Thanks, Edgar

   by Kimmel Jones, Euless TX

Many years ago, thanks to the efforts of Edgar Kaplan, the Laws of Contract Bridge were changed to award 300 points (instead of 200) for every doubled, non-vulnerable undertrick after the first three (100 - 300 - 500 - 800, etc. instead of 100 - 300 - 500 -700).

The purpose was to make sacrifices over slams less profitable when both sides are white. Kaplan's view was that when you had a non-vulnerable slam (worth +920 or more), it was too easy for your opponents to find and play in a doubled contract that went down five (only +900 for you under the old scoring).

This scoring rule became relevant in a recent Fast IMP Pairs event in the online ACBL daily tournament at Bridgebasecom.

	J8x AKxx AK10 10xx		North-South vulnerable   IMP Pairs        West    Lefty    North  Trialbid       East    Righty      South   Kimmel  Pass   1NT (15-17) Pass   2H (transfer) DBL 2S Pass 6S 7C Pass Pass DBL    All Pass
x J109xxx    Q QJ9xx		Q97x        Qxx 98xx xx
	AK10xx Void J7xxx AK8

I was South and my partner was Steve Hollingsworth (TrialBid), who many years ago was my frequent teammate and occasional partner in Midwestern tournaments. Every bid in the auction was made very quickly ... this is the FAST pairs, by golly. The 7C bid was especially quick, as were all of Righty's passes. 

The defense was straightforward. We basically forced declarer to ruff three times, then claimed the rest of the tricks for down ten.  That's plus 2600, and at IMPs, no less.  The comments after the hand:

Righty: "Nice bid, pard."

Kimmel:  "Nice pass!" 

Lefty:  "What did you do? Mix your Queen of Hearts in with your diamonds?" 
     (Of course, you can't really do this on the computer, but that's what makes it funny).

Kimmel:  "More like with his clubs." 
    (Hey ... I can say this. I've done it before!)

But studying the hands, they don't really do a whole lot better in a 7H sacrifice.  A very careful tapping defense looks like it can limit Righty (he'd get to play it) to just four trump tricks, for down 9 and a score of  2300.

The average field result for figuring the IMPS was a little more than +1200 for North-South. That indicates that most pairs scored up a small slam, but a few did worse, missing slam (or maybe going set in a grand slam). So for going +2600, we beat the field by around +1400 and gained 16.4 IMPS. Had this occurred before the change in the scoring rules, we'd have scored a mere +1900 and gained only around 11 or 12 IMPS.

We managed to gain a few more IMPs throughout the session and pick up a close, well deserved victory. Thanks again, Edgar.