Playing the Jim Cahill invitational with Jack and 5NT from Malahide

About 1 week ago I got down to creating a pbn file of the Jim Cahill invitational. 176 boards played by 12 top Celtic Pairs. 2 Welsh and one English type slipped into the event. Using some scripts provided by Dave the Snake from Wicklow off we went. PBN is short for portable bridge notation and is one of the best known file types these days for storing bridge games with bidding and play and names and many other tags.
So having made up our 176 board file with 6 plays in almost every board we fired up our Jack program and started to play. Now one expects to finish somewhere near the bottom of this event as there are some good players involved.
Putting it bluntly Eddie Fitzgerald and Michael McDonagh would be termed very dangerous opponents anywhere in Ireland and on some boards anywhere in the world. This multi titled pair were the lowest placed in this years renewal of the James Cahill Invitational. So the comparisons will be tough.
So it took 8 boards before I found any traction. Before that I had a 7/12 as my best score along with 4 below average and 2 averages.

Finally on board 8 I secured a top .. Better than all the rest. Just like playing on
http://bridge-now.com
Speaking of which I failed to finish my 70 boards this week due to the local barman locking his doors a little too early. I was standing in the cold ringing him. I was nearly firing up my tablet in the car to get the boards played.
Now it was not his fault really. I got the bridge finished about 1105pm. The lady at table 8 finally played her final card at 1105pm. However it was not over .. the folk had to have their postmortems and I was locking up. Result I land at my local at about 1140pm so its kind of late. Anyway all was well apart from missing the 70 hands target by 3.

Meanwhile a nice hand popped up in Malahide and someone mentioned it.

Now our player landed in 5NT after exploring a slam. Problem was now he needed to make 11 tricks in NO TRUMP and was at the 5 level. 

So under severe pressure. Adding to the issue East poked out the toughest and best lead. 

CLUB NINE lead and our player won the CLUB ACE and started to think. The thinking did not work and our player got a minus score. He later mentioned that he got to 5NT and failed to make it despite the sheet saying 5NT is cold. Later that night having finally achieved entry to my local and played as many hands as possible on Bridge Now before end of week at 12 bells Wed I decided to have a look at our players hand. I could see a good shot at making the hand given I could see all the cards and sent a text indicating only a very strong declarer might roll that one home. 

12 hours later our player is still examining the hand and the sheet and bridgewebs but no success even seeing all the cards. So I gave him a good clue about throw in and taking all his winners first. 

A while later he agreed it could be made and expressed thanks. 

I said ... next problem is for you to make 6D 6H and 6S with the same cards and lead. 

4 lessons in one ...

Not bad for one hand ...