Read Rodwell

17 June - 2 July 2011
5th EUROPEAN OPEN BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS
Read Rodwell, take more tricks

by Barry Rigal If you heard that Eric Rodwell, known for his cerebral approach to bidding, had written a book, you might assume that it was all about how to reach the best contract on every deal. You would be wrong. The Rodwell Files, published by Master Point Press, focuses almost exclusively on card play. Rodwell is in Poznan to play in the Open Teams, and he took some time out to talk about the book. The project, Rodwell says, had its genesis in the Eighties, when he started making notes on the computer. I felt things should have names, he says, so I used to put names to lots of plays. Doing so, Rodwell says, makes the concepts easier to remember and recall at the table. In the days when he was first collecting notes, Rodwell was a semi-regular visitor to Toronto his son and daughter were living there with his ex-wife. On one visit, Rodwell showed his notes to Canadian star Fred Gitelman, who showed them to Ray Lee, owner of Master Point Press. Rodwell declined Lees invitation to make the notes into a book. I didnt think there was enough there, he says. In 2009, Lee suggested to Rodwell that the project could get off the ground by involving Mark Horton, editor of Bridge magazine in England. In fact, the book is listed as by Eric Rodwell with Mark Horton. Horton approached the project with enthusiasm. Forty years ago, Horton says, I read Reese on Play, a book that changed the way I though about bridge forever. Having just finished working on The Rodwell Files, I believe we have another book in the same mold that will revolutionize the way we think about play and defence and influence generations of players for years to come. With Horton supplying some of the illustrative deals and Rodwell having added to his collection over the years, the book grew from the original 40 pages of notes to more than 400 pages. Rodwell estimates that deals from actual play make up about 40% of the contents. There are nearly 300 deals in the book. He and Horton worked hard on categorizing various situations, such as when to lead an unsupported honor or when to duck a winner. The goal, he adds, is to make advanced card play concepts understandable to average players. Most books target bidding because its easy, Rodwell says, but if you learn bidding and not card play, youre not going to get very far. Heres an example of a play named by Rodwell. Its the Knockout or Entry Fly. Say you are in a notrump contract with your righthand opponent having overcalled 1[. Dummy has [J 5 4 and you have [A 10 6. LHO leads the [8. You have some work to do on your contract, and you know your RHO is good enough to play the 9 if you play low from dummy. His plan is to make you win cheaply at trick one, then let his partner get in and play another spade, on which he will play the queen, forcing your ace then or at the next trick. His suit will then be set up. Rodwells view of this play is that putting up the jack from dummy will force the queen from RHO, allowing you to duck and thereby cut communication between your opponents in the spade suit or if RHO plays low on the [J provide a potentially useful dummy entry at trick one. There are many others Cash and Thrash, involving the trump suit, is another and Rodwell feels that the book hits its target in illustrating important concepts and helping the average player by explaining things in a way they can understand. Here is an excerpt from the book: THE SPEED OF LIGHTNING PLAY Now lets move on to some general tactical ideas some of them are legitimate, in the sense that the opposition can do nothing to counter them, while others depend on inducing an (often slight) error. The speed of lightning play is one of my favorites. As any fan of the band Queen will anticipate, it can be very, very frighten5
5th EUROPEAN OPEN BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS ing. If RHO is the dangerous opponent, you can often lead away from a holding like AJx in dummy toward holdings in the closed hand headed by the ten, on the theory that RHO wont go up with Q x (x). A common variation is where you lead low from K J x toward 10 9 x x x in hand. Of course, you must be able to afford to lose a trick to RHO later on. This play is most valuable when you have something like Qx opposite AJx in hand in the suit they led (dummys queen having won Trick 1), where East cant hurt you later, only now. This play is so named because East will play low at the speed of lightning, as a matter of habit. In fact, if he knows that he is the dangerous opponent, there is every reason for him to play the queen (danger hand high!) since if he ducks, declarer will doubtless try some coverage ducking play. Heres a full deal showing the play in its purest form:
Poznan, Poland Rodwells newest book is not his first. He and Audrey Grant collaborated on four books, one of them on the 2/1 game force bidding system. He has consistently resisted suggestions to put RM Precision the bidding system he and partner Jeff Meckstroth use into book form. As for The Rodwell Files, the author says its a matter of sharing what he has learned over the years. If I have discovered some things, he says, at some point I should put them out there. If the book helps his opponents play better, Rodwell adds, at least he will know that my opponents opponents will play better, too.
Championship Diary
Yesterday morning Tacchi decided to abstain from the 20 minute walk to the office and took the tram, where he was accompanied by Patrick Jourdain. Two remarkable things happened. First Patrick gave him a ticket. Second a young lady offered Patrick her seat.
[ ] { }
W [ ] { }
Q3 A942 KJ3 8754 N
West
North
S AJ5 K3 10 9 6 5 4 AK3
East
South
Pass Pass
2} 3NT
Pass All Pass
1NT 2{
Everyone is talking about the brilliant scoring system. Moments after the session has finished you put the bar code on your badge into the reader and your results are printed out. If you are a journalist and not a player it prints out the Daily Bulletin. After our dauntless copy-editor had added schedule to his list of typographical errors the opinions of the journalists were divided. Was it a case of monkeys and typewriters? It was decided that it was more a case of Invent an idiot-proof system and they will breed a better idiot. We get a lot of email about the Bulletin. The latest one reads: I hope you got a lot of credit and good comments regarding Thursdays bulletin. It was really good. (To slightly misquote, as is frequently stated during Prime Ministers Question Time, I refer the honourable gentleman to the observation made in the paragraph above.) If (like us) you are a fan of Waldemar Malicki, you can enjoy a lot of his work on YouTube. One cute piece is Emmanuelle - Waldemar Malicki & Filharmonia Dowcipu : Muza
West leads the [6 to dummys queen, East playing low. With only six top tricks you need to develop the diamonds. As long as East doesnt get in on the first diamond lead, with the queen, you are safe. So your best shot is to lead the {3 from dummy at Trick 2, hoping East, dealt {Q x, plays low at the speed of lightning. The whole deal is:
[ ] { }
K 10 8 6 4 Q85 A82 10 6
[ ] { }
W [ ] { }
Q3 A942 KJ3 8754 N
S AJ5 K3 10 9 6 5 4 AK3
[ ] { }
972 J 10 7 6 Q7 QJ92

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17 June - 2 July 2011

5th EUROPEAN OPEN BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS

Read Rodwell, take more tricks

Q3 A942 KJ3 8754 N

Pass All Pass

Q3 A942 KJ3 8754 N

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