Complete! Included: Results, Masterpoints, Attendance, Tomorrow's Schedule and Checking Out.

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Checking Out

One problem with doing puzzles for Daily Bulletins based on dates is that tournaments tend to be held on the same dates year to year. We've done puzzles based on births, and news events, and every time I put them together I realize I've done this before. So, a new angle this time: famous people who died on this day. Here are five from August 19: how many can you guess? Answers near the end of the page.

• French scientist and writer whose work on probability theory included an argument that a rational person should believe in God, since the potential gain is infinite and the potential loss is not.
• American race car driver who won the 1969 24 Hours of Daytona and the 1972 Indianapolis 500, known for his ability to set up his own car to maximize its potential, and died following an accident at the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix.
• American comedian and actor who starred in thirteen feature films with his brothers, later a successful radio and TV game show host.
• German-Swiss businessman who lived in Amsterdam in hiding for two years before being discovered; his family was separated and perished in concentration camps but he survived to edit and publish his daughter's diary, which became a best-seller.
• South African journalist and activist who opposed apartheid, befriended Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko, and was placed under a government house arrest for five years to prevent him from publishing details about Biko's death.

Today's Bridge Advice

Directly from Michael Corleone

Both vulnerable at matchpoint pairs, you hold:

♠ A J T 8 6 4 2   ♥ A 4   ♦ Q T 5   ♣ A

LHO is the dealer and opens a weak 2♥. Partner passes and RHO bids 2♠. What's your call here?

(Answer below)

Brain Workout Section!

For those of you who used to like the puzzles I printed in the old bulletins, here is a link to an online version: one of the puzzles that I used to feature in the old paper Bulletins, but it is easy to play on a computer as well. Not so easy on a tablet or phone, since most of the puzzles require right-clicks, not easily done in a tablet or phone environment. Rectangles gives you a grid of cells; divide the grid into rectangles so that every cell is part of a rectangle, and each rectangle contains exactly one numbered cell that is the number of cells in its rectangle. (Don't forget, squares are also rectangles.) Strategy: The larger numbers usually have a limited set of possible rectangles they can fit in; start with the largest numbers and the smaller ones will become apparent. These puzzles come from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (see below) and there are links there to apps for most devices.	Easy puzzle (McBruce's time: 0min 54sec)
	Medium puzzle (McBruce's time: 0min 59sec)
	Tricky puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 38sec)

Answer to Bridge Advice Question Above

Both vulnerable at matchpoint pairs, you hold:

♠ A J T 8 6 4 2   ♥ A 4   ♦ Q T 5   ♣ A

LHO is the dealer and opens a weak 2♥. Partner passes and RHO bids 2♠. What's your call here?

The player who held this hand realized that RHO's 2♠ was forcing and chose to pass. Not much else really makes a lot of sense. Partner will see a double as takeout, and a cuebid as a stronger takeout. 4♠ might expose the psyche, but are we sure it is one? With 0-1 hearts and five or more of the unseen six spades, RHO might just be trying to improve the contract.

Unfortunately, not everyone recognizes the RONF concept (over a weak two, a Raise is the Only Non Forcing call) these days, and 2♠ was passed out. Declarer remained stoic and calm and went down five for -500, holding this hand:

♠ 9   ♥ 8 5   ♦ K J 2   ♣ K Q J T 7 6 5

And now, here is the real question: how do you react to this? Your side can make ten tricks in spades or notrump for +620 or +630, but got only +500 against the psyche. (It could have been +600 had you followed the A♣ opening lead with the A♠ when the dummy hit with the singleton K♠, but we'll forgive you for switching to a diamond and letting declarer cash the ace-king and ruff a third in dummy.)

Here's where the Corleone brothers come in. Sonny, against the advice of consigliare Tom Hagen, would call the Director and angrily expose this psyche, taking further offense when told that psyches are legal and the result must stand, and would probably blow uncounted tricks and matchpoints the next several hands with smoke coming from his ears. His final score would suffer and if he was unable to calm down he would become unpopular with opponents and partner simultaneously, and we remember from the movie how that turned out.

Michael Corleone would react differently. He would recognize what the 2♠ bidder was up to: partner's 2♥ opener, denying more than three spades, tells RHO that his opponents have a spade fit, and will probably find it even over a jump in clubs or a raise in hearts. If instead RHO bids 2♠, confusing the next player enough to pass with no real options, LHO will have to make a second call, since 2♠ is forcing, and then RHO can bid clubs enough times to maybe buy the hand. It's not personal, it's strictly business!

Having passed 2♠, if you hear 3♥ from LHO and 4♣ from RHO, are you coming in with 4♠ now? Probably not, it sounds far more likely that you're getting a plus score by defending here.

Too many of us react to an opponent's successful psyche like Sonny instead of Michael. In fact, if they're psyching against you, it shows respect: it means they think you will prevail in a sane auction, and that their only chance is to stir things up and hope to emerge unscathed! It's not personal, it's strictly business!

On this hand, +500 was slightly above average for the defenders, as only one pair of five was allowed to play in 4♠, and another got the same -500 score in 5♣ doubled! Others failed in 5♠ or 4♣.

Psyches like the 2♠ call are legal, but only if done infrequently: once they become expected or suspected as a possibility by partner, you have an implied partnership agreement. The possibility needs to be communicated to the opponents, especially if the situation is one on which previous psyches have been made with any sort of frequency. Most such gambits put the partnership at great risk of disaster since the call will be taken seriously by partner and might result in getting too high.

However, some of them do work, and when one works against you, it is best to simply congratulate the imaginative player and move on. Going into full vendetta mode will only result in more poor results. If there is a question of frequency, or a hesitation that may have revealed something to the psyching side, or a strange call later by the partner of the psycher, call the Director and accept the decision. If you disagree with a decision about a psyche, you can file a player memo online, which will help if the partnership gets many such psyches reported. But such bids are legal as long as the psychic bidder's partner is as much in the dark as the opponents are.

By the way, a bid that is only slightly off what is expected is not a psychic bid as defined in the Laws. If your opponents get to 4♥ on a 4-3 fit and it makes, despite one of them being a heart short for the opener or the response, that's no psyche. If someone is a few points short of the normal requirements for a bid and the contract makes anyway because three finesses work, that's no psyche either. A psychic bid is a "deliberate and gross misstatement of honor strength and/or of suit length," not a bid that is a little short of expectations.

So the next time you get a bad result because an opponent's psychic bid worked, remember the advice of Michael Corleone: it was done out of respect, knowing that you would likely prevail on normal lines. It's not personal, it's strictly business!

The five people who died on August 19 referred to above were:

• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was the French scientist and writer whose work on probability theory included an argument that a rational person should believe in God, since the potential gain is infinite and the potential loss is not.
• Mark Donohue (1937-1975) was the American race car driver who won the 1969 24 Hours of Daytona and the 1972 Indianapolis 500, known for his ability to set up his own car to maximize its potential, and died following an accident at the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix.
• Groucho (Julius Henry) Marx (1890-1977) was the American comedian and actor who starred in thirteen feature films with his brothers, later a successful radio and TV game show host.
• Otto Frank (1889-1980) was the German-Swiss businessman who lived in Amsterdam in hiding for two years before being discovered; his family was separated and perished in concentration camps but he survived to edit and publish his daughter's diary, which became a best-seller.
• Donald Woods (1933-2001) was the South African journalist and activist who opposed apartheid, befriended Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko, and was placed under a government house arrest for five years to prevent him from publishing details about Biko's death.