Brain Warmups

This Day in History

All of these events happened on June 15. Can you fill in the blanks and put them into chronological order? (Hint: the five answers represented by blank are in alphabetical order below.)

• On his fourth voyage, Blank lands on the island of Martinique.
• In the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Blank for publication and support of his Ninety-Five Theses.
• Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse In Motion, a series of automatically-taken photographs of a running horse to prove that all four feet leave the ground when it runs, becomes the basis for blanks.
• A seventh-generation member of the Flying Wallenda family, Nik Wallenda, becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk directly over Blank.
• In a provincial election, Saskatchewan elects North America's first blank government, led by premier Tommy Douglas.

1710½ tables at the end of Day Six (Sunday), 53.2% of the 2019 total.
In 2024, there were 1901 tables at the end.
In 2019, there were 3217½ tables at the end.
However, we missed Monday Evening and Tuesday Morning, which in 2024 totalled 165½ tables. Add that in and we are 25 tables short of last year's total to this point. For full details, check out the Table Counts page!

Daily Deal — Giving You Some Advice You Can't Refuse

Michael Corleone's Bridge Advice

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!

Masterpoints for all players are updated nightly here first, with everyone's current red and gold point total listed alphabetically below the leaders, before a shorter leaderboard is added to this page.

• Midnight Sun Regional, June 17 - 22, 2025 at the Anchorage Bridge Center in Anchorage AK (info)
  
  
• Puget Sound Regional, August 18 - 24, 2025 at the Lynnwood Event Center in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle (info)
  
  
• Whistler Regional, October 17 - November 2, 2025 at the Fairmont Chateau in Whistler BC, north of Vancouver (info)
  
  
• Leavenworth Regional, April 13 - 19, 2026, at the Festhalle in Leavenworth WA (info)
  
  
• Penticton Regional, June 15 - 21, 2026, at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre in Penticton BC (info link not yet posted)
  
  
• North American Pairs Club Qualifying, at participating local clubs, June 1 - August 31, District Finals in Fall 2025 TBA.
• Grand National Teams Club Qualifying, at participating local clubs, generally begins in September and goes through to January or February 2026, District Finals in Spring 2026 TBA.
  
  
• Nanaimo Sectional, August 8 - 10 at Bowen Park in Nanaimo BC (info)
• Evergreen Sectional, August 30 - September 1 at Engineer's Hall in Burnaby BC, just east of Vancouver (info)
• Victoria Fall Sectional, September 5 - 7 at Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney BC, north of Victoria (info)
• Harvest Sectional, September 12 - 14 at Elks Lodge in Burien WA, south of Seattle (info)
• Kelowna Fall Sectional, September 19 - 21 at Winfield Memorial Hall in Lake Country BC (info)
• Invermere Sectional, October 3 - 5 at Columbia Valley Centre in Invermere BC (info)
• Kamloops Sectional, October 16 - 18 at Colombo Lodge in Kamloops BC (info)
• Comox Valley Sectional, October 24 - 26 at The Florence Filburg Centre in Courtenay BC (info)
• Round Up Sectional, November 7 - 9 at Engineer's Hall in Burnaby BC, just east of Vancouver (info)

Let's not forget the Summer NABC in Philadelphia PA, July 23 - August 3, the Fall NABC in San Francisco CA, November 27 - December 7, 2025, and the Spring NABC in St. Louis MO, February 25 - March 8, 2026. Players, take a moment to visit the table with tournament flyers and take a few for your local club; this remains the best way to spread the word and build attendance. We've listed the next year's worth of District 19 Regionals, and Sectional tournaments up until the end of 2025 that had flyers posted online when I prepared the tournament pages, just before this tournament. (Several in the period covered are scheduled but do not appear here, since they do not yet have a flyer listed here: ALERT to tournament organizers, please remember to send your event schedule or tournament flyer to tournaments@acbl.org as soon as it is set, or revised, so they can add the data to the ACBL tournament database. This essential first move gets your event schedule posted online, directors assigned, and deal sets generated for the tournament.)