Hi all
I had a blast in Toronto. Pleasant city, nice summer weather that allowed for wearing shorts when staggering home at 2 am and boatloads of bridge. After getting handed the towel in the mini on Thursday, Michael and I played in the A/x pairs. In the afternoon session we made little mistakes and accepted all gifts, so we won our section. In the evening some errors crept in as well as a couple of bad judgment calls and we ended up with 55something% overall. Having pummelled Sadek & Hussein I consider my greatest feat.
Here’s a deal that has been bugging me. I’ve seen several iterations of it, but directors generally refuse to do anything about it, except have supposedly correcting small talk with the offenders.
1- I just need so little from partner to score 11 tricks, while holding virtually nothing in defence
West pushes a double through the table and leads the 
Ace. This is what I see:
West takes the first two and then switches to a . Piece of cake, I win the Ace, ruff a with a top trump, cross to dummy with a small one and pass a top 
to West effectively placing her. After that I had to explain my claim twice (!) and wrote down -200. It’s a perfect save against a no-brainer 4.
This was the full deal:
At the other table South decided his hand was worth a 2 opening, showing a big hand. My teammates interfered with some suction action, but didn’t take out 4 because they were expecting a different type of hand. Fortunately South’s declarer play matched his bidding capabilities, down one and just a loss of 3 imps. Opening 2 on those types of hands, besides making me cringe, really warrants some kind of pre-alert in my opinion.