Author Archives: Mike

2020 Liz & Me

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Different pods, but somewhat similar peas. Continue reading →

I recently checked out the Wikipedia entry on Senator Elizabeth Warren. Since she looks much younger than I feel, I was shocked to learn that she graduated from high school the same year that I did, 1966. Her birth was ten months after mine. I was never held back in grade school or high school,* and so I deduced that she must have skipped a year at some point.

Liz lived in Oklahoma, and I lived in the next state up, Kansas. We were not exactly neighbors. It is about a five-hour drive from KC to OKC.

I went to Rockhust, a Jesuit high school in KC. She went to Northwest Classen, a public high school in OKC. What we had in common was debate. I debated all four years at Rockhurst, and our squad often attended tournaments in the southwest corner of Missouri, which is about halfway to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma schools sometimes also attended these tournaments. I debated against a few of the students from those schools, but I do not remember her school ever being present.

In her senior year her school won the state championship of Oklahoma, and she was a star. My school also won the state championship of Missouri when I was a senior, but I was no star. The same four guys had won the state championship the year before as juniors. I might have been asked to fill in if one of them had come down with beriberi or severe acne, but that never happened.

Her debate career evidently ended on that high note. She went to George Washington University, not a debate power, and left after two years to get married and move to Houston, where she got a degree from the University of Houston, which definitely was an awesome, even legendary, debate power in those days. She graduated in 1970.

I, on the other hand, went to a meeting of the University of Michigan debate team during orientation week before my freshman year, and I was impressed by how awful they were. I knew no one in Ann Arbor, and so I started spending more and more time on debate (as well as bridge, intramural sports, learning how to juggle and play “Love is a many-splendored thing” on the piano, hallway sockey, Arnold Palmer’s Indoor Golf Game, epic water fights, shower parties, and dorm government) and less and less on schoolwork. Nevertheless, after four years of this folderol I actually graduated on schedule. My collegiate debating career had a few highlights, but nothing Like Liz’s high school career.

Shortly after my graduation I was drafted. I spent eighteen months in the military police. I won a commendation from the base commander for my part in the Battle of Sandia, the decisive event in the New Mexican War. I then spent two years pretending to be an actuarial student at the Hartford Life Insurance Company. While there I really missed the intense competition of the debate circuit. So, I returned to coach debate at U-M and Wayne State while exhausting my veteran’s benefits in grad school over the course of seven years.

During the eleven years in which I protected America from the Red Menace, wrote programs to manage pension funds (and the football pool), and traveled around the country for debate tournaments, Liz moved to New Jersey, had two babies, got divorced, remarried, worked with children with disabilities, got a law degree, passed the bar and offered legal services from her home — not all in that order. As far as I know our paths never crossed.

Now she is debating again, and I just play bridge and manage the homegrown computer system used by the New England Bridge Conference. If I ever met her, I would share one of my million debate stories that non-debaters can never appreciate.

* There were a couple of close calls early in my academic career. One of the kids in my kindergarten class at Prescott School in Kansas City, KS, habitually threw rocks at the other students. One day after class I hid behind a bush, and, when he came by, I jumped him and beat him up. In the end he was held back, and I wasn’t.

The next year my teacher at St. Peter’s school taught us to make sentences by selecting cardboard letters out of little boxes and aligning them on a type of slate. I could never find the letters, and the nun concluded that I had some kind of reading or writing disability. Fortunately my family moved to a different parish later that year. At Queen of the Holy Rosary school the first grade students were being taught to write words and sentences, which I could already do with no difficulty, instead of constructing them from cardboard. So, Sister Mildred happily promoted me to second grade.

The Natural 2NT Jump Overcalls

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Lightning struck twice in Great Barrington. Continue reading →

Donna Lyons and I played in the Open Pairs at the 2019 Great Barrington Sectional. By the end of the tenth hand we had entered the Twilight Zone.

Neither of the North players at our first two tables had ever used a BridgeMate before. So, Donna and I had to talk both of them through the process. To make things worse, a computer glitch prevented scores from being entered in the first round. Two sets of scores then need to be entered at once. It was a mess.

Normalcy returned for the first two hands that we played in the third round. Then a bidding sequence that I had never seen emerged. Here was the layout:

GB19_33

I held that lovely West hand. Donna stretched a bit to open 1♦. South overcalled 2NT. I deemed that my solitary face card merited no mention, and so I passed. Assuming that South was bidding the Unusual Notrump, North bid 3♣. South, however, interpreted that as Stayman and rebid 3♦, Donna’s suit. At that point, North did not know what to think, and so she passed. They made the contract, but both 3NT and 5♣ were cold.

South, you see, had made a natural 2NT jump overcall, a bid that I had not seen in thirteen years of tournament bridge. I fully expected not to see it again for another thirteen years. Boy, was I wrong.

We moved to the next table. The first hand that we played was the following one.

GB19_4

After two passes Donna again opened 1♦. North bid 2NT. Since I had an even worse hand than on the previous board, I played the green card. This time North made the call that I least expected, pass, as did Donna. So, we played 2NT.

We took two tricks. I am pretty sure that I have never written down a score of 210 before. 6NT, 5 of either minor, and 4 of either major are possible. That’s right. They could make game in any strain, and they stopped in 2NT!

I checked the Notrump Overcalls section of the convention cards of both teams. On the cards used on hand #33, the one for the player on my left had nothing at all. The one for the guy who bid 2NT had the “Minors” box checked on the “Jump to 2NT” line, which was consistent with his first bid, but not his rebid. The second team had nothing checked and nothing written in.

Paul V and the False Dmitrys

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A bizarre attempt to convert the Russians by conquering them. Continue reading →

I recently stumbled across a bit of historical arcana that seems to have evaded all papal historians.

Tsar Ivan the Terrible ruled Russia from 1537 to 1584. His son Fyodor succeeded him until 1598. Fyodor was a simple man who had no interest in politics. His older brother Ivan had been groomed for the throne, but the Tsar scotched that plan by murdering him in 1581. Ivan had one other son, Dmitry, who was still alive at the time of his father’s death. However, he was just an infant, and, since his mother was Ivan’s fifth (or maybe even seventh) wife, he was not considered eligible for the throne.

Boris Godunov, a Tatar, was Fyodor’s brother-in-law. While Fyodor was alive he ruled Russia as regent. During this period Dmitry died in Uglich under suspicious circumstances. Pushkin wrote a famous novel, Boris Godunov, which claimed that Boris had ordered the murder of the youngster.

I have been to Uglich; half of the town is still a shrine to the Tsarevich Dmitry.

When Fyodor died, Boris was elected tsar by the Zemsky Sobor and ruled for the next seven years. He was succeeded by his son Fyodor, but the young man was murdered within a couple of months. In 1605, when Dmitry would have been 22 years old, the “Times of Troubles” began in Russia. No one had a clear claim to the title of tsar.

In that same year Camillo Borghese (you might have visited his nephew’s villa in Rome) was elected Pope Paul V. He had apparently had an extended correspondence with King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland, which at the time extended to most of the Baltic countries. Sigismund was a devout Catholic with designs on conquering both Sweden and Russia. He intended to convert both countries to Roman Catholicism. At the time the Swedes were Lutherans; the Russians were Orthodox and had been split from Rome for over four hundred years.

According to Polish and Russian accounts Sigismund and the pope (working through Jesuits who had been dispatched to Poland) were somehow involved in an incredible scheme. Together they sponsored the first “false Dmitry,” a young man who happened to have been born the same year as the prince who had died in Uglich. This fake Dmitry led a rather small army from Poland to Moscow. Others who were upset at Boris’s rule joined the parade.

The mother of the real prince had claimed on many occasions that her son had been murdered in Uglich by Boris Godunov’s agents. Nevertheless, this Dmitry somehow convinced her to announce publicly that she recognized him as her son. Her endorsement, in turn, convinced many Russians to support the false Dmitry.

The pretender actually conquered Moscow, was elected tsar, and ruled for almost a year before being murdered. Sic transit gloria mundi. He was killed in public in broad daylight in Moscow. His body was put on public display and then cremated. If the Munchkin coroner had been there, he would have averred that he was not only merely dead. He was really most sincerely dead.

During his short rule Dmitry had married Marina Mniszech, a Polish noble, and bequeathed important territories to her family. This was apparently all part of the scheme. He also took Boris’s daughter Xenia as a royal concubine in order to cover all the bases.

Are you still with me?

After the assassination a second false Dmitry emerged to claim the Russian throne. This one was identified by Marina as her husband who had miraculously survived the assassination attempt and cremation. He too was able to muster an army and march on Moscow. This time Sigismund actively supported the cause. Dmitri’s forces twice made it to the outskirts of Moscow before being repulsed. One night, while his troops still were in control of southeast Russia, he got very drunk and was assassinated by a Tatar prince.

A third and fourth Dmitry were less successful. In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

I can’t believe people read fiction. Compared to history it is so boring and unimaginative.

The rest of Russian history is less chaotic but just as interesting. Michael Romanov was eventually elected czar, and his family ruled up until the revolution in 1917.

I have not been able to find copies of the correspondence between the pope and Sigismund yet, but I have some leads.

Another LAW Failure

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The third exception bit me. Continue reading →

I was sitting West for this hand, which was the last one played on a Saturday afternoon.

Hand2

My partner opened 2♠ with what is a typical collection for him in the first seat at favorable vulnerability. I doubt that many of the other South’s bid 3♥, but the player at our table did. I anticipated that she would have much better hearts, which made me think that my king would be working. On the other hand, my diamond suit looked like three losers. I tempered my ambitions and bid a humble 3♠ to extend the preempt. North surprised me by bidding 4♥. The auction then came around to me. We definitely had nine spades. South probably had at least six hearts. I figured the opponents for ten in all. That would give my partner a singleton, and even if he had two, my king would probably cover one. I decided on 4♠, which was the final contract.

In the first round I would have doubled with South’s hand. If she had done so, North probably would have played 4♥, and I would have let her. If my partner could find the magical club lead, we would earn 200 points on the hand. As it was, we lost 50. There were nineteen trumps (ten for them and nine for us) but only seventeen tricks (eight for them and nine for us). The LAW says that this is unlikely in the extreme.

I was not disappointed with my partner’s inability to find ten tricks. I was disappointed to see that we had four certain tricks on defense. So, I should have passed or doubled.

There are three negative adjustments to the LAW: Negative purity, negative fit, and negative shape. These factors result in some holdings being better for defense than for offense.

The most common problem is reportedly negative purity, which is usually identified with broken honor holdings, especially in the trump suit. It is certainly true that both sides have such holdings in their respective trump suits. However, they do not result in defensive advantages. North-South can win only one spade trick on defense, and East-West has no heart tricks if that suit is trump.

In fact, after the first lead the hand plays itself. If North is declaring in hearts, and East finds the killer lead of the 10, East-West gets one spade, one diamond, and three clubs. If East is declaring in spades, North-south gets one spade, one heart, two diamonds, and no clubs. Aside from the trump suit, these are exactly the same results on both offense and defense.

The actual problem for North-South is clearly the third factor, negative shape. The two hands have identical distributions, which means that their ten trumps are not worth as much as they appear. Notice what happens if North trades a low diamond to South for a low club. They gain a trick in both suits if they are declaring in hearts, but they do not gain anything on defense. Furthermore, if North trades a low club for a low diamond, the same effect occurs!

Larry Cohen addresses this problem in To Bid or Not to Bid:

Patterns to be especially wary of are 4-3-3-3 and 5-3-3-2. If your distribution is flat, it becomes statistically more likely that the other players also are flat. If everyone’s distribution is balanced, it often depresses the number of tricks. However, flat distribution does not negatively affect the trick count as often as minor-honor problems do.

East-West has a similar problem. West’s trumps would be more valuable if they could be used for ruffing, but West has fewer cards in no side suit. My only ruffing value was in partner’s shortest suit.

What can be learned from this hand? The main thing is to be very careful about using the LAW on a hand with flat distribution. In this case, however, It was the opponents’ distributions that upset my calculation more than my own. In retrospect I asked myself “How weird (in percentage terms) was the perfect mirror imaging of the opponents’ hands?”

Start with the heart suit. South overcalled at the three level. She cannot have a solid suit; the king is in my hand. When I saw North’s raise to four, it seemed quite likely that South must have six pieces. The most likely reason for choosing a suit over a double in this position is because of an inability to support one of the suits. To be conservative, let us say that the chance of each of them having five hearts is no more than 40%. This is extremely conservative. If nothing was known about either hand other than the fact that the opponents had ten hearts between them, the probability would be 31.18%.

What about the other suits? There is really no good indication available of how any might split, so let’s consider random distributions. The probability of one of the three-card suits splitting 3-3 (assuming hearts are 5-5) is 39.16%. The probability of the other three-card suit splitting 3-3 (assuming hearts are 5-5 and the other suit is 3-3) is 47.62%. Of course, if all three of these suits split evenly, the fourth must also. The probability of all four splitting evenly is therefore no more than 7.46% under very conservative assumptions.

I made the right bid after all.

Bone Spurs and Flat Feet

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My draft status and DJT’s. Continue reading →

This recent post on the CNN website brought back memories of the strange beginning to my illustrious military career.

I took my pre-induction physical in October of 1970, the first year of the lottery. My exam took place in Kansas City. Since procedures varied greatly from region to region, I can only speculate about what the physicals were like in other regions.

When I arrived for the physical, I was surprised by the appearance of about half of the guys sitting in the waiting area with me. Each bore an easily recognizable item, and everyone who bore that item seemed to flunk the exam. Furthermore, everyone who did not have one seemed to pass. Can you guess what it was?

* * *
What did you guess? A crutch, a cane, a seeing-eye dog? No, the item was a briefcase. The people who failed the physical uniformly came prepared to prove that they suffered from some disqualifying condition. Those who depended upon the army doctors to discover their maladies were disappointed.

The exam itself was perfunctory. I suppose that the doctor would have noticed if one of us was paraplegic or missing some limbs, but less obvious conditions did not interest him much. I was anticipating the check for flat feet that is mentioned in the above article. My footprints looked like those of a duck with toes. Here is how the doc checked us for flat feet (and maybe bone spurs). The whole group of us (dressed only in underwear) were told to face away from the doctor and toward the wall. He then issued the following commands: “Right foot up, left, OK.” Unless you practice for a week, you will not be able to say that as fast as he did. At least half of the guys never raised either foot.

It would have been a joke for them to exclude me for my feet. I have walked long distances over rough terrain many times, and my feet never bothered me much.

One thing that the people at the physical were very interested in was detecting color blindness. This was done one-on-one and lasted at least fifteen minutes. Some people were, in fact, determined to have that defect. I don’t remember that that exempted them, but it probably limited their duty assignments.

Donald Trump did not go through this process. He has said that he made himself eligible for the draft in 1970 because of his extremely high number. His was 356; mine was 154. You only had to survive one lottery. Guys with his number were not drafted in 1970. He was safe forever.

Donald Trump graduated from college in 1968, two years before I did. Somehow he had convinced his draft board to grant him a 1-Y status for the year and a half after his student deferment ran out based on alleged bone spurs on his heels. Whenever he has been asked about how exactly he managed to obtain this deferment, his answers have been evasive.

I clearly remember that plenty of doctors in those days were willing to help my generation avoid the draft, and plenty of guys did extraordinary things to create or mimic conditions that would get them excluded. I knew several perfectly healthy young men in both groups.

The definition of 1-Y status is “Registrant qualified for service only in time of war or national emergency.” If you are thinking that the War in Vietnam was definitely a war, you have not read your constitution lately. Only Congress can declare war, and it has not done so since 1941.