Month: August 2010

Hi all

Here’s a slam I butchered.

West

North

East

South

21

Double

5

62

a.p.

 

 

 

1. Weak
2. Not very scientific, but sometimes you just take off the white gloves and enter while swinging your ax.

Dummy comes down:

King lead. Alright, this baby needs some work. I can count only ten tricks with a successful hook. I won’t go into detail how I botched the contract, but my opponent threw me a trick-twelve-bone with a ruff and sluff.

It took me some overtime to formulate the most elegant plan. Draw two rounds of trumps ending in dummy. Play a to the Queen and exit with the Ace of and the Ten. This basically wins with the 3-3, King doubleton onside and various 2-4 holdings where East will be endplayed. Those last ones might be a bit difficult to read, though.

I think that’s as much optimization juice you can squeeze from that lemon.

Cheers!

Hi all

I’m probably kicking an open door, but Vegas is a wicked city. There’s so much eye candy even an armed and thick skinned Viking will suffer an indigestion. And you’d better bring a boatload of cash to unlock good times. Here are two pictures, the first one from left to right: Jerome, Remco, Dennis, Dennis, me & Martin (Kees-Jan took the picture). We’re admiring the inside view of The Venetian at an hour past midnight! The second one was earlier that day when we were accompanied by two Dutch girls (Nathalie & Agnes, friends of Sanne).

Somewhere late Saturday night, Dennis suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed towards some red haired woman.
“So?”, I asked.
“Do you know who that is?”, he riposted.
“No clue.”
“That’s Rihanna playing blackjack over there.”
“… Diana … who?”

I understand she’s one of the biggest pop stars around right now. Man, I’m so out of touch.

Let’s just stick at what I’m reasonably good at, Beowulf in action:

West

North

East

South

 

11

pass

22

pass

33

pass

34

pass

4

pass

… 5

a.p.

 

 

 

1. Unbalanced, 0+
2. Forcing, 4+
3. Forcing, 5+
4. Limit, nothing but

I agree the bidding looks rather painful and overly complicated.

When East led a Geoff had no problem collecting twelve tricks, he lost just a trick to the King of . If the finesse had been right thirteen tricks would have been reasonably easy. On the other hand, had East led a ten tricks would have been our limit. Funny, on the best lead it’s either four or seven. I don’t remember seeing such a deal before.

Alright, I’m gonna hide under some umbrella … ella … ella