Hi all
Last Saturday and Sunday I played with Hoek, Dennis and Martijn “Termiet” (Groningen guy) the EGBC teams tournament in Groningen. It was the first big tournament for Hoek and me, I can confess I was a bit anxious.
I dare not tell you about Saturday. It was a dark, dark day. Everything Hoek and I did went wrong. Somebody must have put a spell on us, I don’t know. My team tried to drown the jinx in legendary amounts of beer, but I went to bed fairly early for I was totally drained. Sunday, hesitant and a little hangover-ish we took the cards from our first board.
Whoa! I pick up a solid 9 card suit 
. What to do? I hate to open these kinds of hands with some forcing bid and a timid 1 leaves to much room for the opponents. So I started with 5, it’s definitely preemptive and partner has a general idea how big my playing strength is.The opponents are silent and Hoek raises me to 6.
Gold.
A fine raise by Hoek, because of my unusual call he estimated (hoped for) a 
void in my hand and valued the rest of his hand enough for slam. At the other table South opened a Namyats 4
, but the 4-level wasn’t high enough to shut out East. Eventually Dennis and Martijn bought the contract in 5 undoubled (?).
We shook off the dirt and gloominess from the day before and jumped on the roller coaster of succes.