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 " 

Board 9 Gala Pairs Malahide ... continuing the Blindspot series

 Ireland Imps Pairs takes place every night at 830pm. Good hands no Pass outs .. a little shook up and stirred. 

Meanwhile I was perusing through the Malahide Gala Pairs results and the Declarer had played and noted the Declarer had taken part and noted several boards for declarer to examine. However that is another story, Tonight we are going to look at Board 9. 

Many declarers made 3NT despite being short of tricks and eventhough they got a fine lead into AJT. 

14 declarers made 3NT .. and 12 of them received a killing HEART lead so what went wrong. Well I don't know what happened but seems the defence dropped their guard. Lets look at the first one. 9v36

Small H lead and when declarer tackled clubs they both duck .. East is correct but West should take as this club is the 9th trick for declarer .. West wins club and puts heart thru and its down 1. Both ducking club means 9 tricks is there. 

Next exhibit saw a HK lead and all went well until Defender East failed to cash the last winning heart for some reason ...maybe was a misclick or maybe a misbrain or something but declarer was left away. 

We will look at one more ... Facelle and Picolino ... same as first exhibit they ducked the club and that is declarers 9th trick .. This declarer actually made 11 tricks when sheet indicates it should only be 8 

There are 8 or 9 more exhibits of declarer being allowed make a contract that should be down. 

Link to BBO result

Maybe its because its matchpoints and the defence are afraid of giving away the 10th trick. Who knows but the 3NT folk should all be going down on the above board .. 

The Ireland Imps Pairs is a nightly competition of IMPS scoring and is a great training session. 

Ireland Imps Webpage

Have a look at previous results  above link .. We also run a ladder competition of best 40 results added together in the year. 

Board 5 Malahide Gala Pairs ..is it a blindspot or what went wrong

 Ireland Imp Pairs takes place every night at 830pm ..Good hands decent opponents.. a couple of cute hoors ..a village idiot and a clown ..

Meanwhile in the leading club in the Broadmeadows area something bad happened. We had the opening event of the season and this year it was online due to the pandemic. However the pandemic of generosity was clear on board 5 as all defenders offered up free contracts 

Many defenders as west led off with spade 6 keeping their nice diamond suit for later earnings when partner gets on play. However it all seems to have gone wrong after trick 1. So what went wrong ..how did 9 10 and 11 tricks happen when the flogger indicates 7 tricks are the most for declarer. One thing is for sure the Malahide defenders are very HONEST and most generous. 

Looking at all 4 hands one can see .. 5 diamond tricks and a spade Ace but something went very wrong for most of these defenders.

Maybe they were still waiting to do their SIGNAL as declarer wrapped up the 10th or 11th trick. However something is clearly wrong with defensive signalling or thinking in Malahide Regional. 

I understand that the clubs motto is CARADEAS TRI IOMANIOCHT ...but its a long time since I have seen that written down and I think it comes from the past and means something like "We play hard ..We beat all but we remain friends " ...However these days something is wrong with the defenders ...

Maybe its because its matchpoints and they are afraid to give away an extra trick or maybe its because in the old days the jeweller would be shining his diamond ring with his handkerchief after leading a spade. 

At table 1 the mighty William Ronan is on declare and the defence leads spade and wins Spade Ace .. 

Returns a spade and the mighty claims 11 tricks quickly or slowly ..I don't know as I was not there. 

1NT and a Stayman auction saw Ronan bid 2D response ... Could West have mentioned a double of this 2D to indicate interest or is it too risky .. Anyway did not happen and 76% to NS. 

Table 2 and we have the powerful Doyles versus some other defenders ... Here Lando opened 1D so that might stop any switching to diamonds despite the singleton in the dummy ... 

Spade 6 lead and Ace wins and spade 10 is returned for some reason and Lando does the Billy Ronan thing and its 11 tricks and 76% 

Table 3 ..any better luck .. maybe ..here we have ping pong man on defence .. a table tennis superstar of the past ... No its not Alan Roughneed.. 

1D 1H 1N 3N ...and a spade 6 is led and the Ping Pong man slaps it with his Spade Ace bat .. and slams back his partners lead and South does the Billy Ronan thing and its 11 tricks and 76% NS. 

Table 4 and its the mighty Wed night star Facelle in the East seat but all that happens is more 76% NS. 

I blame Patrico Engoldsby  ... Rule number 1 ...Make sure you return partners suit ...its sacrosinct or sacrosanc or some word like that ... I know there are folk who still have a folder 27 years later with the Patrico Engoldsby notes from the first bridge class ... and Rule number 1 is ..return partners suit .. and rule number 2 is return partners suit .. and rule number 3 is return partners suit .. 

However what if you did not get lessons from Patrico Engoldsby ... what if Patrico Engoldsby never said return partners suit ... what if Patrico Engoldsby said ... ARCH ... 

Analyze the LEAD 

Review the BIDDING 

Count the TRICKS 

Have a PLAN ... 

The above is normally for declarer but it probably works for a defender as well ... 

Anyway if you did go to lessons with whomever was the bridge teacher in your local area ... those were lessons to start you off as a bridge player ....after the lessons ended you were meant to develop your game and beat all the opponents .. 

You can perform your own analysis on the other 20 odd tables of Masters and Inter As but all left out a plus score North South ..when none is there ... 

find board 5 here

https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=24406-1599244213&u=ronanb

Several other boards like board 15 were much the same generocity 

Ireland Imps Pairs every night 830pm

 Folks every night at 830pm  we hold the Ireland imps pairs. 28 boards with lots of bidding and very few 4333 hands or 1NT PPP hands. Competitive bidding a plenty ... the opposition here interfere and interfere lots. 

Here is a hand where one opponent called his opponent something not so good 

South found a double of Easts opening 1S bid and West expressed sorrow about this bid. 

North South found their way into 5D doubled and disrupted Wests drive towards a slam.

However maybe Wests 4S bid was a little timid with such a strong hand. Playing 5 card majors we can hardly call Qxxxx of spades as 2.5 losers ..its probably 1 loser at most. So the hand is very slammish.

Being favourable vulnerability its open door for South to try any sacrificial move.

The result of Sept 19th above

Link to Sept 19th results

Sept 15th Ireland Imps Pairs Comyn and Curragh win

 830pm every night we run this Ireland imps pairs 

Malahide Congress Teams runners up John Comyn and Guy de Maupassant dominated the Ireland Imp Pairs on Monday night. They both had good helpers in their partners molleyhen and curragh8. 

Curragh8 got home in 6H to get the winners off to a good start on board 3 

but maybe it was the experience who leapt to 6H over 4H. 

Confidence in partners play I guess. 

Then we came across an east west pair who made nice bids but 

unfortunately they got a little high in the bidding and got sent the 

Curragh kiss. 

5D down a few and a nice stash of imps 

And above are the results showing the broad back of Curragh8 tranporting J Comyn 

over the line fending off the fast closing Carolyn Donnell and Kenny from Scotland.

September 16th Ireland Imps Pairs results Terry Gilligan

Ireland Imps Pairs runs every night at 830pm .. 24-28 boards in 6 or 7 rounds.  

Last night Tom Gilligan and Dave Terry posted a fine 68 imps plus score in the Ireland imps pairs. 

This left them 40 imps clear of 2nd place but they did not hit the front straight away. They had a 12 board battle with fellow Malahide players Elaine Caulfield and Agnes Kelly in rounds 4 5 an 6 and eventually won by polishing off Carolyn O'Donnell and Kenny in the final round. 

A good start as the robot sitouts opted to go all the way to 5Ds missing out on the better 4H contract. 

This generated 9 imps for Terry and Gilligan. 

However the 9 imps went back as this 5H was too tough to bring home with

5-0 trumps offside. 

These boys appear to be playing strong NT which they would have indicated on

arrival at the table. However I don't see any alert of the redouble. However

in this case the opps damaged themselves after the unalerted redouble so could have no

complaint. Unalerted bids can cause a pair to lose any gain connected to the non-alert. 

Here the 5CX might have made but the 5S offered was definitely not making. 

And above the results for September 16th

Sept 5th Ireland Imp pairs Bob and Martin Garvey win

 Last night in the Ireland imp Pairs the much "put your own word in " Martin Garvey saddled up with Bob the Robot and stormed to victory. There is an idot from Yorkshire who I don't even know but for some reason she decided to term me as someone who washes Garveys car or donkey but she used more coarse words than that. A nasty piece of work I am advised. Hopefully she will stay away from Ireland Imps pairs forever more. 

Anyway here are a few hands 

Anyway for some reason thegarve figured 3NT was a good idea. 

The defence stayed off HEARTS for much too long and thegarve gathered in 12 imps.

Again thegarve sails into 3NT and again the opps leave him alone to build 9 tricks and thegarve sails off with another 8 imps in the bag. Only round 1 and he has the bat out and ready for enlever. 

Finally in the last round the opponent and his robot climbed into 6H and thegarve waiting patiently delivered the hammer. Another 12.5 imps. Who says you have to be good. Just wait in the grass and the food will arrive. 

Plenty of decent players show up in the Ireland imp pairs. A good session for Teams practice as you can call the 4 board rounds as Team matches if you choose. 

sept 4th Ireland Imp Pairs sees the aspiring Sean Connor win the day

 Last night we continued the nightly Ireland imp pairs and we saw Sean and Brian win the day. 

Our intrepid lads climbed into the making 6Ds. I am not fully sure what the rest of the field were doing but 3NT plus loads seemed the order of the day. This is a good 6D and needs just to play high cards. However many players who consider themselves quite decent are not getting past 3NT. Of course they will say we took the middle road and got average. Average does not win. 

Surely a Strong NT in South facing the North monster should be examining slam. 

Then board 8 saw West stick it to the lads with a low point 3S opening. No problem a Skibbereen 3NT bid and a 5D bid and a 6D bid and we were in the making slam again. Not to be out done EW tried to save but were too many trick off at non vul. 

Meanwhile Dave Terry and his Bob were kicking up a storm and leading into the final board but failing to find a vulnerable game or at least take the insurance in case it made saw Terry and Bob overtaken on the final board .  number 28 

September 3rd results ..Hunter wins

 Last night in the Ireland Imps Pairs former Regent stalwart Bill Hunter won the day. In round 1 Mr Couloure from the Northside dispatched himself in 3NT for 6 tricks and a bucket of imps for Hunter and the Robot. 

I am not fully sure how Mr Couloure managed to confine himself to 6 tricks but some magic in the clubs and diamonds was required. 

Later on Bill Hunter opened a diamond and West was sleeping and the robot banged out a 3D bid and all passed quietly ... East West missing their Heart part score or game and Hunter landing the 3D contract to boot. Another 10 imps to Hunter and Bob the bot.

Finally we have the scores and Hunter plus Bob are well clear of some aspiring bridge players like Sean Connor the well known card sharp from down Waterford way these days. 

Last night I misclicked September 02

 Tonight due to my misclick last night I will give the extra boards if folk want them. 

830pm start for the Ireland Imp pairs 

Last night I did a misclick and amazingly BJ recalled boards 1 2 3 were same as 22 23 24 ...

So I deleted boards 22 23 24 using an old face to face scoring program and the results are here

September 02 fixed results

Norbert wanted his partners score above average and that happened as BJs 3 passouts sent them tumbling.