks, and the K,Q. That's if the A flies. If not, then we play for trump to be 3-2 with various options.

Further add-on: I sometimes amuse myself by giving hands to the robots. I do not claim  robots are experts, and of course they do not know EW are playing acol.
Left to themselves, they reached 4 on the auction
1 - X - Pass - 2
Pass - 4

The opening lead was the stiff and the robot declarer took 11 tricks.

So I revised it. I left the auction alone but I insisted that the robot defender lead the K at T1. The robot declarer took it and led a small , E ducked, the K won, he took 10 tricks.
Proves nothing but it's what the robots did.

[Curls77]

Hi all
Colin was so kind to write a review of 4 boards from the later session, you'll find file
Challenge 2 Commentary by Colin.docx
in the same directory where all results and travellers are: https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz

[kenberg]

Hi all
Colin was so kind to write a review of 4 boards from the later session, you'll find file
Challenge 2 Commentary by Colin.docx
in the same directory where all results and travellers are: https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz

I had some trouble finding it but now I have it, thanks.

[Curls77]

There were more players having issue with this link, but I can't figure why. If anyone can help, pls let me know 

Also, I hope u check on them, coz it takes time and effort build all travellers and actual matches, I'd skip the trouble if none cares 
Hope ur in process of setting new teams, we are about to announce next event, watch the IAC news, here forums and your BBO mail!

[kenberg]

Aha: You can skip the lengthy explanation below of how I got there and just go to
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dOzg3D7xVyud2SHHXN0KpP__bib-nNOL/edit


Tech things often present challenges. I was able to overcome the challenge  and I will describe my solution.

Here is the link from above:
https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz
There are three ways for me to open such a link but they all lead to the same result.
The three ways are to
click on it in your message,
copy it and insert it in google and open it,
or, after inserting it in google,  a highlighted form appears and I can click on that.
These all open up at the URL:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U4ubDgm611WikH_f6FLeJTKrdhmD_EeK

Ok, this might be the start of the issue. The URL that opens begins "drive.google" rather than "tinyurl".

But of course something is open so can I work with that? yep, but it wasn't easy.

What I see in front of me after https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U4ubDgm611WikH_f6FLeJTKrdhmD_EeK opens is the word "Folders" and beneath "folders" I see "2022.02" and "2022.04"

Over on a side panel there is stuff about "owner" and "who has access".
So I click on "2022.04" in the main panel.
Nothing opens immediately but the side panel changes.

I now go to the side panel and click on "2204.04".

This brings up, in the main panel, icons for 10 documents, a mix of pdf, word and x (I have no idea what an x document is).

I click on the one called "Challenge2..." It's a word document.

It opens, although I can only see part of it, in the side panel.

So I go over to the side panel and click on it, the part of "Challenge..." that I see, and it opens full size.

Now I would like to have it easily available in the future so I hope to save it. I go over to "file", find "download, and click on "download". It gives me downloading options including "'pdf" and '.word". I like the pdf format so I click on that.

A pdf file is created, I find the option to "download", and click on it. It downloads, unopened.

I open the downloaded pdf file.

Open pdf files can be saved to my desktop so I do that.

And now it is right there whenever I wish to open it.


Thoughts: Tech things are usually easy providing you know what you are supposed to do and near to impossible if you do not know what you are to do. Very very possibly there is a much simpler way to get to the file, but the above approach is the only way that I found.

In 1954 I bought a 1947 Plymouth for $175 that not surprisingly needed work. So I figured it out. But a wrench gets applied to a bolt, pretty obvious. Not quite so obvious with tech.

[Curls77]

Hello Ken
Thanks for explaining.
The link leads to IAC Drive, where the folder IAC vs ACOL is shared with anyone who has the link.
Think of it as window explorer, double click to open it and see the sub-folders (2022-02 was 1st challenge, 2022-04 was last one, and I'll keep adding new sub-folders, one for each challenge played).
Once in the sub-folder, you'll see individual files. Again, double click them to open, or right click and choose Download.
X icon is for Excel files, that have all travellers, and copiable LINs for players that want to upload the hand to BBO and replay the board.

[kenberg]

Ah yes, double clicking! I might have thought of that.

It illustrates what I said about tech being easy if you know what you are supposed to do.
 
Windows Explorer and I do not think the same way. I need some sort of caution sign whenever Explorer is involved. Back in my days of working on cars, some bolts had reverse threads. A guy could waste a lot of time if he didn't think of that.

Actually I guess I sort of double-clicked in that I clicked once in the main panel and then clicked again in the side panel. It just took a while.

Ok. Double click. Got it. Thanks.