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Hi bridge pals!
If you attended my webinar today (many thanks to the ABTA for hosting it), you witnessed my sad attempt to speak and think at the same time. Thank goodness I was seated—it could have been a lot worse.
I was stumped by this scenario posed by an attendee: “Make a set of 4 deals where North is dealer with opening points, holding 4-5 or 5-4 in the majors.”
I knew that the “or” in the scenario meant that my solution would probably involve my curly-braces for specifying a condition in one suit or another, but I kept trying to wrap the whole suit in curly-braces, and then I ventured into specifying the lengths of the minor suits to try to “herd” cards into the majors. Aside from not working, all of that was also unnecessary.
Just as soon as we closed down the webinar, the simple solution hit me: the majors both have at least four cards; only one of them has the fifth card. Therefore, only the hypothetical fifth card needs to be enclosed in curly-braces, so that only one suit or the other will receive it.
Here’s the recipe and shaper. New subscribers, please note the warning at the top of this blog post, about possibly needing to view this post on the blog instead of in your email, for the links to work properly.
Happy dealing!