Chapter 2, Raising the ante

サビーネ・コンベンションのもとになった書籍、Sabine Aukenの「I love this game」の第２章を引用します。

It had been a promising start. If we could manage a few more results like the last one, our opponents might start getting nervous. It is not always easy playing the last set of a long match when one is ahead by quite a substantial, but by no means safe, margin. One hopes for a quiet set of deals with a lot of sequences like 1NT-3NT, with a standard opening lead and a standard line of play that quite likely will be duplicated at the other table. One's mind is set on playing defensively and not taking any risks.

When the deals are very distributional and when it is very difficult to judge what happened at the other table, one can easily be trapped into getting worried. The same is true when one has made a few unlucky decisions or made a few mistakes. It is the uncertainty that can get to you. How are our teammates faring at the other table? How many IMPs have we lost? Are we in any danger of losing the lead? These and similar thoughts may cross your mind, and they are deadly. Instead of concentrating on what is most important, namely trying to do your best on the deal you are currently playing, you become distracted, wasting energy on things that have already happened or are happening elsewhere and on which you have no influence. Along with many other things, bridge is also a psychological war.

Dany's two heart opening was a two-way bid; it showed either a weak one-suiter with spades or a weak two-suiter with hearts and a minor. Over Veronique's two spade intervention, I had the method but no desire to compete in three clubs, which was just as well. It probably would not have escaped undoubled and would have been booked to go two down; even that would have required careful declarer play.

In two spades, Veronique took ten tricks. Indeed, there is no lead and no defense that can prevent declarer from winning ten tricks if she times the play correctly. Was this a good or a bad result for us? When you are trailing by as many IMPs as we were, you had better think positive. Being pessimistic won't get your IMPs back. Who knows? Maybe the French would bid too high in clubs at the other table and get doubled; even two clubs doubled would win us another IMP. Or maybe Andrea and Pony would find a way to bid game. One thing was sure, the South hand would not be opened at the other table, which would automatically lead to a different bidding sequence.

In fact, this is how it went:

It is probably just too difficult to discover the nice mesh of the East-West hands, which makes four spades a very reasonable contract, despite only minimal values and lacking any spectacular distribution. On different play and defense, our teammates scored +140 and we lost 1 IMP back to France.

The score was now France 215, Germany 173.

Daniela's and my philosophy in the bidding is to open all distributional hands with almost any excuse; we don't have very strict suit quality requirements. When we catch a fit with partner, we can immediately preempt to the limit. No opponent who is continuously confronted with that kind of competitive problem can guess right all the time.

Many years ago, we played a defensive two-suiter scheme, where we would only use the artificial bid that immediately showed the two-suiter with either weak or strong hands; with intermediate hands, we would start by bidding first one suit and then later, with luck, the other. The idea was to give partner a better impression of the hand's strength, thus making it easier to judge whether to bid game or not.

I discussed this philosophy with Jeff Meckstroth. He said that he and Eric Rodwel I had once played the same way, but then later decided that it was much more important to tell partner about the hand's two-suited nature as quickly as possible. It puts partner in a much better position to preempt to the limit and make the right high-level competitive decision. I found this difficult to argue with and Daniela and I have happily been bidding our two-suiters ever since.

If you are as enthusiastic as I am about getting those weak one- and two-suiters off your chest as quickly as possible, then you will find there is a little snag. There are not nearly enough opening bids at the two-level available to cover all combinations; at least, not if every bid can only show one hand type. So in Daniela's and my system, almost all two-level openings are multi-meaning. We play the following structure:

• 2♢: either a weak one-suiter in hearts or a weak two-suiter with spades and a minor

• 2♡: either a weak one-suiter in spades or a weak two-suiter with hearts and a minor

• 2♤: either a weak two-suiter with both majors or a weak two-suiter with both minors

Some people who favor multi-meaning two-level openings also like to include a strong variant, e.g. the Multi 2. opening, which often shows either a weak two in one of the majors or a strong balanced hand or something similar. I very much dislike such a method; partner will almost never be on firm ground as to whether there is a weak or a strong hand opposite. That makes it impossible to preempt effectively, thus totally defeating one of the main purposes of a weak opening and rendering it a much more harmless weapon.

Can it really be that important to get the first blow in? Is it not more convenient to show a weak two-suiter later in the auction? And is it not advisable to define requirements for opening weak twos very closely, so that partner can better judge whether to stop in a partial, bid game or even search for slam?

Well, just like the mini-notrump, this is a matter of taste and temperament. If you are the safety type that likes to feel comfortable knowing all the time what is going on, the control freak that cannot stand it when things get totally out of hand, then don't adopt the approach I favor. If you are the adventurous type, however, and love to feel the adrenaline flowing in your blood, because it gets you to perform better, then go ahead, jump into the cold water. Any doubts? Let me convince you with this deal from the 1993 Venice Cup and Bermuda Bowl in Santiago:

First, let's take a look at what happened in the Bermuda Bowl final between Norway and the Netherlands:

At the first table everybody bid like a gentleman, pretty much drawing a blueprint of the whole distribution. Everyone judged perfectly and the par contract was reached, six spades doubled down one.

At the other table, however, Bauke Muller, coming from a country commonly known for being very liberal and giving its citizens the freedom of choice, did not feel restricted by rigid rules. He boldly started with a two spade preempt in second chair, not seeing any need to preserve the possibility of playing in a jack-high four-card heart suit when he held a six-card suit headed by the KJ10 on the side. This had the effect of completely silencing his opponents, letting him chalk up +650 in his final four spades contract when the other side was cold for a vulnerable slam. And his opponents were none other than the formidable pairing of Helgemo-Helness from Norway, not exactly a pair one could accuse of being timid bidders.

And what happened in the Venice Cup, where we faced the United States?

Both Jill Meyers and I had a toy in our bag for opening the North hand with a multi-meaning bid that included both minors. The auction soon accelerated. Since it looked to the East-West pairs as if North-South were saving, the final contract at both tables became six diamonds doubled, making twelve tricks for a flat board.

Eric Kokish covered both the Bermuda Bowl and the Venice Cup finals for the World Championship book. He considered it quite risky to basically commit the North hand to the three-level vulnerable, but wrote in his commentary: "Given what transpired at both tables [in the Venice Cup], neither [North] is likely to revise her fearless approach to the game." Yes, Eric, you are absolutely right.

The above deal occurred in the penultimate 16-board segment of the 128-board final of the 1993 Venice Cup. It was the first time we had ever reached the final of a World Championship. Going into that set we were trailing the United States team by 73 IMPs, and badly needed to get some IMPs back. Dany and I had a fantastic set: whatever we touched turned to gold. At the end of the set, our opponents were quite obviously rattled, and we left the playing room with high hopes of having recovered a large portion of our IMP deficit. However, it was not to be. The American North-South in the other room, Jill Meyers and Kay Schulle, had also done extremely well. We only won the set by 8 IMPs, leaving us without any realistic chance to emerge victorious from the final. We were behind by 65 IMPs with only sixteen deals to go.

I was devastated. Daniela and I had played every match but one during the round robin and we had played every single board in the knockout stage. It had been a long and exhausting two weeks with a lot of successes and failures, a lot of emotional ups and downs, but this was just too much. First the joy of anticipation and the hope of being within striking distance, and then the agony of disappointment. It is good to have a team captain with broad shoulders. For the first time ever at a bridge tournament I started crying. I have never done it since. Besides being a psychological war, bridge is also an emotional rollercoaster.

This deal from the semifinal in the same tournament is a proof of how eager we are to show our two-suiters as quickly as possible:

We were playing against Sweden in a cliffhanger, and going into the last sixteen-board segment were trailing them by 28 IMPs. It was still early in the set, but things were going quite well. When the above deal came up, we were actually only 16 IMPs behind, though we didn't know that at the time, of course.

Daniela, perhaps excited about picking up a two-suiter when it so often seems to give an opportunity to create a swing and also about having the momentum, mistakenly opened the South hand with our 2D bid. What was wrong with that? She opened out of turn! Nobody noticed and the bidding proceeded as if nothing unusual had happened. The Swedes quickly bid to 3NT and I chanced a double. I was by no means sure we could beat this contract, but the wind had been blowing at our backs so far in this set. I felt that getting a number at this point would be just the right medicine. When Mari Ryman escaped to four clubs, I doubled even more happily, wrong in theory, but right in practice as it turned out.

Dany led her singleton trump, and I won with the ace, cashing the king of diamonds to continue with a second round of trumps. This defense is very strong, but declarer can still prevail. One of various winning lines involves finessing me for the ten of hearts, stripping me of my exit card in diamonds and finally endplaying me in hearts, squeezing Daniela in spades and diamonds in the process. The only choice at my disposal would be whether to give the last tricks to declarer or to dummy.

This line is certainly easier on paper than in practice, even though after the bidding and initial defense declarer should have quite a good picture of the whole deal. A clear disadvantage of aggressively bidding two-suiters is often tipping off declarer to the right line of play. (I was hoping I wouldn't have to admit to this drawback of aggressive bidding here, but I feel I need to be honest and lay all cards on the table. Nothing is perfect.)

However, it is not always so easy to keep a cool head in the heat of battle. There were no finesses and no endplay, so when the smoke had cleared, declarer was down two for 500 points to us. In the other room, our teammates also had a good result when Waltraud Vogt managed to take ten tricks in three clubs on a spade lead, giving us another 130 points and 12 IMPs.

In my mind, this deal was the match-breaker. I had the distinct feeling that all our opponents wanted to do afterwards was get the whole thing over with, race out of the playing room and compare scores, hoping they still had enough to win the match. But we didn't; we just wanted to sit in our chairs, waiting for more things to come. Momentum was clearly on our side and the match was up for grabs. When we had finished playing, we knew there had to be a chance we had pulled this one off. Our teammates were still playing, so we hurried into the VuGraph room to find out the score. When we entered, the audience started clapping. Then we knew for sure; it was a poignant moment.

As I've just admitted, the approach of aggressively bidding two-suiters can work to the opponents' advantage when they end up as the declaring side, knowing a lot of information about the deal. But it can also work the other way around when the opponents make descriptive bids themselves, trying to overcome the enemy preempt and win the bidding war. Very often on distributional deals, it is extremely difficult to judge to which side the deal belongs, and many experts make an effort to exchange as much valuable information with partner as possible in order to make the right high-level competitive decision.

Witness this deal from our quarterfinal match against the United States:

This was an exciting deal to declare. Jill Meyers won the heart lead with the king and switched to a spade. At first sight this looked like a very straightforward deal. There was a heart loser and a diamond loser; if I could play the club suit without a loser, I would make the contract. The traditional way of doing this is to finesse for the queen, but my instincts were warning me: "Not so rash!"

When you have been a woman all your life, you learn to listen to your instincts. I knew now was the time to start thinking—before playing to Trick 2, not afterwards. West's double of our artificial two spade opening had been takeout promising both majors. East's three heart bid indicated longer hearts than spades, since with equal length she could easily have cuebid one of our suits. Thus West had to have five spades and four hearts and East four spades and five hearts. Taking this further, it seemed likely that their minor suit distributions were 2-2 and 1-3. Surely with a void in one of our suits they would not have let us play five diamonds but would have bid on instead.

Was all this knowledge useful for anything? Yes, because while it was uncertain which opponent held the club queen, I felt fairly confident that West had the king of spades to justify her takeout double. In that case, if all my assumptions were correct, the position of the club queen was totally irrelevant. Can you see it? It really is a beautiful deal. At Trick 2, I finessed the spade queen. My heart beat faster as I watched my screen-mate, Randi Montin, play to this trick. It would look so stupid to take a losing finesse with a singleton in dummy when there weren't even any apparent losers to discard.

When she followed low, I couldn't help a happy little smile; now I knew this would be a great deal. Using the ace-king of clubs as re-entries to my hand, I could now ruff all my major-suit losers in dummy, cashing the spade and diamond ace on the way. The club queen hadn't dropped, but I knew that if my calculations were correct, whichever opponent won the trump exit would not have the club queen. They would have to give me a ruff and sluff.

So it proved, when the position before the second round of trumps was:

Jill Meyers had no counter when she won with the trump queen.

The set had not gone well so far for our opponents, and when this deal was over, I could sense an air of disbelief and a feeling of resignation. They seemed to be thinking: "How are we supposed to beat this team if they continue to play like this?" We, on the other hand, were flying high. Everything was going our way and, to stay within Zia's terminology we were playing in Heat 1. When you reach this point in a long match, it is important not to get overexcited or lose focus. Try to continue in the same vein as long as it lasts and pile up as many IMPs as possible. One thing is sure: there will be a next set and your opponents, having regrouped, will try to strike back with full power, doing just as bad and maybe even worse things to you than you did to them before.

Daniela and I do not have any strict suit requirements for using our two-level openings. They are simply defined as showing 4-9 HCPs. With more, we open at the one-level; with less, we pass. We like the combination of constructive and obstructive elements. Bridge is a battle of minds and, just like in a real war, in the long run it is a big advantage to strike the first blow. When Ron Andersen and I wrote our book Preempts from A to Z, we started the first chapter with this quote: "Twice armed is he who knows his cause is just; but thrice armed is he who gets his blow in fust!" Nathan Bedford Forrest knew what he was talking about.

Making life difficult for the enemy is the key idea here. If the opponents are deprived of their well-oiled bidding machinery and prevented from getting into one of the sequences they have been practicing for decades, where everybody is on 100% firm ground as to what every single bid means, they will on average have a much harder time reaching their best contract.

Our approach also allows for a lot of negative inferences. We know that when partner doesn't open the bidding, she doesn't have 5-5 distribution, nor does she have a six-card major or a seven-card minor. The only excuses for not opening the bidding are if your hand is too weak or you are holding a four-card major on the side that could be considered a serious candidate for becoming the trump suit. Thus if a passed hand all of a sudden gets involved at the three-or four-level later in the bidding, it can only be because there is a huge fit for partner or because there is a four-card major on the side. Voila!

It has long been policy at international bridge competition to restrict conventions like our two-level openings to team events at the very highest level. They are forbidden at all other international championships. The rationale is that bids that do not unequivocally specify at least one suit are simply too difficult to defend against, because the opponents do not have a cuebid available. Have you ever heard of a chess player that was barred from using a new ingenious strategic move he had developed because his opponents weren't aware it was possible to play this way and didn't have enough time to think of a counter strategy? Have you ever heard of a tennis player who was prohibited from using a new technique he had developed for his serve because his opponents had trouble returning the serve? No? Neither have I.

I can certainly sympathize with that policy at pairs tournaments where pairs usually play only two or three boards against one another. It would be extremely difficult for any pair to work out effective defenses against a host of artificial and unusual bidding sequences. In that case, there is merit in limiting the number of allowed conventions and approaches. On the other hand, one could argue that if at least some of the restrictions were removed, more people would start playing unusual treatments and more people would become accustomed to playing and defending against them. It would no longer be such an uncomfortable experience. It is amazing how adaptable we human beings can be. Players having to defend against new treatments would discover new angles to the game they never knew existed. It would widen their bridge horizon. What an appalling thought!

Every society in history seems to have run through a cycle. Once a society had gained superiority, had grown fat and complacent, it totally stopped development, doing everything it could to try to hold on to the status quo. And then it went under. Now let's be honest, aren't we beginning to see some parallels in the bridge world? When will we ever start learning from our mistakes?

I do understand a bridge expert's desire to be allowed to devote himself to what he is best at. He thoroughly analyzes a bidding sequence he is familiar with, allowing him to correctly diagnose the layout of the whole deal. Then he beautifully performs the play like a plastic surgeon, finishing with an exotic entry-shifting trump squeeze without the count that nobody has ever heard of. Will that make the VuGraph audience cheer? They will be clapping politely for sure, because the commentators will tell them to do so. But will it make the VuGraph theater resound like a football field with a noisy and cheering crowd, as happened in Paris? I doubt it.

It is often said that in order for bridge to become a spectator sport, we have to simplify our bidding systems to make it easier for the average bridge player to understand and follow what is going on. I disagree with this. It is the excitement and entertainment factors that play the most important roles here. To my mind, simplifying bidding systems does absolutely nothing to increase the excitement and entertainment value of our game; quite the contrary.

The last sixteen deals in the Paris Venice Cup have been widely acclaimed as one of the best VuGraph shows ever. The spectators were on the edge of their seats, with the mainly French audience cheering their home team on with cries of "Allez la France!" I call this entertainment — and it was made possible because our two teams were using different bidding systems and approaches to the game. I assure you, if it hadn't been for that, these last sixteen deals would have entered the annals of World Championships as one of the dullest sets ever. Instead, wherever I go, people ask me, "Are you the partner of the famous player who took a first-round finesse against the jack of hearts to win the World Championships for Germany?"

Goethe's Faust complained, "There are two souls in my breast." I think this must be true for mankind in general. It lies in human nature to explore and discover. It also lies in human nature to be suspicious of new ideas and developments, and to cling to traditional ways that have survived the test of time. When Galileo Gallilei proclaimed the earth wasn't the center of our solar system, but that the earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun, he was taken to court and convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Today we learn about the solar system in kindergarten. Van Gogh only sold one of his paintings during his lifetime. Today, you have to be a multi-millionaire to afford one. And Wilbur and Orville Wright were laughed at for their dream of making humans fly; they had to leave their country to attract any genuine interest. Today we have space shuttles exploring the universe.

So when we are told that experts have to simplify their bidding systems because the general bridge playing public does not understand them, I like to reply with the words of Galileo Gallilei: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." And when he left the court that had convicted him of heresy and had forced him to recant the findings of his astronomical research: "Nevertheless, it (the earth) moves (around the sun)."