HAPPY New Year to all of you, and now that the festivities are over you can concentrate on honing your skills for the Regional. One way to get in more practice is to play online, and as we go into the New Year the two richest men in the United States — Microsoft founder Bill Gates and master investor Warren Buffett — announced plans to find a programme to teach bridge in schools.

Both billionaires play regularly on OK Bridge as Challenger (Gates) and T-Bone (Buffett).

Gates and Buffett have hired Buffett’s bridge partner, Sharon Osberg (a two—time world champion), to start a programme to teach contract bridge in junior high schools. They’ve donated up to $1 million to fund it.

“Bill Gates and I kind of cooked it up together,” says Buffett, who thinks bridge would teach kids maths skills, logical thinking and how to work with others.

“We hope we can get a school programme some place where the kids are taught the game and develop a lot of competition between schools.”

Gates learned bridge from his parents but took it up seriously when he began playing with Buffett ten years ago.

“Bridge is a game where you can keep improving and feel great about it without over-hitting the limit of what can be done,” he said in an e-mail.

Lots of kids who have joined the poker craze should love bridge, says Buffett, who spends nearly every evening playing online on OK Bridge — 6,000 hands last year, he figures. “There’s intellectual development involved — and working as partners with people,” he says. “If a lot of kids are exposed to bridge, a number of them are going to benefit in a very significant way.”

What bridge has over chess and poker is that it requires players to learn to work with someone else, Buffett says.

“You have to learn to understand your partner, to be tolerant. Sympathetic, encouraging,” he says. “Those are skills that are not bad to have in life.”

Buffett and Gates have promised to take on the winners of a school tournament. “We’d go down and play the best team,” Buffett says. “It would be fun for me and Bill to play the champions. And it might spur them on some.”

My thanks to Martha Moore of USA Today <$>for the above — all I can say is that Gates and Buffett is one rubber bridge game I wouldn’t mind joining!

We’ve all been involved with ‘psych’ bids, where a player makes a bid which misrepresents their hand in an effort to throw off the opponents in the further bidding or play of the hand. What we really see, however, is a ‘psych’ during the play of the hand, mainly because the opportunity for a ‘psych play’ comes up very rarely.

With that as a lead-in, try today’s hand.North

[spade]K 2

[heart]4 3 2

[diamond]A K Q 8 7

[club]8 6 4

South

[spade]A Q J 10 9 8

[heart]A K

[diamond]— —

[club]A J 10 3 2After what must have been an interesting auction, you overshoot the mark by just a smidge and end up in 7[spade]. The opening lead is a trump. What now?

The obvious play is to use our lone entry to dummy to pitch three clubs on the top diamonds. Then we play off our major suit winners (spades first) and hope the opponents manage to pitch all their clubs.

Not too good. Any set of opponents who can count to 13 without taking of a shoe won’t have too much trouble with that line. Anything else?

How about psyching a squeeze! Leave the diamonds high and dry in the dummy and run off six spades and then two hearts. As the last heart is played we can hope that the hands look something like this:North

[spade]—

[heart]—

[diamond]A K Q 8 7

[club]8

West East<$>

[spade]— [spade]—

[heart]— [heart]—

[diamond]J 9 6 5 [diamond]10 4 3 2

[club]K 9 [club]Q 7

South

[spade]—

[heart]K

[diamond]—

[club]A J 10 3 2What will West and East pitch on the final heart? Keep in mind that if South started with even one diamond, the defenders holding four must keep all of them to stop the suit. And, of course, declarer must have a diamond or he would have taken the AKQ when he was on the board.

There are some other lower probability hands that could cause opponents some difficulty as well. An opponent starting with five diamonds and the CKQ will end up having to pitch from four diamonds to the jack and the king-queen of clubs. He may well decide to play for the CJ to be in partner’s hand.

You can say that the opponents shouldn’t be fooled by this play. The partner who has three or fewer diamonds should pitch all of them. Yeah, well, OK, but way back there in real life, this play would enjoy a lot of success. And if your opponents are such disciplined discarders, the alternative play of cashing the three top diamonds isn’t going to work either!

I think this hand was originally described as a pseudo squeeze of course it is, but a better description of this a play psych. As with all play psychs, we come up with an imaginary hand — as similar as possible to the real one and play that hand instead of the one we were actually dealt.

So, did you solve it?

LATEST RESULTS

Bermuda Bridge Club

Wednesday, December 14, afternoon: <$>1. Lisa Burland-Elizabeth Mckee, 2. Aida Bostelmann-Dolly Winwick, 3. Gillian Gray-Julia Lunn.

Wednesday, December 14, evening:<$> 1. Sally Godet-Scott Godet, 2. Dee Griffiths-Annabella Fraser, 3. Joan Sims-Julia Lunn.

Friday, December 16, N/S: 1. David Cordon-John Burville, 2. David Sykes-Sally Sykes, 3. Cliff Alison-Craig Hutton. E/W: 1. Vera Petty-Roman Smolski, 2. Michael Bickley-John Hoskins, 3. John Rayner-Magda Farag.