The Killarney Online Diarmuidfest

Yesterday thanks to Diarmuid Reddan and his helpers we had the Killarney Online bridgefest.
Now I did not notice Nicky Wheels present but there must be a reason. Nicky turns up at every other dogfight in the real world but maybe there is no IPAD on his wheels.

Anyway a couple of hands that got my attention. I was following and keeping an eye on the Derry bridge expert O'Kane and his Austrian partner. So when BJ O'Brien rocked up with his possibly professional but seriously capable Limerick connected DanMac one feared the worse for O'Kane and herself. On the first board having no fear BJ fires off an old fashioned Ekrens bid.
Myself and Thomas MacCormac used to play this convention many years ago and at one stage we termed it "So good its better than cheating" ...Anyway BJ must have heard about it.

The first board anyway saw the Derry boy  open a normal 1H and BJ produced what was going to become a strong hand with Diamonds. A delicate 2H from South and an interesting 3C from Dan MacCormac. Now as BJ is not much good for the conventions unless they fit his hand for the post mortem one guess there is no lebonsohl at play here. A delicate 3H persuader from up top and BJ follows on with a 4D bid and with Dan MacCormac bidding 5D for some reason best known to himself the Derryman just had to sit there and gather in the 97% score for 5D vulnerable off 2.
...........
The 2nd board loomed and one expected BJ to strike back and even the set
BJ looked in his golf bag and found the Ekrens club and looked at his hand and thought that will do.
So a large swing with the Ekrens Club .... vulnerable and all ...and the ball went tumbling towards the rough.

A double from South showing some kind of values of the strong NT variety and DanOMahony pushed with 3H. The big man up North passed quietly waiting for another double and his bonus.
4C came back from South and the big man was probably doomed for a poor score. Maybe he would have passed 4C and got a decent score against all the other poor NS's who did not get the warning about the majors breaking badly. Anyway Danmac rentered the fray with a 4H bid. Something is very off with this version of DanMac on these 2 boards. Maybe he went to the offie and left his dog play the 2 hands. So when Michael O'Kane saw 4H on the table in front of him he quickly delivered the hammer ..slamming his whiskey tumbler and spilling the whiskey all over his shirt.

DanMac failed to make any overtricks in 4H and it was a fine score for the Derryman and the Austrian.

However that was only a skirmish. For some reason Danmac roared back on the rest of the boards and skinned countless opponents and put the incredible declarer O'Brien in the right spot many times and they ended with a 64% score on the session. However those 2 boards were strange for East West.
Getting clobbered by O'Kane is nothing new for BJ.

For some reason they played different boards in session 2 in 2 sections. Never happen in real life as Diarmuid always carries a dealing machine in his pocket with cables and you better put everything back as you got it if you are lucky enough to get to use it. I know it won't happen again or else it was BBOs fault or maybe BJs fault.

Killarney Diarmuidfest results