In the Buzz of Club Activity, A Cluster of Singleton Queens

Players in duplicate tournaments win only master points, no prizes. And they strive to attain the rank of life master. You must gain 300 points, at least 50 being silver points, which can be won only in sectional tournaments. Earlier this month the Greater New York Bridge Association ran a ''STaC'' -- for Sectional Tournaments at Clubs -- week. These pair events were played simultaneously in the clubs across the city.

The diagramed deal was played Jan. 18, and it helped Justine Cushing and Barry Rigal of New York to second place behind Joan Hight and Phyllis Young, also of New York.

When you uncover a good fit with your partner, the strength of your hand increases. There are two commonly used methods of evaluation. First, you can add points for short suits. Here each doubleton is worth one point, giving North a total of nine. This would suggest raising to two spades, with the intention of accepting a game-try by partner, or of competing to three spades if the opponents enter the auction.

Second, you can use the Losing Trick Count. You look at no more than the first three cards in every suit, counting one loser for each top honor missing. The North hand has eight losers: three spades, two hearts, one diamond and two clubs. This makes the hand worth a game-invitational raise to three spades, which was the bid chosen by Cushing. (Perhaps the best approach with a borderline hand is to underbid slightly in a pair event, where you do not push for thin games, but to overbid in a team event or Chicago, where you bid game with any excuse.)

A club, heart or high-spade start would have defeated four spades, but West had a natural diamond lead. (She was using Rusinow leads, so selected the jack, the second-highest of touching honors.)

Declarer immediately discarded two heart losers on dummy's top diamonds, then called for a club. East went up with his ace, cashed the heart ace and continued with the heart king. South ruffed, took his top trumps and club king, ruffed a club on the board (West discarded a diamond) and trumped a diamond in his hand to give this unusual finish:

When did you last see four singleton queens in a three-card end position?

South led his club jack, leaving West with no winning play. If she had ruffed, declarer would have crossruffed the last two tricks. If West had thrown the heart queen, declarer would have ruffed the club jack on the board and trumped a diamond in his hand. And when West pitched her diamond queen, South ruffed on the board and discarded his last club on the high diamond nine.

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Playing Past 100, Still Eager To Hunt Down the Overtrick

Who and what age is the oldest active tournament director in the world?

T.D.'s, as they are generally known, like to be seen but rarely heard. They announce the movement at the beginning of a session and prefer to spend the rest of the time watching everything run smoothly. If they are never heard again, it means that no one broke one of the laws, because if a player does, a T.D. must be called to give a ruling.

The oldest active T.D. is Sidney Matthews at the Marbella Club in Spain, who celebrated his 100th birthday Nov. 13. He was the declarer on the diagramed deal, which occurred during a duplicate at the International Bridge Club in Marbella and was reported by the English expert Tony Priday.

The two-spade rebid was not natural, but fourth-suit game-forcing. North, who had already shown five diamonds and four clubs and could not bid no-trump without a spade stopper, had to continue with three hearts. Ideally this would have included three-card support, but sometimes opener must raise with only a doubleton, especially when it is strong.

West led the club queen. Assuming trumps were 3-2, Matthews could see that his contract was safe, but in a match-pointed pair game, overtricks are valuable, so South wanted to win 11 tricks. He could hope that the spade finesse was winning (50 percent) or play for diamonds to split 4-3 (62 percent).

Matthews knew which was more likely. But to establish a long diamond, declarer would have to ruff three diamonds in his hand, which would require four dummy entries: three for the ruffs and one to reach the established winner.

South, seeing that he had the diamond ace, heart king, heart ace and club king, won with his club ace, played a diamond to dummy's ace and ruffed the diamond five in his hand. Using dummy's two trumps as entries, South also ruffed the diamond seven and diamond eight.

Now declarer led the spade queen from his hand. West took his king and returned a club, but South won with dummy's king and discarded his spade five on the established diamond deuce. East later scored the heart queen, but Matthews had his overtrick for a tied top on the board.

West, after complimenting South's play, said that next time he would lead a trump, which would prematurely burn up one of those dummy entries and stop the overtrick.

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An Am Who Plays Like a Pro

Pro-am events are usually looked upon by pros as a labor of love. They are giving something back to the game that has given them so much. But the winners are always happy. The am is delighted to receive the accolades of peers, and the pro will have several stories with which to entertain friends.

The Greater New York Bridge Association's annual Victor Mitchell Pro-Am was played Friday at the New York Helmsley Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The turnout was terrific, with 52 tables in play. The winners were Peter Bonfanti and Erna Frischer of New York, who narrowly beat Yuri Yurachkivsky and Nathaniel Norman of New York. Third were Michael Polowan of New York and Scott Woolley of Venice, Calif.

The winners did well on the diagramed deal.

After South opened one club and North responded one diamond, East normally made a takeout double to show both majors. But Frischer overcalled one heart, mentioning her stronger major. South rebid one spade, and Bonfanti (West) crowded the auction with a pre-emptive leap to four hearts. North understandably competed with five clubs, and Frischer showed that she was no shrinking am: she doubled.

West led his heart ace, East using the deuce as a suit-preference signal for diamonds, the lower-ranking of the other two side suits. West shifted to the diamond nine, East taking two tricks in the suit before giving her partner a diamond ruff. Down two, plus 300, was a top on the board.

It has been a notable couple of weeks for Frischer. Her grandson, Ilan Hall, won the ''Top Chef'' competition on the Bravo network the week before this event, and the day before she celebrated her birthday. Bonfanti wrote, ''I was too polite to ask, but I suspect that the first digit is an 8.'' Not only that, but the second digit is an 8 also.

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A Good Guess Yields a Title as the Spring Nationals Begin

The first national championship decided at the American Contract Bridge League’s Spring Nationals here was the Baldwin Flight A North American Pairs. Dave Abelow of Owings Mills, Md., and Dick Wegman of Bethesda, Md., won it on Thursday night.

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	NORTH 10 A J 10 8 4 A K J 8 4 10 3
WEST 9 7 3 2 K 6 Q 5 A 9 8 7 2		EAST A 8 6 5 9 7 3 9 6 3 2 J 5
	SOUTH(D) K Q J 4 Q 5 2 10 7 K Q 6 4

Neither side was vulnerable. The bidding:

South	West	North	East
1 N.T.	Pass	2	Pass
2	Pass	3 N.T.	Pass
4	Pass	Pass	Pass

They started badly, lying 61st of 70 pairs after the first of the four sessions. But they moved up to 24th during the second session, when the field was cut to 28 pairs for the second day. After a big game in the third session, they moved into the lead, which they maintained despite scoring only just over average in the final session.

In a very close finish, the winners scored 407.03 match points; second were Glenn Milgrim and Chris Willenken of New York, with 404.76; and third were Dan Gerstman and Joel Wooldridge of Buffalo, at 400.35.

Abelow guessed well in the diagramed deal, which he played in the third session against the pair that finished second.

Abelow (South) opened one no-trump, promising only 12 to 14 points. Wegman (North) used a transfer bid to show his five-card heart suit, then made the unusual decision to rebid three no-trump, not three diamonds. South, with three-card heart support, corrected to four hearts.

Milgrim (West) led the spade three, playing low from an odd number of cards and third-highest from an even number. Willenken (East) won with his ace and shifted imaginatively to the club five, West taking declarer’s king with his ace and returning a deceptive club eight to the ten, jack and queen.

South cashed his king and queen of spades, discarding diamonds from the dummy. If he had believed West’s carding, he would have continued with the spade jack, pitching the diamond jack, but he played a heart to dummy’s ten and took the two top diamonds, dropping West’s queen.

Declarer’s plan had been to ruff the diamond jack with his heart queen, then to repeat the heart finesse. And if West had found a brilliant falsecard holding three hearts to the king and three diamonds to the queen, that would have been the winning line. But after some thought, Abelow called for dummy’s heart ace, dropping West’s king and scoring an overtrick.

Plus 450 was worth only 6 match points out of 13 because one declarer in three no-trump took 11 tricks, and three pairs in four hearts won 12 tricks. But if South had bagged only 10 tricks, he would have received 2 match points, resulting in the win and place positions’ being reversed.

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Digital shuffle

Another nice advantage these games offer over their physical counterparts is the fact that you have to play by the rules, but most software titles allow you to modify the rules within certain parameters. A solitaire game, for example, might let you choose whether to draw one card at a time or three.

Your computer acts as an impartial referee, so you can’t take a peek at the upcoming cards in the deck, and your friend can’t place an extra hotel on Park Place when you’re not looking. Some games warn you when there are no legal moves or let you know which moves are available. So cheating is not an option — unless you make extensive use of the undo command!

An important feature of these games is the ability to challenge the computer. There’s no need to wait for a willing human opponent — these games will happily challenge you on their own. The computer’s intelligence level can often be adjusted to match your skill level, too, so you can increase the game’s difficulty as you learn.

Many new card and board games offer extensive multi-player options. You can play against friends sitting next to you at your Macintosh, or you can challenge friends who are far, far away. Games like Chessmaster 9000, 3D Card Games, and iPuppet presents: Colin’s Classic Cards allow people to play across the Internet. (Please note that each person must own a copy of the game.)

One final — and perhaps mundane — advantage of the games is that you never need to worry about losing cards or game pieces, nor do you have to clean up the table after you’re done. Simply quit the application, and everything magically disappears!
Great deals

Chessmaster 9000 pieces.

Chessmaster 9000 (Feral Interactive) offers a definitive look at one of history’s oldest board games. Packed with tutorials, drills, quizzes, and puzzles created by some of the world’s greatest chess minds, this title features challenges for players of every skill level. You can even replay classic matches that span the years 1619 to 2002, with an accompanying glossary that helps you understand different moves employed in those contests. When you’ve honed your abilities against AI players, take on live ones across a LAN or over the Internet.

Chess is also featured in Big Bang Board Games (Freeverse), along with checkers, Reversi, Four-in-a-Row, Mancala, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Backgammon. Stunning 3D graphics, coupled with Freeverse’s whimsical sense of humor and the ability to take on live opponents over the Internet or a LAN, make this a great package for board game fans.

If cards are more your thing, choose from a variety of great titles covered in our card games feature: the dozens of solitaire variants found in Silver Creek Entertainment’s Hardwood Solitaire III and GameHouse’s Aloha Solitaire and Aloha TriPeaks; Toybox Games’ Ancient Hearts & Spades and Silver Creek’s Hardwood Euchre, Hardwood Hearts, and Hardwood Spades; and Donohoe Digital’s DD Poker 2 and Masque’s World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier.
Burning Monkey Solitaire

Freeverse Software is well known for its cool and comical card games. The company’s collection includes casino, solitaire, and four-player games like 3D Hearts Deluxe. This witty update of the classic card game allows you to challenge a host of computer characters or play online against friends. The game supports the most popular rule variations and offers skill levels that range from easy to cutthroat. You can even put your own face in the game to stare down your online opponents.
Burning Monkey Solitaire 4

Burning Monkey Solitaire 4 (Freeverse Software) offers 30 different solitaire games, including Klondike, Golf, and even 52-Pick-up. As you play, you’re watched closely by an audience of feisty monkeys who will comment on your moves, offer random bits of wisdom, and even tell a few jokes. The game also provides an extensive cheating mode so that you can steal a win when fate is clearly against you!

Of course, some people would rather try their luck when money, real or digital, is on the line. If you’re one of them, you’ll find a variety of casino titles on the Mac, from Phantom EFX’s ReelDeal Casino’s Quest!, which challenges you to make your way through a casino and become a master at every game it offers, to Masque’s Slots and Slots II.
Stacking your deck

Card, casino, and board games have minimal system requirements and very rarely require graphics acceleration. Take a close look at the box of any game that appeals to you to be sure that it will run on your Macintosh.
Pick a card

Card and board games on your Mac bring the fun of classic tabletop games to life in a new and interactive way. You can hone your skills by challenging a computer opponent or match wits with friends over the Internet. It’s a great way to spend a quiet afternoon. Pick one up today!

http://www.apple.com/games/gettingstarted/cards/

Grab a deck of cards

Grab a deck of cards and you can entertain yourself for a little while, at least with the solitaire variants you know. And unless you can round up some opponents, you’ll be limited to those games.

Load one of these collections on your Mac, however, and you’ll have access to not only a cornucopia of solitaire games but also plenty of computer-controlled opponents who offer varying degrees of difficulty for poker, spades, euchre, and hearts. In addition, you’ll enjoy gameplay hints, historical tracking of your wins and losses, customization options, and more. Many games also let you take on human opponents over the Internet.

Hardwood Solitaire

Hardwood Solitaire. We have a winner!
Solitaire-y fun

All of us enjoy a game of solitaire when we want to take a break. Your iPod or iPod nano even comes with a copy of the traditional version, in which the goal is to move all the cards to the four piles at the top of the screen. If you’d like to explore 101 variations on the ultimate solo card experience, try Silver Creek Entertainment’s Hardwood Solitaire III, which also lets you customize your deck and playing environment, track your career statistics for each type of solitaire, get gameplay hints, and more.

GameHouse’s Hawaiian-themed Aloha Solitaire and Aloha TriPeaks titles offer new twists on traditional solo card games, complete with power-ups, difficulty levels, different types of configurations, and other options. The former combines mahjong and solitaire, challenging you to clear the screen by matching pairs of cards. You select them on the board or from the cards you draw from the stock deck.
Aloha Solitaire

Aloha Solitaire. An enjoyable cross between Mahjong and traditional solitaire.

In Aloha TriPeaks, you draw a card from the deck and select cards from the board that let you move up or down, regardless of suit. For example, if you draw a five, you can go up to six or down to four and then go up or down again from there.

A bonus meter fills in both games as you move cards off the board, but it depletes while you study the situation. Both games also feature power-up cards that give you special abilities if you can pair other cards with them. The powers in Aloha Solitaire include reshuffling the cards in the play area, creating a reserve pile that carries over to the next level and transferring a reserve pile to the stock deck.

In Aloha TriPeaks, power-up cards build the number of fans and reveals available to you. Each of the former lets you sweep a card off the board, which comes in handy when you have no more moves, while the latter lets you see all the face-down cards until you make your next move.
Ancient Hearts.

Ancient Hearts. A few points headed your way.
Hearts, spades, and euchre, oh my

While solitaire games are a fun solo diversion, at some point you’ll likely want to take on opponents. You’ll find plenty of action in the traditional trick-taking games known as hearts, spades, and euchre. Toybox Games wrapped up the first two in a collection called Ancient Hearts & Spades, which features a setting reminiscent of an ancient temple.

Whether you choose hearts or spades, you’ll have access to three levels of difficulty, a three-round tournament, and speed mode, which covers your cards while your opponents play and gives you just four seconds to make a decision when it’s your turn. If you can’t figure out which card to play, the computer randomly chooses one for you, so think fast or the Queen of Spades might fall into your lap.

Silver Creek also checks into this category with Hardwood Euchre, Hardwood Hearts, and Hardwood Spades. Like Hardwood Solitaire III, these titles feature robust options for customizing your card decks, a variety of avatars (the picture that represents you), different choices for musical accompaniment, and more. All three also let you take on human opponents over a LAN or the Internet. You can chat with other players as well as zap them with Fooms, which are graphical effects that express admiration, displeasure, and other attitudes.
Hardwood Spades

Hardwood Spades. Use a Foom to express your feelings during an online game.
Calling your bluff

The ultimate competitive card game is, of course, poker, which can almost rival chess in its nuances. Donohoe Digital’s DD Poker 2 and Masque’s World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier both offer an abundance of riches for poker aficionados, including tips and tricks, gameplay advice, tournaments against live and AI players, multiple levels of difficulty, historical tracking, and more. You can also modify pot limits and other variables.
World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier

World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier. T.J. offers some sage advice.

T.J. Cloutier is a well-known professional poker player who has won dozens of tournaments and has placed in the World Series of Poker’s top five finalists four times. He offers plenty of tips in World Class Poker, including video tutorials that explain how he would handle a given situation. The game even features more than 85 quiz questions in which he gives you the rationale for his answers.

Give yourself a few weeks with Cloutier and your friends will start wondering how you manage to clean up at the weekly neighborhood poker tournament. At the very least, spend a few weeks with Hardwood Solitaire III and discover a wider world beyond that old staple, Klondike.

http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2006/02/cardgames/

Grab a deck of cards

Grab a deck of cards and you can entertain yourself for a little while, at least with the solitaire variants you know. And unless you can round up some opponents, you’ll be limited to those games.

Load one of these collections on your Mac, however, and you’ll have access to not only a cornucopia of solitaire games but also plenty of computer-controlled opponents who offer varying degrees of difficulty for poker, spades, euchre, and hearts. In addition, you’ll enjoy gameplay hints, historical tracking of your wins and losses, customization options, and more. Many games also let you take on human opponents over the Internet.
Hardwood Solitaire

Hardwood Solitaire. We have a winner!
Solitaire-y fun

All of us enjoy a game of solitaire when we want to take a break. Your iPod or iPod nano even comes with a copy of the traditional version, in which the goal is to move all the cards to the four piles at the top of the screen. If you’d like to explore 101 variations on the ultimate solo card experience, try Silver Creek Entertainment’s Hardwood Solitaire III, which also lets you customize your deck and playing environment, track your career statistics for each type of solitaire, get gameplay hints, and more.

GameHouse’s Hawaiian-themed Aloha Solitaire and Aloha TriPeaks titles offer new twists on traditional solo card games, complete with power-ups, difficulty levels, different types of configurations, and other options. The former combines mahjong and solitaire, challenging you to clear the screen by matching pairs of cards. You select them on the board or from the cards you draw from the stock deck.
Aloha Solitaire

Aloha Solitaire. An enjoyable cross between Mahjong and traditional solitaire.

In Aloha TriPeaks, you draw a card from the deck and select cards from the board that let you move up or down, regardless of suit. For example, if you draw a five, you can go up to six or down to four and then go up or down again from there.

A bonus meter fills in both games as you move cards off the board, but it depletes while you study the situation. Both games also feature power-up cards that give you special abilities if you can pair other cards with them. The powers in Aloha Solitaire include reshuffling the cards in the play area, creating a reserve pile that carries over to the next level and transferring a reserve pile to the stock deck.

In Aloha TriPeaks, power-up cards build the number of fans and reveals available to you. Each of the former lets you sweep a card off the board, which comes in handy when you have no more moves, while the latter lets you see all the face-down cards until you make your next move.
Ancient Hearts.

Ancient Hearts. A few points headed your way.
Hearts, spades, and euchre, oh my

While solitaire games are a fun solo diversion, at some point you’ll likely want to take on opponents. You’ll find plenty of action in the traditional trick-taking games known as hearts, spades, and euchre. Toybox Games wrapped up the first two in a collection called Ancient Hearts & Spades, which features a setting reminiscent of an ancient temple.

Whether you choose hearts or spades, you’ll have access to three levels of difficulty, a three-round tournament, and speed mode, which covers your cards while your opponents play and gives you just four seconds to make a decision when it’s your turn. If you can’t figure out which card to play, the computer randomly chooses one for you, so think fast or the Queen of Spades might fall into your lap.

Silver Creek also checks into this category with Hardwood Euchre, Hardwood Hearts, and Hardwood Spades. Like Hardwood Solitaire III, these titles feature robust options for customizing your card decks, a variety of avatars (the picture that represents you), different choices for musical accompaniment, and more. All three also let you take on human opponents over a LAN or the Internet. You can chat with other players as well as zap them with Fooms, which are graphical effects that express admiration, displeasure, and other attitudes.
Hardwood Spades

Hardwood Spades. Use a Foom to express your feelings during an online game.
Calling your bluff

The ultimate competitive card game is, of course, poker, which can almost rival chess in its nuances. Donohoe Digital’s DD Poker 2 and Masque’s World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier both offer an abundance of riches for poker aficionados, including tips and tricks, gameplay advice, tournaments against live and AI players, multiple levels of difficulty, historical tracking, and more. You can also modify pot limits and other variables.
World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier

World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier. T.J. offers some sage advice.

T.J. Cloutier is a well-known professional poker player who has won dozens of tournaments and has placed in the World Series of Poker’s top five finalists four times. He offers plenty of tips in World Class Poker, including video tutorials that explain how he would handle a given situation. The game even features more than 85 quiz questions in which he gives you the rationale for his answers.

Give yourself a few weeks with Cloutier and your friends will start wondering how you manage to clean up at the weekly neighborhood poker tournament. At the very least, spend a few weeks with Hardwood Solitaire III and discover a wider world beyond that old staple, Klondike.

http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2006/02/cardgames/