Wbridge5 March 30th

Good morning folks

Wbridge5 is starting to motor in Ireland these days. Early in March an interesting player appeared called Give_Up_Eamon presumably aimed at me but this account has stopped playing for the last week or so.
However the well known Irish Camrose player James Heneghan has emerged as the man to beat in the recent past. Eddie Fitzgerald of the FourSeasons B&B in Galway is getting to grips with the French bidding system and the infernal robotic partners and is pushing up the leaderboard. BJ O Brien is at his imp collecting best even if it is a matchpoint competiton. You don't get much dummy play if you partnering BJ so this game suits him down to the ground as the robot never looks to declare any hand. Jean Fitzgerald from Ennis is putting in a reasonable 58% shift with the Wexford men Ronan and Sexton also up there with 58% months.
Elvis is a reclusive player from Malahide who thinks he is an expert bridge player but the reality is he has not played against many real experts in his bridge life. However a 57% monthly contribution is nothing to be sneezed at but the facts are he is 7% per board behind Heneghan who is probably ok to be termed an expert. After all he has a yellow star on BBO and several international caps on his kitchen wall.

Mr Heneghan also has a large collection of Martens books on one of his kitchen tables. He lives in a rather long house so its hard to tell which is the kitchen and which is the other kitchen. However I was impressed to see the large colourful collection of Martens books on the table a few years ago. 

www.martensbridgeuniversity.com I think is the site for getting a sampler of these very good books.

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Galway Congress will shortly be in progress with the Congress Pairs ...and other associated events I think for intermediate players.

Gala Open Pairs event tomorrow ... www.galwaybridgecongress.com

Teams on Monday 

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Greystones Open Cup takes place next Sunday April 7th ...so go there 

Eamon, we'd be most grateful if you could mention the Greystones Open Cup in your blog.

Here are the details. best wishes, John

Greystones Open Cup1.30pm on Sunday 7th April
at the Greystones Bridge Centre
2 session Match Point Pairs
1st (400 euro), 2nd, & 3rd Prizes
1st & 2nd Session
Best Intermediate & Best Local
TD Brian Lawlor
Entries (Master / Intermediate)
John Hautz 01-2861485 or 086 0555493
<jhautz@eircom.net>
John Royds 01-2819283
<roydsjf@gmail.com>

Kindly sponsored by Glen Fuels, Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow 01-2861444

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Over the last few days I noted the ability to play hands from the vugraph archive on BBO with a partner against two GIB robots. Being a great fan of the GIB robots since receiving an email when in Saudi Arabia from Matt Ginsberg who was developing same to be a tester , I dived.

Sadly I found these web based robots to be very crippled. I understand this as BBO could hardly run robots for loads of members at a decent strength. In future will have to source some known human opponents when playing these vugraph hands. Robots are great for practice and training as you can discuss your system as you go and the robots don't care. However random humans get irritated if you don't play at their pace and you talk during the bidding.

Of course we would never take advantage of the robots by telling pard a card or anything.

However BBO is a fantastic service and I can figure something out if I need to play robots.

www.bridgebase.com

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Played a hand back a while in Live Bridge with the aforementioned Elvis and he was dealt approximately 

Axx ..J...T976543..KJ and game all and 2nd in hand after West passes

The self acclaimed expert quicky opens the bidding with 1D and with silent opps

I am holding KQJTx ..Qxx ..J2 ..Qxx

So I bid 1S and my esteemed Elvis rises it to 2S ..

tempted to pass this with my aceless wonder I noted I have near7 losers and decided I best give one lift as we are playing weak NT so pard does not have a balanced 12-14.

so I go 3S...

My man pulls the 4S card out of the bidding box at the speed of sound ..

(When I was a kid I had no concept of the speed of sound ..I used to shout into a sewer pipe and race down the field to see if I could hear myself at the other end of the pipe..)

I have no concept of the evaluation algoritm that Elvis applies to bridge..

Its a 9 count with no primary spade support and it feels it wants to roar into 4S vulnerable in a pairs game. After some helpful defence I emerge with 9 tricks for minus 100...and retreat to some safe place. On my return I am greeted by the gleeful Elvis ..90% that was pard ...

it was only the 2nd time played  and being a TD I understand the score could only be 100% 50% or 0% ...so I just said what about if they were actually playing against me and doubled me and I went off a pile .. They ate their partners DK and then cashed the DQ..setting up the diamonds. So I escaped for 1 off undoubled.

The end of the night score was 50% but 3S making was 90% ..they might defend better against 3S and give me the same score. Trump leads are probably best or force the dummy before diamonds are up ..

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That will do for today ..

Thanks 

Eamon Galligan