Ireland Imp Pairs 8pm every night

Ireland Open Imps Pairs at 8pm every night 

Bridgebase online competitive all tournaments and search for eamongall

 Good evening folks 

Ireland Imps pairs moves back to 8pm each night as it has been affecting my Netflix viewing. The hands will continue to be exciting both for players and kibitzers. Some folk don't like playing or cannot commit to a full 2.5 hours of bridge play so they might maintain a watching brief. 

Some like watching some of our experienced players hitting the Beechers Brook or the other fences that jump up in front of them 

Meanwhile if you want a little practice 

http://www.bridge-now.com/ is a fine FREE website which will give you a score after each board you play. 

also http://bridgez.net:3002/playonthecloud

All results of Ireland Open imps are stored here 

https://www.bridgewebs.com/irelandimps/

There is also the Peter Pigot Bridge Club 

https://www.bridgewebs.com/peterpigotbridge

An interesting hand from Malahide on Thursday night ..Hand 9

 Ireland Imp pairs every night 830pm has some good exciting hands ..We call them Elvis hands ..

All shook up...

Last Friday morning while reviewing the Malahide offering from the night before one spotted hand 9 had many people going down without any fight in 4S on this offering 

the play started generally with a small heart lead to the Heart King and trick 2 was Heart Ace and 

trick 3 was another Heart which you probably ruff. 

How come a string of Inter As and Masters went down quietly in this hand which to me looks like 10 tricks on top. I had a look at the 2 folks who made it. Line number 2 blasted into the running all my 6 spades line and hope the opposition will crumble which they did. It is hopeless for 2 defenders with no signals or idea what to signal or how to go about it to stop 4S. On the run of the spades the defenders threw away some cards and eventually bared down to 2-2 in clubs and the declarer played Ace and another club to establish his 3rd club as the 10th trick. Its very hard for defender East to figure out what to discard but an early club ..keeping one saver on his Club King doomed him. He had some hearts to discard first while he pondered his fate ... 

Meanwhile up on line 1 the defence quickly attempted to cash diamond Ace attracting the declarers interest to the Diamond QJT in dummy and this declarer managed to set up the diamonds and pitch a losing heart before making 11 tricks. The other 7 declarers failed to get near 10 tricks at all. 

So why did so many fail to make 10 tricks legitimately .. 

Ireland Imps Pairs every night 830pm Monday to Sunday.

 Thinking of new Ireland Early imps at 7pm every night. 6 minutes a board. 16-18 boards. 

Good evening folks 

Last night in the Ireland imp pairs Katie and Bobbie had an eventful night. 

Somehow they managed to allow Emer home in 4DX from a 7 trick start. 

Then on Board 23 there was some misunderstanding somewhere

as katie got to declare in a BJ special 1SXX for 1520 points. 

Vinmar and Robbie did a car crash .. 

.......

Every night YOU can do same or suffer same as the Ireland imps 

brings many surprises and few 4333 hands. 

I deal 32 and throw out 4 flatties leaving the rest. 

A hand from 1990 training session. The Damian Lynch team. The Ireland Imps tourney.

 Every night eamongall runs the Ireland Imps Pairs. Maybe its too long at 28 boards but nobody told me 

that yet. Maybe I should change to 2 times 15 board sessions and combine the 2 events for those that want the long event. Who knows as nobody tells me anything. 

eamongalligan62@gmail.com 

https://www.bridgewebs.com/irelandimps/

Amazingly back in 1990 I was part of an  Intermediate A bridge team. Noel Mitchel Damian Lynch David Dunne and Eamon Galligan. We also had a subs bench which included Sean Mitchel Pat Cassidy and James Danaher and maybe even brainiac Kevin Mitchel. 

I found this hand on an old computer and am amazed how much trouble it is causing some Area Masters Inter As and Inter Bs. 

Make 6S ... 

Answers to eamongalligan62@gmail.com

The folk of today don't seem to understand the mental pursuit of working the opponents hard. 

Back in the day one of our team produced a set of 32 bridge boards. They were divided up between us and each player got 8. The plan was that on one Sat or Sun we would meet at a designated venue and each of us would bring 8 hands were we were meant to be the dummy. Then we would play them out under dummies direction. 

Thus we actually had training sessions for our bridge team. 

As intermediates we did not fear the "Masters and Seniors " 

One time we won the Regional Teams out in Malahide and could not understand why we were handed Best Inter A prize and a qualification for Inter A All Ireland Final ... 

Meanwhile a team of Masters from behind us went off to play in the Kelbourne Cup. 

This was in a time like in the Bible BC... but for us bridge players it is BF 

Before Fred ... or arguably BC before Clegg. Matthew Clegg was the okbridge founder. 

Fred Gitelman developed what became Bridgebase Online 

Irish Team win English Gold Cup 2020

 The Gold Cup of the English Bridge Union is arguably the toughest event in English bridge to win. 

Yesterday evening the team of Adam Mesbur Nick Fitzgibbon John Carroll Mark Moran Tommy Garvey and Swedish assistant Fredric Nystrom won the Gold Cup

Good videos with good commentary can be found here 

https://www.twitch.tv/eopenbridge

More later 

The Ireland Imp Pairs the best and most run event of the lockdown .. A 4H contract 830pm EVERY NIGHT

 The below hand is published to emphasize that entries are the lifeblood of bridge ...the South player just happened to be on site.  

Last night in the Ireland Imp Pairs we spotted the very decent player Martin Garvey being slapped into 4H by his robot who has seen his skills before. 

South received the opening lead of the S6 and rose S9 and won Queen with Ace 

A quick heart to queen followed by HA for a 2nd round of trumps. Galligan watched incredulously as thegarve squandered his possible trump entry with Heart 8. Declarer should have had a fair idea spades were 4-2 from lead but the extra entry was gobbled up. 

Now garve is very good and quick to offer free advice to lesser players after the hand. Unfortunately most players instead of taking this FREE advice would rather verbally square up to the giver. Me personally I scoop up everything he says about bridge. 

Some nights I learn new ways of putting  people down  but its generally harmless banter or generally directed at those players who have much improved in the COVID era of bridge. 

We have a few folk trampling the online Ireland games who have skills that could win the Bermuda Bowl.....................

Anyway the garve continued to draw a 3rd round of trumps and is now an entry short. 

He needs to reach dummy twice but has only 1 entry .. if only he had have taken that extra chance in the hearts one might think. 

......

However West spoiled my story by pitching a club and thegarve prevailed and made 4H. This is a 16 imp swing for thegarve and enabled him to enlever la batte. Apparently in a London team game of the 1970s a young garve and others were allowed announce "Raising the Bat " to indicate 50 imps in the plus column. Probably totally Unauthorised information but that was the game of those days. 

I think Englishmen in their version of hurling are allowed "Raise the bat " after scoring 50 points.

I have been corrected as above or is it below by one of the non-GAA Malahide folk

(For good order on your blog, the Englishmen “Raise the bat” after scoring 50 runs, not points, when cracking the leather upon the willow).....😜😜

Something like Joe Canning or some of those Limerick lads reaching 2-10 in the hurling. 

If you got this far you will find a very decent game of SWISS IMPS at 

https://www.bridgewebs.com/irelandimps/

All results of previous games and the hands are published above. 

Two humans kicked over the robots last night in Ireland Imp pairs

 Last night in the Ireland Imp Pairs we had a nice little game going with some decent players togging out. 

The top 4 places included Waterford champion William McKay,regular visitor to Ireland Congresses

pre Covid and during Covid Martin Garvey. Well known Galway duo Enda Glynn and Paul Scannell 

as well as Dave Ryan and Mary Roche in 4th place. 

However the main action took place in a different area of the event where 2 humans took annoyance 

with the human robot combinations and the 2 robots who acted as sitout replacements. 

Trick 1 Heart king won with Ace 

Trick 2 finesses club 8 losing to 9 

Trick 3 Diamond comes back Ace 

Trick 4 Cashes a high diamond 

Trick 5 Cashes Ace of Club

Trick 6 Sticks Eddie Macken  in with Club King 

At this stage Eddie and Harvey  started to make noises ...just small noises but they continued to play 

They finished off the next 3 boards with pinder1234 and the robot and next were drawn against

the pair of sitout replacement robots. 

This did not improve their mental states and their horses were feeling their angst. 

By the time they reached board 16 they had been skinned for almost 50 imps but for some 

reason it was Eamon and the robots that were taking the hit for this. These two are multiple Irish champions but feeling angst for getting endplayed by a robot is a little much. 

Boards 17-20 were against 2 humans so that was okay but unfortunately on board 21 a robot human 

partnership dared to approach their table. 

Our 2 chaps downed tools and refused to play 

Even my offer to partner one of them was turned down 

After 7 minutes I asked could I put in 2 subs... 

I probably irked them more by replacing them with 2 robots ..

Happily maitennis turned up and replaced one of the robots despite the massive red score.

All because a human could not bear to be endplayed by a robot. The humans claimed the robot pair

CHEETAHED ...

Funny thing is if a  human visualised and placed this endplay on another human he would be cheered 

from on high .. 

Its not unlike the great play that Carolann Cummins produced declaring 6Hs a couple of blogs ago. 

Actually playing against a robot that night ... The robot just clapped her. 

Reminds me of a time back in 1990s when Joe McHale partnering me in Kilkenny put an 

intra-finesse on Michael McDonagh and Eddie Fitzgerald and the 2 lads stopped in the middle of 

the play and clapped him ... 4H+1 .. Their team mate scored up 2H+1 

However the sportsmanship was present 

Camrose Trophy 2021 Ireland representatives are probably Team BJ.

 Team BJ won the recent Camrose trials but I don't know if the selection committee have ratified the winners to represent CBAI in the Camrose series both weekends yet. Have to wait and see. 

Team BJ .. O'Brien O'Briainsx2 Walsh O'Gorman and Milne won a 2 rounds round robin held on Real Bridge platform. A strangely struggling Moran team failed to raise any steam at all. Could be the missing "look them in the eyes " at the table caused a different feeling or maybe Team BJ have been following a new training regime that I don't know about. 

Boards and information can be found at https://kibitz.realbridge.online/   and you might have 

to page down a little to find something about CBAI Camrose Trials. 

No point in having a selection committee if you going to try to win the Camrose without the legendary Thomas Hanlon. I think it normally says in the Conditions of Contest something about selection committee having the final word. 

Meanwhile presuming Team BJ are ratified for at least the first weekend I offered them some training. 

Unfortunately they turned me down indicating most of the team would not get any value out of my nightly imp pairs. 

Not one to give up I made a 2nd offer of some bidding practice without my involvement. I am still waiting for the response on this offer. Having been involved with more than 2  Bermuda Bowl teams training sessions I thought I would have something to offer in the 5 weeks remaining before the Camrose Trophy. 

I also offered them my services as Non Playing captain. 

Ireland Imps Pairs tonight 830pm and every night. We want the best pair in Ireland. Come Granda Tom

 Recently I have been following Fearghals Sligo events with interest. I gradually noted that Granda Tom and his regular partner higheg nearly always win. Now I understand that pretty much all the Sligo and friends are weaker bridge players than myself but so are most of the Ireland grandmasters so its not an insult. 

However I have never come across The Granda or Higheg in about 35 years playing CBAI Bridge. As most of my bridge was beyond intermediate level I have probably missed many players. 

Finally this morning I figured it out ... There is no Granda Tom or Higheg ... Fearghal just puts Granda Tom and Higheg in place of the 1st place finishers in the Sligo events same as he places John Wayne and Julia Roberts in the last place.

So I had a look last night at the November record of Granda Tom and Higheg.

15 matchpoints events in Sligo and some other SWBA place and 15 first places. 

This is like the Dubs at the GAA except the Dubs will probably keep going after COVID(whereas the granda will disappear)  unless Mayo lift the curse. Maybe Thomas Galligan will take them down. He plays GAA like the granda tom. 

Now I am an avid student of bridge so I want to learn more about the tactics of granda tom and higheg.

I noticed in passing that when shorn of the granda tom ...the higheg has more normal 55% or 52% scores but that could be a weaker partner. 

Now I need to learn some good tactics to teach some students I have so if the granda tom and higheg might play more often in the Ireland Imps Pairs then I could study their skills a little more. 

Also some of my players are of a more iron will than granda's normal fodder. They are not so generous. 

I have noted the granda is reluctant to alert most of his bids and this is very unethical and I hope

he will make a better effort to share what the granda and higheg know about their bids. 

Its okay for Declan the Donplayer in the local club DON game to keep secrets as he openly admits his objective is not to win but to pull a stroke. 

Strangely enough I taught Declan the Donplayer how to play bridge and he loves it. Declan plays on 

Bridge Now      http://www.bridge-now.com/

We play for a pint a week but Declan managed to negotiate a 10% handicap on me but as he regularly breaks 55% for the week I am now on a loser. However I explained to him that he gets 10% of his 

score added not a full 10% so I am still able to win most weeks. 

I am going to ask Declan the Donplayer for an opinion on Granda Tom and Higheg as Declan is a good numbers man ..seldom leaves much in the bookies. 

Imagine a blue Dub putting a 10er on Cavan to take down Donegal and another 5er on Cavan to take Donegal by 4-6 points ....... He figured it would be easier for Dublin to beat Cavan. 

When I heard he backed Trump I was slagging him ... turned out it was some snooker player not POTUS.

..........

However when I asked Fearghal he claims he only changes the last place so the Granda is real but I think the Granda and Higheg are two GIB robots. 

Ye can look yourselves 

https://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/index.php?&from_login=0

Northern Ireland Camrose Trials 2020

 Meanwhile the NIBU Camrose Trials are taking place to find out who will take on BJ and Ranald in the annual Corn Something for the match between NIBU and CBAI. 

The pre tournament favourites Tranmer and Sommerville are struggling to nail down the 3rd place position with the experienced Coffey and Lavery chasing them all the way. 

Tranmer has been the best player by far in the COVID online bridge around Ireland with loads of massive scores albeit against weak players from the clubs. I have not counted how many 70% plus scores he was managed but as he indicated himself he has a 33 year bridge partnership so an enormous advantage on other pickup partnerships. 

For some reason the Tranmer Sommerville partnership does not deliver anything like the Tranmer Tranmer results so maybe Wayne needs to work on his game. 

Maybe its the weaker bidding system in use in the Camrose Trials or most likely its far stronger opposition playing this weekend. 

Early Camrose NIBU     link to pdf of scores 

Cross imps     link to cross imps 

Last night I saw a wonderful 6H bid and made in Ireland imp Pairs ..830pm every night

 Good evening folks 

Here is how to play bridge but don't play too good .. 

Here we see Alan O'Sullivan bidding a fine 6H for his partner to play. 

Some good pointers in this hand about playing. 

Alan gets an opening bid from partner in his best suit and doing his losing trick count 

comes up with about 5 losers.

5 losers is slam zone opposite an opening bid so Alan rolled out the cannon. 

4NT told him about 3 aces and he went on and got the bad news about the kings so 

he settled for 6H. 

So we are going to play 6H .. 

Well we have a 2S move down in the South hand so that might help us. 

We have a slow diamond loser and a club finesse or drop or some kind of Galligan play

to make 

................................

Our declarer done some eliminations in spades and diamonds and played 2 rounds of clubs 

catching the helpless Bill Hunter in a hopeless endplay. 

You can replay the hand here 

Replay the hand here

..........

Why is nobody else having a go at 6H ...its a good one to bid 

The folks in 3H plus 2 might need to improve their evaluation

Just a bidding misunderstanding ..one thought 3H was forcing and the other NOT 

Anyway well done to Carolann on the declarer play .. Someone actually rang me up to tell me about the fantastic declaring play so I thought I best slap it up there. 

I might have tried Club Queen to see if I could tempt robotcop to cover or hesitate. 

Robot is unlikely to be programmed to cover a 10 .... 

Of course declarer might not have been planning on deprogramming the robot ..

It was the first hand of 4 so might not have noticed robocops presence. 

EDIT ... Of course I was somewhat dumb when writing the about Clubs play as QJT of clubs are

visible in dummy ... Hmmm

...........

Sadly the next 11 boards brought few gains for this great declarer as Rdelargy and tito44 held her at bay. 

The Granda is playing well but also collecting many presents...Ireland Imps 830pm every night ..

 Ireland Imps Pairs tonight at 830pm .. Hopefully tonight the Granda will show up and we will give him good trimming. He caught me off guard last night as I accidently set event to Matchpoints. 

You see the Granda is a matchpoint specialist ..and he won 

Boards1-4 was fairly quiet as Granda got into his stride ... against Allways3 and Molly

Board 5 saw Sean Connor doing a strange play in 3NT .. You would think he would play in the

Offaly cold 4H contract. 6 card HEARTS to AJT987 ...we call those trumps in Dublin. 

Board 7 we saw the Granda open up the throttle 

Despite reaching 6H which was scoring a tidy 73% the granda threw all the grandkids in 

the ring and for some reason backed his ordinary declaring partner all the way to GRAND SLAM.

The 3H bid is amazing .. The grandma clearly does not play the AUNTY double. 

Needless to say zaczaczac called the police who changed it to 6H+1 .. No problem from Granda 

....................

Even I was stunned by the Granda's next move. Took me a while to take it all in. 

I don't believe it ..The Granda wheels out the old farmers bidding trick .. 

The Strong Club ...and the Negative Diamond

No alerting No nothing ..

However its a serious move ...and catches a large fish.. 

Now this could be legit ,,,,granda might be using the forcing club neg diamond to find

out if his partner has 6+ hcp and we might be thinking its all strange ..,,but it might be perfectly 

normal in Granda land .. Like back in 1989 Galligan thought he was the business when he bid 2S response to 1NT with 20 hcp to find out if partner held a maximum or minimum. He did not know 

the 4NT quantitive back then. 

Anyway Granda hoovered in 100% for being in the right contract. 

He just does not understand the cardplay 

............

But down the end ... Granda went on a crazy run... all nothing to with him 

board 24 saw granda gifted overtricks in 3NT 

.......

Then boards 25-27 saw Higgins and O'Sullivan put on the Santy Hats .. 

Those three 100% hands were not the doing of the great Granda tom.

On the first, his opponents failed to compete to 3♣ with their nine-card fit, although they were doomed for a bad score as long as GT didn't fail to win a heart before cashing both his diamond winners.

On the second, he achieved a fantastic score by jumping to 3N with ♠AQx ♥xx ♦AKxxxx ♣xx. Maybe a little unusual, but the crime here was North playing a third round of spades after South discarded all his spades and made it clear that West was cut off. This turned -2 into a make.

On the third, Granda tom got his top when his opponents bid to a bad contract, and then misplayed it (despite there being no way to do any better double dummy).

...........................

So Granda we will be waiting for you in the Ireland Imps Pairs ...

Every night 830pm .... Keep away from that Sligo warren of iniquity. 

Fearghal will have you playing bad bridge soon ... 

The return of the Meadowlark ..was a fine bridge program for Windows in 1990s

 Folks 

Accidently today while reminiscing I looked for Meadowlark Bridge. 

Lo and behold Meadowlark has returned to life 

Meadowlark Free shop

So I went to the Meadowlark page and after some fumbling I clicked on Shop and then the picture 

of the birds and then added to cart and then clicked the Cart top right and carried on 

and eventually got 0.00 and no credit card it brought me to a place to download 

Meadowlark Bridge. Got an exe file called mb.exe

I installed it to check it was real program before telling you folk about it .. 

All good and installed ...seems to be written in python ... 

Now to figure out how to use it 

All I know is Meadowlark was a fine program before GIB arrived and later Jack. 

........

Apparently the Meadowlark engine is the engine for the Tricky Bridge phone app. 

.....................................

Some work to do here yet. It won't work on my ALL in ONE machine but it does work somewhat on my laptop. Its written in Python so is interesting. However I will report back when I figure it out. 

 

You too can be better than BJ O'Brien for a week but not Karl Cashen

 Bridge Now    a fine site to practice bridge on 

I have been using this site since about 2015 at least ... its a good website 

Some years ago I spotted the account Esther Mor that plays over 100 hands every week. However the account seldom gets past 20% score. Thus I wonder who could play 100-150 hands a week and get this bad score. Many years ago probably late 1980s  I had a bridge console and my baby brother worked out he could bid 7NT on every hand and win loads of points as the claims were not checked ...

Then some years later  one night I went to one of my early PCs which had a bridge program on it and found he has wrecked that game as well by bidding 7NT for his opponents and then doubling them and getting loads of points .. Well he was only about 10 years old ..but he gamed all those machines and programs. Meadowlark bridge was the program ...around 1993....so he was about 10. I was not happy but after about an hour I just reinstalled the program and all was well. 

Meadowlark Bridge 

Wow I just googled and found out Meadowlark is coming again ..in 2020

It was a fine program in its day ...Now there is a new day ..

Galligan misclicks on a spade and makes 4H instead of 4H plus 3

 A few minutes ago I was playing on 

http://www.bridge-now.com/

And I as they say it misclicked on a spade as they say ....

However I know myself I told my fingers to click on a spade ... I did not mean to but I am 100% certain my brain got confused and I thought click on spade ... instead of diamond ... 

This is NOT the purpose of an UNDO ....

If you were aiming for Diamond 3 and your mouse slipped then maybe you can ask for UNDO or else be a little more careful. 

In the above case I knew I had 13 tricks and I got distracted or brain accident but I clicked on the spade and then knew I did not mean it ... 

YOU CANNOT HAVE UNDO FOR THIS ...

The site I was on does not allow UNDOs anyway ..

So I got 14% instead of 90% 

So when playing on BBO be honest about your undos .. 

Connor Doyle struggle in Ireland Imps Pairs ..Cobol Cate offers help on Grand Slam

 Ireland Imps Pairs every night at 830pm Interesting hands but I never look at them beforehand

Last I spotted legendary golf rescue coach loitering near the bottom of the imp pairs. Doctor Sean who can save you 10 shots on your golf game by using the rescue loft club. 

So the first example saw our boys take a crack at Pat Coffeys 2C contract but they only managed 

to collect down 2 instead of the possible 3 down. 

First at trick 6 Culbaire slipped by continuing a small trump ..maybe it was a misclick or maybe it was after the good play by Coffey of ducking trumps and leading Doyle into the swamp. 

However Coffey fired his gain right back like the Monaghan GAA team today. 

7 points up at half time and they lost it ... 

Play continued until trick 11 when Doctor Connor skewed his mouse off the Heart 8 and onto the big Spade. Missing out on the class play of H8 which would have skewered Coffey for another 200. 

On this board Doyle and Connor chose to stop in 3S as they only had 19 combined points. 

Thats reasonable enough. However with 10 tricks available the off form Doyle managed to 

wander into down 1 territory. It looks intuitive to cross ruff but its a better idea to make  a plan 

that is going to get you 9 or 10 tricks as opposed to going plodding and hoping. 

I think they have a thing called hit and hope in the golf 

Down 1 went Doyle and a missed chance of plus imps. 

Board 5 saw Connor not happy with having got in his 1S overcall deciding to introduce

the EIGHT high diamond suit totally ignoring zaczac negative double. 

Zaczac doubled again thunderously and the ROBO was listening and PASSED. 

4 down and 800 for the robozac. 

Next we found the Connor Doyle combo boom into 7S but unfortunately the play did not 

match the bidding. Most grand slams need a little bit of Matt Forde ....a famous Wexfordman 

from the GAA. 

Our man won the opening lead with Diamond king and set off drawing 3 rounds of trumps.

I cannot see any possible way for this line to make the contract and I expected better from declarer Doyle who can play a little some days. However this was a non-play day. 

...............

So I asked Cobol Cate ... 

She said I win Diamond King 

T2 3 4 I play AK clubs and ruff a club.

T567 I draw 3 rounds of trumps and end on Spade Queen. 

trick 8 I ruff my last club

trick 9 A of Hearts ....I  think its from Austria ..Vienna coup

trick 10 small diamond to QUEEN ..

trick 11 ..I play my last trump and watch the gallant opponent with HEART QUEEN and long diamonds

CRUMBLE ...13 tricks made

Board 9 the intrepid duo pounced on Mollyhen from Athy in 3H. 

The lads took the first 4 tricks and then failed to take the setting trick and 

Molly headed for home in 3HX and 530.

Cobol Cate arrives in 6NT in the Ireland Imp Pairs

 The Ireland Imp Pairs takes place every night at 830pm. None of this 715-740pm stuff when BBO building cleaners are around with need to plug in their hoovers and unplug a server or 2. 

So its Cobol Cate on declarer against the Defenders Double Declan and Double Deane who claim

they are better than what it says on the double dummy printouts by Deep Finesse who can see all the cards. 

So Cobol Cate hoovers up the Diamond lead with King 

T2. Advances a small Heart to reach dummy.

T3 Runs Spade 10 successfully keeping lead in dummy

T4 plays spade 5 to spade Jack winning and reaching the below position

One small point ..Cobol Cate would be better use HT and keep the hearts fluent for later finessing.

So what next ... The Deanster points at the clock and puts the rush on Cobol Cate who remains 

unmoving doing her sums .. A club finesse looks nice 

T5 we do the Club finesse and that wins ...

T6 we do another Club finesse and note the Deansters hilow with trepidation ... and Lightning swoops 

in with the Club King.. 

Lightning can see that HEART and SPADE returns are hopeless so returns Diamond 10 

won by Cobol Cate with Ace. 

Cobol Cate notes the Deansters discomfort on discarding on 2 winning clubs and feels some hope

4 cards left and only 3 winners so looks like one down ... 

Trick 10 Heart to the King ..and the Deanster follows easily 

Spade Ace is cashed and the Deanster wobbles a little ... 

The poor Deanster is caught in the vice like grip of Cobol Cate and can throw a winning diamond or bear the Heart Jack ... 

6NT bid and made by Cobol Cate ... and our intrepid defenders would be 24 imps worse off if they played Cobol Cate .... 

Happily for Mary Deane they played Mr Potato and he cashed Spade ace at trick 4 and left all the pain

go away. 

Cobol Katie shows how to make 3S doubled against all the odds

 Recently Cobol Katie took up bridge and tried to use her programming skills to work the cards. Unfortunately her partner Accounting Dora swears by the Hackett convention. 

So poor old Cobol Kate ends up in 3SX and looks in Deep Trouble

Trick 1 .. North leads and wins Hearts

Trick 2 North leads another Heart and Cobol Katie ruffs

Trick 3 Cobol Katie being short of trumps starts off using her reserve suit Clubs as a kind of trumps. 

Club to the Jack ...she uses finesse as entry to work the diamonds

Trick 4 Cobol Kate leads a diamond towards KQ and South starts to feel the pain 

lets say Cobol Kate is allowed win King diamond and Kate advances another Club finesse 

South ruffs

Nothing better to do except play a trump 

Meanwhile Accountant Dora is doing the sums in her spreadsheet and sees NINE is possible and starts bouncing in her managerial chair as the BOSS looks through the window. She can see that slowly a bright light is coming down the tunnell and its not a train ..its Cobol Kate cycling the Club Suit as reserve trumps. Eventually South will ruff for the final time and win her 4th trick but Accountant Dora will be totting up the score for 3S doubled and made .. 

What a player is this Cobol Katie. 

She might replace Declan the Donplayer or Shane the Unblocker in my stories. 

How not to bid a slam in 6NT from Ireland Imps Oct28th 2020

 Nightly Ireland Imps Pairs ... this is the best session of bridge on BBO .. 830pm Irish time

2 BBO dollars ... 24 hands with some nice interference bidding on some boards 

Sacrifice bidding does work on some boards

Good morning folks 

Last night despite the BBO blip at around 7pm Ireland time BBO managed to get everything up and running in time for our nightly games. I understand that many folk think they are the only single person in the world locked out of BBO at any one time but its not true ...it is 50000 other folk all banging their keyboards and tablets and mice and Ipads at the same time with the same problem. Eventually BBO will solve the issues ....last night the cleaning person pulled out the plug on a server in Las Vegas to run his hoover for 20 minutes and we bridge players had to wait while he or she cleaned the room. 

So we pushed back the start times by 15 minutes or so and off we went .. 

I saw a hand in the Ireland Imp pairs last night with a regular partnership of a couple of years at the helm. This pair has many successes at the intermediate A and B level. So lets see them bid a slam. 

North South remain silent ..sitting in awe of their well known opponents

1 diamond goes number 1 after picking up a nice 19 count with a VOID

1 spade replies number 2 as she caresses her 6 spades to the AQ

STOP 3NT goes number 1 as she rushes to tell partner the good news of her 19 point hand

Number 2 opens the kennel and unleashes Frankie otherwise known as Big Dog GRRRR BRRRRR

4C from number 2 ....how many aces you got 

4H from number 1 ... I got one of them aces 

Thats not grand says number 2 we are only missing one but  we can still bid a small slam 

She sends off Frankie again and asks how many KINGS ...

5C ... 5NT roars number 1 ... I got 3 big kings ...

Hmmmm says number 2 ... we are missing an Ace and a King ... oh well ...

Locks Frankie Gerber away and says sure my 6 card spades will be trumps ...

Yikes goes number 1 ... we can hardly play in spades with my VOID ... 6NT she goes 

..........

A club is led and number 1 attempts to count 12 tricks .... and can only find about 10 

..........................

So what went wrong ...

1. They only had 30 points 

2. They were missing an Ace and a King 

3. One had a VOID in partners main suit 

4. They had no trump fit 

5. They never met my friend Sally Dawson  from Fitzwilliam ......she says 

"Plus in part score beats down in slam or even plus in game gets a game bonus" 

After dropping 28 imps on the first 3 boards our intrepid pair did well to end up on only minus 10 imps after 24 hands ..

There was no hurry on the above board ... spade void should slow things down 

1D 1S 

2H 3S

3N 

2H shows 17+ so thats the 19 hcp taken care of 

3S shows 6 card spades ..no good opposite void ...also no other suit or secondary diamond support

Thus better stop in 3NT having shown all our stuff and got no good news ..

Leave Frankie in the kennel

Painting oneself in the corner. Ireland Imps Pairs 830pm every night

This evening I was reviewing the big scores from Malahide this morning to see what tips I can learn for when the COVID tide recedes. I spotted an opponent of one of the leading pairs bidding 6NT. However he declared from wrong side and I presumed leading pair got him down for their 100%. I looked anyway. I could not see any way to lose the slam. 

Just play Diamond King and next trick he sees Spade Queen ... 

Unfortunately a trick ahead of himself probably and instead of a nice 100% in the bag he ended up with 0% as he locked himself in dummy to lose the last 2 tricks in Hearts. I did this myself once in Drogheda Congress was racing towards making 7C grand slam against Ciara Burns and Murchan but got a trick ahead of myself and blew it . 

Last night in the Ireland Imps one chap called the other a chimp for bidding 3H jump bid and not alerting it. Then he called me a jellyfish...Hopefully someday Garve meets the Lions Mane and finds out the real deal. 

I mean does this really need alerting. Its simple Acol bid ..limit raise 10-12 hcp. 

Then he started crying about 4C makes but sure the robot does not understand alerts. 

Then he put on a big sulk and would not bid on the next board. 

Eventually I had to put in a robot to play last hand of the set. A grown man sitting there sulking.

What a whinger and crybaby. 

However at least he is an honest whinger so we won't be blocking him yet. 

I guess he will do a sulk now and not appear for several days but he will return. They always return. 

I do understand a little bit but sulker is basing his whinge on allways3 being an Expert. Its great for allways3 that thegarve rates him as an expert player. 

Hand 1 Charles Higgins Session 2 ....we missed again

 A few days ago I was playing the Charles Higgins Session 2 boards and hand 1 was annoying me. I tried the effect of passing my partners weak 2 opening but the robot EW roared in with a double and a jump to 4C. So we looked at that and figured well we should get 2H tricks and 1 diamond  and 1 spade trick so down 1 is surely good for us ..

So we defended 4C and no matter what I tried the North robot insisted on giving a ruff and discard in Hearts thus allowing 4C to make .. Later on it slowly dawned on me that 4C was cold and the North robot was not giving away the contract. 

So I had a look at the results in Malahide. We have 24 results and 14 of them are an unmolested 2H contract. The EW folk just sit there and take the medicine with no argument. Most of them blow a trick on defence and shrug ...Nothing we could do ...and take their 25% scores. 

1. East could try an aggressive 3C bid ...Now that is fairly hungry......

2. Coming around to West he or she could consider a takeout double 

3. push them up to 3H ...you might defend better and get them down 

4. Opponents who are under pressure often struggle to make contracts

5. 2H is nice and soft ..not much pressure or danger of going down.....

6. so 14 tables where we can attempt to improve the EW score up from 25% ...

Moving on ...to the other 10 tables 

7. First line we have a 3D by West ...doomed to failure as only 6 tricks available 

but at least they had a go .... Now a little education and we might get this West 

to bid DOUBLE ..not put all eggs in one basket and enlist partners help in choosing a 

suit to play in ..

8. Looks like 8 pairs went willing to 4H and got bad scores for this ...However these

folk are closer to the mark as they have sacrificed against the cold 4C contract but the poor 

souls get 9 points out of 46 .. a fairly miserable return for taking the best action. 

Why is bidding good getting such a poor return. 

9. Finally the one EW pair who almost got it right ...5C-1 ...despite going overboard they still 

hauled in a nice 75% score ..stopping in 4C would have been nearly all the eggs. 

In this case the East player produced a 3C bid and partner overcooked it 

going all the way to 5C ...

10. How are so many capable players missing this hand by so much. 

There are no names mentioned here .. but most of the players above are playing past 30 years 

and consider themselves capable .. 

The hand was dealt normally and not created or fixed but I think it tells a story on not being 

competitive enough. 

Many years ago an old lad called Walshe in the Bankers Bridge Club ..He is dead since and suffered from what is now called dementia but he did his best and generally managed ok. 

He told me ...if you do nothing else ..don't let the opposition stop in 2 level if you can think 

of any excuse to bid. You can let them off if you have trumps as then I am short and have not done anything. Paddy Walshe was his name and he is neither of the more famous Galway and Listowel Paddys. 

A few hands that went awry in Ireland imps pairs Monday

 Ireland Imp Pairs every night at 830pm ... a great workout or training session ...

No 4333 hands here ..,. No 1NT all pass here ... 2BBO dollars 28 boards ... The real deal .. 

The despondent return of the Tranmers did nothing for the Ireland imps pairs. After a dismal round 2 when their Northern com-padres Connell and Marge destroyed them the Trannies were fighting a hard battle to rise from the depths. 

Board 27 saw the Trannies receive a nice gift from former international woman player Maria someone as she gifted them a going down all day partscore 

I mean why can you not have 2D 1H and 1S for down 1. 

Somehow Maria chose to roar up with Ace of Hearts and create discard for Tranmer to roll home 

the no play 4C ... plus 8 imps for Tranmer 

Then we were onto 3S on board 23 ... again 5 tricks off the top ...but no ...the defenders chose not to

do the business and Tranmer was away again for slates .. West even made the perfect Club lead .. 

Another 6 imps in the Tranmer bag ... No wonder people think he is too good for the Ireland Imps .. 

He is like a reverse Santa Claus. 

And we move on and we find Bruree in a cold 4S ...He knows from bidding where HA is but chooses to forget that opening bid ... down 1 in cold one and Tranmer is flying ... another 13.5 imps in the Tranmer bag . 

  My final example on this run sees Tranmer take the push to the failing 3D contract and then MaryPT pushes on to the hopeless 4C .. another 5 imps in Tranmers bag.. 

With a flash of his wand Tranmer has landed 32 imps in the plus ...and not a sign of MrT1000 on these boards. MrT2000 might be the greatest bunnybasher of the Covid era ...He is certainly racking up the imps since mid March .. However these 4 boards were all gifts from above.

Meanwhile ..its time to examine how the Tranmers came a cropper against the non-descript Donegal duo Connell and Marge... 

Board 5 Tranmers gained 2 imps for a missed slam 

Board 6 .. 

Its a going down 4H but it is quite tough it seems to me ... something about spades and trumps and thus Tranmer could not find the double dummy switch of a small spade 

Then Mrs1000 came alive and bid a decent 6D ..but again it was off as had to lose Ace and an offside trump queen. 

Board 8 saw the whole world making partscore or game in spades but Tranmer stopped off to collect plus 100 in 3HX. 

Finally revenge of the Bruree Joe as he roared into a cold 6S and played it perfectly to make loads of imps. Go on Bruree .. This left the shell shocked Tranmers down in bunny land hoovering up the lettuce and carrots .. 

The Donal is not the Tommy at the bridge

 Ireland imp Pairs every night at 830pm Good hands competitive bidding and Donal bidding 

Tonight I spotted this rare bidding

1C P 1S! X

P 2D  P 2N

P P X

I think a redouble happened and 2200 happened ...just like me in Brighton right Tommy. 

The West made an error in the bidding and the John Comyn was there to show

him the error of his ways 

It was hand 13 of the Ireland Imps pairs last night 

The Blindspot series continues with a hand from Ireland imps. Game at 830pm nightly

 Ireland imps pairs takes place every night at 830pm with 24-28 boards of Elvis deals ..no passouts and not much 1NT all pass. 

Right so with partner opening the bidding and Thomas holding a juicy 10 count of Ace and 2 Kings one fancies this will go down which it will. 

North makes the italian lead of a singleton as is not certain of the ability of HJ to work in its own right. 

So spade5 lead actually drops a trick but thats okay as the "expert" Allways3 often pays back a trick. 

So on we go and the North after winning spade ruff with HJ for some reason figures a club King will be a good idea despite the void in the dummy. So a club it is and now Allways3 can see the light and starts to bounce in his chair and starts counting in the 9 imps for making. 

He does some ruffing and draws a round of trumps nicely and now has only 4 cards left and is still in a winning position. However now his facemask drops over his eyes from his forehead and the blindspot sets in. For some reason allways3 draws another trump as he does not learn about cross ruffing method yet. The bad news is thegarve might read this and learn some information for his next battle with allways3. So allways3 clicks on a trump and feels the same feeling as the nephew felt in Homeland as his beloved uncle pulled the trigger. 

So Uncle Thomas finally reaches the stage but unfortunately only has a loose grip on allways3. 

Uncle Thomas does not realise that allways3 has made a booboo and follows the old book rule of if you can draw 2 trumps for one its normally a good deal. 

However it is not a good deal when there are 2 winners left for declarer and you have just dispatched your final trump. 

All Thomas has to do is play a diamond and allways3 becomes allways1downdoubled. 

Eventually TRUMP 6 becomes a master card and there is nothing that allways3 can do. 

I presume it was a blindspot or a reflex action by Thomas but its 16 imps gone in the bin ..

Just in case the naysayers start whinging about highlighting a chaps bad hand ...I did speak to Thomas last night on this hand and told him I am firing up my blog...

He replied "LOL" ... which means "laughing out loud " 

Many years ago when I made my debut on the online bridge I was greeted with all these "lol" messages ...I wondered why so many people were talking about "little old ladies" or "little old lads" 

There was also "lmao" ...which I eventually learned meant "laughing my ass off " 

or rotfl meaning "rolling on the floor laughing "