A night behind the Flash

Every bridge club owns a Flash. We have Flash Finnegan in Fitzwilliam and we have the Flash Smith brothers in Elm Park. Out in Malahide we have a few flash players. However some of them are slow due to human frailties. These are not the people we are talking about.

I know a lady in one club where I direct and she has severe arthritis in her hands. So for her I do my best to sort the cards for her and also sometimes get help from the table feeding the cards to her and they sort them as they finish.

Another thing that slows down play is the odd person who is recovering from a stroke or the like. Things just don't work as fast. Therefore the director helps out. Again sorting the cards and maybe a seated position.

Then we have the Bridgemate dummy. This is the person who despite being dummy has to do the bridgemate entries BEFORE putting the DUMMY on the table. We could have 2-3 tricks played while the DUMMY is sorting out the bridgemate.

Then there are those champions of DUMMY LAY. One card at a time .. slowly but surely the DUMMY materializes. The bridge teachers need to teach the good and quick methods of laying out the dummy. One card at a time ... this might take 30 seconds .. if same person is dummy all night that could be 20 minutes in a night because some of them also pause for effect.

Galligan versus Galligan bridge movie

Above the last 6 boards of a Sean v Eamon bridge movie.

And finally ..THE FLASH

every morning when you read the daily bulletin there is a small topic about slow play, “ slow play, especially habitual slow play, is a violation of law and subject to penalty” How does it work in the real world? The second session of the Kaplan Blue ribbon pairs I had the pleasure of sitting EW and following “ the Flash” First round, with 2 minutes on the clock the round is called, we try to change tables but they just started bidding their 2nd board. I call the Director. 2nd round, we only have to wait 5 minutes this time, I call the director again. 3rd round the same as well as the 4th round. 5th round is only a minute late, thanks to the hospitality break. I called the director 7 times, the only thing he told me was they had noted my concern.......In total the Flash was late 9 out of 12 rounds. (maybe round 13 as well but I didn’t care, that was the last round. how can directors let this happen? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind if a pair is late once in a while, some boards are more difficult, time consuming, then others. But playing match points, 2 boards a round, horrifying. Funny side fact, in one of the rounds where we started only 4 minutes late, we had a difficult board and the bidding took a least 4 minutes, so we had only 7 minutes or so left on the clock. My opponent called the director and he started pushing us....... This is insane, everybody has 15 minutes for 2 boards, no more, no less. If you can’t play by the rules, don’t play.

I am putting the link to the full article here in case any THOUGHTFUL  PLAYERS read my blog.

Full FLASH article and comments

Galligan v Donegalman .. Bray Congress NIBU Congress is coming

Last night I played 10 boards of a challenge against Wilson and did fairly well. Good content for a video. This morning we finished off the last 6 boards with a cup of tea and a sandwich.

The video is here.

Galligan Wilson video

Results of Bray Congress can be found here as in at the below link.

Link to  Bray Congress   Congress results.

Next Friday we have the Gala Pairs in Malahide to open the season.
Should be 40 tables of Bridge legends in action.
I expect Pat Dunne the tournaments officer has a good plan.

Ann Hassan says Go to Congress before Brexit

Above the link to Congress.

Soon Muttley will be laying down the LAW with a selection of partners.

Galligan plays Malahide boards 11-22

As promised yesterday myself and Jack went into battle again and failed to trouble the scorers when playing the Malahide Strong Game on Tuesdays. Too many mistakes by me and a few errors by the Malahides diminished my score. It has to be somebodies fault. Must be Jack bridge program.

Nobody will fear me anymore. 43% is hardly to be feared.

17th place out of 22 pairs ..well 24 if you count Eamon and the Jacks.

Here is the link to the pain

No pain No gain

A player in this event in real life said I am very brave to post my losing result. I have nothing to hide ..sometimes I lose. Possibly my two table opponents were tougher than the opponents I might have played on the night. However I did tone my Jack down to 75% so that should have evened things up.

Galligan plays Malahide Tuesday with Jack6

This morning I decided to play some of Tuesday night August 20th hands with my trusty partner Jack against the Malahide human comparisons. Unfortunately I did not fare too well.
A comfortable 23rd place out of 24 pairs was a large eye opener. It must have been my partners fault.
Except it was not ... it was some of Eamons too agressive moves.

So 10 boards played and Galligan in 23rd place with only 22 pairs in the field. That says it loud and clear.

Link to Galligan dreadful 10 boards with commentary

However I will be back for the next 2 sessions of 10 boards so watch this space.

Galligan v Mullingar Man Monday AM commentary

This morning I had to finish a bridge video against my original bridge teacher. He is also known as Mullingar Man in my Bridge Video series.

Galligan versus Mullingar man

So we finished that challenge and won by 3 imps ..
However Mullingar man got about 30 imps in presents from Eamon and the robots.

Every challenge I play against Mullingar man I give him a couple of presents and he also gleans some from the robots.

Anyway the bridge keeps him alive.

Meanwhile I Played a BBO challenge against some Malahide intermediates and that did not go well.
Eye was not on the ball and the results prove it.

With Kitkatsist failing to tog out we were left with 4 players and Eamon Galligan finished last place.
However it was my turn as Eamon had destroyed the field in the previous 2 renewals.

Meanwhile Eamon went to Malahide Regional Bridge Club on Monday morning and made some good contracts. He also done several things wrong. The video below gives a quick commentary on the 21 boards we played.

Video Commentary of 21 boards Monday AM

New Bridge Season arriving fast and Malahide Bridge Congress returns

Good morning all

I have neglected my blog recently and this was brought to my attention by a top player from Malahide recently. So here we are.

First exhibit ... A video created on Sunday August 25th. However I could not upload it until the opponent completed the challenge.

Bridgebase challenge Galligan v Magic

Meanwhile the Dublin Summer Congress passed off without any hitches or anything else.
I failed to attend as I had no partner or as Magic Murphy regularly says "Nobody asked me"

Shortly I will play the Tuesday night game of Malahide from August 20th. Rachel and Martin McHale won that game with a large 65% score. I DOUBT if I can beat that score. However I will give it a run.

Dublin Summer Congress results can be found on Bridgewebs at an account called Dublin Summer Congress. One can also Google .. " Dublin Summer Congress 2019 " and probably get the results.

Two new players from Malahide Regional stormed the Inter B section of this congress winning the Teams and Pairs events.

The Malahide Bridge Congress will return in 2020 under the strong guiding arm of Rachel McHale.
Rachel has been active as Social Secretary and possibly other Council positions in Malahide Regional Bridge club. The Congress will be resident at the Grand Hotel Malahide which in the past was a host of some older Malahide Bridge Clubs before my time.

MacCormac starts the run to Spingold history

Tonght at 9pm Irish time Thomas MacCormac enters the ring against the powerful Nickell team.
Thomas is part of the Pressure team which employs a powerful method of bidding to put the opponents under pressure.
I don't know who gets shown on vugraph but I suspect it is the more closer matches like 32 v 33 send rather than 2 v 63 seed. However all will be revealed at 2100 hours. Thomas will be backed up in his efforts by the former Gonzaga bridge expert Stephen Barr.
Yesterday the reserve Pressure team had the air left out of their tyres by the coffee swilling Lavazza team. I think it was 171 imps after 60 boards but maybe they retired early.
.......................
Meanwhile other news saw Galligan power to victory over Mullingar man by 46 imps yesterday.
However Magic Murphy took out Galligan by 17-13 with 2 lucky strikes earning 13 imps.
Kelan O'Connor continues to hold the upperhand at bridge and quiz.
..............
Catherine Carabine only managed 2nd place in the Declan Murray Open Pairs on Monday morning.

Noel Hughes and Anthony McMackin think they dumped on Conor O'Hara yesterday in the evening pairs but Ronan and O'Hara still won the war with a first place finish.
...............................
Meanwhile Team MacCormac fired 18 imps past Nickell who responded in kind with 84 in the first 15 boards. The Hanlon powered Street team lead small by 4 imps against Team Amalia.
Unfortunately Team MacCormac suffered another 84 imps with nothing going back so far in the 2nd set of 15 boards. So its 170 plays 18 now.

Just to indicate how powerful an event this Spingold is ... the Street team powered by Thomas Hanlon among other world class players also went out in the first round.

The Ballina Congress 2019

I just realized that this weekend is Ballina Congress weekend. I stumbled onto Ferghal O'Boyles wonderful results website and checked out the Mixed pairs winners.

Looks like a power packed performance by the Dublin Delaneys. 68% in a Congress event is not to be taken lightly. Maeve has Paul well schooled at collecting good scores.

Looks like there was no Out of State prize for the NIBU  internationals Hilary and John  Ferguson. Maybe the prizes were planned before Brexit got postponed.

Meanwhile the Congress Pairs is about to start and one has to pick a few horses.
In no particular order we choose

1. Brady Delaney
2. Heneghan DeRaeymaker
3. Pat Quinn Enda Glynn
4. Marcin and Ronan
5. Better mention the Fergusons as some day they will win something.

Malahide Regional Bridge Club are represented on 3 pairs

Billy Ronan Tom Gilligan
Fran Ronan Mary Kavanagh
Mary Kelly Rogers Danny Liddy

One expects the top 3 to emerge from my top 4 picks but we will see ..
Maybe Malahide pair Gilligan and Ronan will turn on the style that wins regularly in Malahide.
However the Washington schooled James Heneghan is going to have too much knowledge and then there is Marcin and Ronan just back from a decent performance in European Open Pairs.
Quinn and Glynn should be able to collect lots of overtricks.
However to sum up I think I will go for

1. Heneghan DeRaeymakers
2. Delaney Brady

Ballina Congress and Bridgebase 4 hands

link to video

Bridgebase Group Challenge and THE APPEAL

Last night or early this morning I started to play a group challenge against Murphy Sean Wondercool and Kelan. This morning I logged in and decided to finish the Bridgebase challenge with the camera turned on. 

Kelan says ..."You only post when you are winning " but I did not know I was winning. 

Kelan scores 21.75

Link to last few boards of Bridgebase Group challenge

We also visited Galway Congress in the video. 

In the above video we also revisit the controversial appeal from the Moylan. 

A totally unbelievable turn over of the directors ruling of result stands. 

Eamon would lose loads of good boards in Malahide if this ruling was the standard. 

Eamon is forever bidding STOP 3NT with no agreements. 

One is supposed to ask some other folk their opinion ..

58% lead a diamond with no alert and 52% lead a diamond with an alert. 

The 2 polls are posted on bridgewinners and can be seem in the above video.

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

The Bridgebase Group challenge is a great innovation. The only bad thing is Kelan always wins 

European Teams Day 6

Meanwhile the Ireland Youth team continue their training plan towards victory in next Seasons Junior Camrose. A bye in Round 18 allowed them collect a morale boosting 12 VPS.

Currently they are in a titanic battle with the always powerful Netherlands.
After a bright start where they took an early lead the Netherlands made the comeback and then the overtake.

Meanwhile Galligan finished off the Wilsopd challenge and expects a comfortable victory after gathering in some large final boards.

Galligan should tame Wilson but one never knows

The link to the final 4 boards is above.

Results from the European Youth Team championships can be found here

European Youth U26 Teams championships

Unfortunately the IRELAND East West Nathan Doyle and Michael Donnelly just suffered a painful experience. Their team mates had an imp making score of 2CX and made for 180.
However sadly our boys found their 8 trump cards were not enough to deal with the Dutch in 1H redoubled holding only 5 trumps in a 5-0 fit. Minus 8 imps.

I suppose that is called a DOUBLE BURNS law breaker.

Yes unfortunately 1H redoubled making 7 tricks.

And a final score of IRELAND 16 NETHERLANDS 41

The Final match of today is IRELAND V FRANCE ..STARTING SHORTLY

The European Youths championship 2019

Good morning folks

For the last few days Eamon has been casting a wary eye on the European Youth championships.
The Irish team of

1. John Connolly
2. Michael Donnolly
3. Nathan Doyle
4. Stephen Barr
5. Jarlath McDonnell
6. Conor Farrell.

sprinted out of the starting blocks with almost 68 VPS out of the first 100.

All going well so far but one noted the goalkeeper was leaking at the same time.

The next 100 VPS unfortunately saw Ireland only adding another 16 VPS.
16 per cent return is not too good but according to Facebook the team remained upbeat.

Round 11 saw a drilling from GERMANY
Round 12 saw a medium loss to SLOVAKIA.

Day 4 TUESDAY started with 2 wins but then ITALY AND NORWAY piled on the AGONY.

A 3 point haul from these 2 matches left IRELAND struggling in 20th place of 23.
..............................................

Now before we get too bothered about these results we need to understand that 90% of this field are damn good players. The kind of player who would easily be dominant in the top Dublin clubs. Those clubs are probably still the BANKERS and the REGENT.

Recently Eamon has been playing 16 board challenges against Kelan O'Connor and I have been shipping about 1.5 imps a board out on average. So Eamon is losing each match by about 16-4.
The IRISH team is doing better than Eamon as they are averaging about 7.5 per match.

So now they got to start winning some matches and so does EAMON..
KELAN BEWARE as the tide is going to turn.

Unfortunately for IRELAND YOUTH they just got pole-axed in the first match today ..

.............................
Meanwhile Eamon has been playing a few boards against Wilsopd ..
and I probably am in a losing position at this stage

Eamongall v Wilsopd

The First renewal of THE MUTTON CUP 2019

Good morning few and Garve

This morning I was recording a BBO challenge against Mullingar Man. Unfortunately I probably lost but I landed a good slam on the last board to give me a shot at the title.
I don't know the result as Mullingar man had not completed.

Then entered thegarve and walked all over my video.

Galligan v Mullingarman

Some of his news was good .. Jason Hackett a top English bridge player and chinease food expert is nearly 49 years on this earth.

Hence the inaugural Mutton Cup

The Inaugural Mutton Cup

This is an individual event and all entrants must be known to Mr Mutton or at least be known to someone. Maybe they might like some vugraph.

Meanwhile out in Malahide it looks like the bridgemates gave up or something happened but nobody has rang me so no need for me to vault into firefighting mode. One notes the presence of the newly honed Magic Murphy in the middle of the field

Kelan loses the head and the challenge and MacCormac delivers

This afternoon we had the end of the Qualifying 6 rounds for the European open Pairs
We have some good news. I don't know how clear this is but in short our 6 players qualified for
the A semi final of the European Open Pairs.

Thomas MacCormac B Saker
Thomas Hanlon John Carroll
Ronan McMaugh Marcin Rudzinski

This afternoon I finished the challenge with Kelan and I was successful. Kelan was unlucky on the first 2 boards as he bid a decent 6 clubs contract and hit a 4-1 break and a few other odds and ends.
Then on the 2nd board Kelan bid a good 7 clubs grand slam. Unfortunately for him there was 4 to the JACK of trumps offside. Needless to say Kelan still attempted the endplay.

Galligan v Kelan boards 1-10

Galligan v Kelan Boards 11-16

European Pairs and Kelan

This morning the 2nd stage of the qualifying for the Open Pairs takes place. We have 3 Irish Pairs involved.

1. Legendary Irish bridge teacher Thomas McCormac partnered by Saker

2. Famous Tyrone bridge player Ronan McMaugh along with Polish national and 

    Irish international bridge player Marcin Rudzinski 

3. Thomas Hanlon and John Carroll. 

All 3 are currently running well in the qualifying positions. 

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

Today while watching the scores coming through on the webfeed I was playing a  BBO CHALLENGE against the unknown bridge player Kelan from Kerry. 

He is a great supporter of Kerry GAA. 

Here are the first 10 boards and Eamon thinks he is in good shape for a tight game against Kelan.

Galligan versus Kelan 1-10    Movie

...........

Also there was a Twitch feed with commentary on the Euro Teams Final 

Twitch feed of Netherland v Mossop

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

On Monday I saw the most bizarre bid ever 

After a weak 2H open by West the bridge player found the bid of 2NT showing 12-14 hcp and the other major. Apparently this is called Hackett convention.

A few boards later another demonstration of the Hackett convention in flying form. 

Again 2H opening by West and the bridge player bids 3 Diamonds alledgedly the Hackett convention showing 15+ points and bidding will continue from there. 

Galligan is wondering why there is no 2 Spades bid in Hackett .. 

European Open Teams moving day June 23 2019

Meanwhile out in INSTANBUL  we have the European Open Team championships.

Ireland are represented by Team Moran and Team MacCormac. Starting today both teams were struggling but we had some hope for Team Moran as they have plenty of Top 32 class in their team.
Led by the lengthy partnership of Mesbur Fitzgibbon who might have 100 years of bridge experience between them. They also have Thomas Hanlon and the swashbuckling pair of Garvey and Carroll.

Hopefully they have done loads of preparation for this event. Adam Mesbur and Nick Fitzgibbon have been very visible on BridgeBase Online in the last 6 months. I heard Krystoff Martens telling the lads a few years ago .. "You guys amateurs .. you guys need 10 days of warm up to reach our level" "Me proffessional ..always ready to go"

Anyway this afternoon the bridge started at 12 noon due to a local event in Turkey clashing.

Round 6

A good start for Team Moran
Round 7

A slight hiccup and loss of momentum ..
Board 29 might need some analysis if they remain alive after 2 more matches

Round 8 and still alive but still many teams to overtake and little room for error

2 matches to go and 9 VPS approx to make up .. Not only 9 VPS but also got to overtake 30 teams as well so need plenty of flat matches to allow Team Moran reach the coveted 32nd or higher position.

Meanwhile the Irish ladies team are treading water mid table just outside the top 8 about 6 VPS to make up but only about 5 teams to overtake in a much smaller event.
There is also a 4 nations team powered by Malahide stalwart Mary Kelly Rogers. They are just outsde the top 8 also although as I type they are in 8th place leading Poland by 8-5 in imps.
However Poland are awful strong.

Team MacCormac languish in the lower regions of OPEN TEAMS BUT THE Dubs are in action and Meath are keeping them at bay for now.

Hmmm I almost forgot my next video including 4 more boards of the challenge versus Kelan.
Galligan v Kelan 2

The Waterford Whisperers strike oil

Sometime towards the end of last week the news filtered through about the Waterford Whispers.
The Whisper was that they won something. Now the Waterford Whisperers often win things but normally it is in Ireland or up the North.
Normally John Phelan is touted for how dark the glasses are on a Sunday morning. A great man to drink a pint and for many years has been known for great ability to fall asleep when sated.
The man can fall aleep on a bar stool and then suddenly awaken and start drinking again like nothing happened.
Anyway for some reason I downloaded some bridge bulletin to see how other things were going and was greeted by a page that said 3rd place John and Lucy Phelan. Good God I thought.

Now I know some people will say its only the EBL Cup 2 but most of those people are hurlers on the ditch. Somewhat like the poor Waterford hurlers this year. Still those same hurlers remain on the same ditch as pre tournament possibilities GALWAY and on a much higher ditch then OFFALY.

The Phelans favourite convention is WEASEL and also John Phelan's partner is the BPIW.
The Phelans never seem to be very good when it comes to playing bridge but they seem to win loads of stuff. They must be nearly GRANDMASTERS of BRIDGE at this stage.

I ALSO have a video about the first 8 boards of myself against Kerry crook Kelan in bridge

Galligan v Kelan June 23rd

Kelan the Kerry Bridge player loses and Murphy bids a slam

This morning one took on the might of the Kerry Bridge player in a BBO challenge.
Now the Kerry bridge player is a much more refined animal than the tantrum throwing wild child of the late 2000s. I played against him once in the Duais when he was a kid and he almost danced on the table when I stroked him. I was playing with Gordon Lessels. He was a right murphyslaw back then.

Murphy goes outside and bangs his head off the railings outside Malahide Regional Bridge club everytime Jumping jumps the bidding beyond the reasonable.

Anyway Kelan has been beating me regularly and heavily. if I have a bad set its 37imps in the bin.

So this morning I hoped for better ....and I got a great stroke of luck.

6 spades making off 2 aces ...the thing of dreams

So the robot led off the Heart Ace and switched to a non diamond
Now Galligan needs 3-3 Hearts or doubleton Jack.
And blessed are the overbidders.
plus 1430

Here is the full video including the celebration
Galligan slams Kelan

I have heard there was some good action in Malahide last night. Magic Murphy says he bid 3 slams.
However he missed one on board 14 it seems and one of them must have revoked on board 11.
On board 21 it appears some one failed to make the matchpoint effort of converting to NoTrump.
37 points between them.
I also noticed a board where several strong players played in HEART part score when Magic Murphy drove to a SLAM .. Ronan and Gilligan declare 1H safely while Magic Murphy roars into 6S.
I think the throne is under attack .. Murphy is about to take over the crown.

The Magic not only bids game but moves on and bids a slam. Down the bottom you can see 3 pairs not even arriving in game. Looks like Malahide has a new boss.

Wednesdays are bad days for BBO challenges

Wednesday is Bridge-Now day as come 1am its the end of the Bridge-Now week.
Therefore all challenges must be finished early in the day so Galligan can have a run at getting 70 boards played. Usually Eamon comes up short as he leaves it too late in the night.

However its a great way to get in some practice and warm up for real bridge.

Link to Bridge Now

Meanwhile out in Europe Open Bridge the Waterford Whisperers are toiling away.
Otherwise known as John "Brick" Phelan and Mrs "Brick " Phelan.

They always put down bricks in dummy.
Promise 6-9 and its always 8-9
Their motto is never go Minus ...as plus in part score beats down in SLAM ..

The Waterford Whisperers qualified into the SEMI FINAL A in Mixed Pairs
along with the non-whispering WALSH and KEMPLE.

Poor Murphy ran into some heavy flak in this latest battle.
We also played a BASH recently and Noel was semi content with his 41.5%

Galligan v murphyslaw


I also finished a challenge with Peter from Donegal. He likes Pink Floyd in the background.
We don't know the result of this challenge as Peter is still to finish.

Galligan v Donegalman

Meanwhile storm Kelan has been on the horizon for several months.
I don't like playing Kelan as he is a fully active bridge player whereas Eamon has retired to Directing.
However one of these days Eamon might make an effort.

I mean whoever heard of a Kerry bridgeplayer apart from Nicky Wheels and Bernard Goldenfield.
I used to think Bernard was the best player in Kerry but then I found out he was from Manchester.

Eurobridge Mixed Pairs 2019 and Shane returns to bridge

Meanwhile over in Instanbul the first stage of the Mixed Pairs qualifying is over. Of our aforementioned two pairs who were bringing up the rear after 5 boards one Walsh and Kemple climbed all the way to 77th place out of 240. They might sneak a place in the A semi final but due to dropins from the Teams knockouts will probably end in the B semi fnal.

Boland Onishuk and Waterford Phelans placed in the early 100s and its B final for them
The best in the west according to Mairead got spanked badly and ended in early 200s. The Bray terrors failed to get moving too much and qualified for the B semi final.

However many world reknowned bridge players failed to make it into semi final A so thats the way it goes.

...........
Bridgemaster..1

An another subject the Bridgemaster program one of my favourite pieces of bridge kit for many years. We had some new developments.
I advised an up and coming bridge player from Malahide to give it a go. The person returned and indicated Bridgemaster should be sent to Panda recycling and fast. The person could not work out that when the program told him down 1 at trick 2 it was being nice and not wasting time.

Bridgemaster was written by Fred Gitelman about 25 years ago or more as a DOS program.
Its still a fantastic piece of kit but Fred has now placed it free of charge on Bridgebase Online.
However my person could not understand that it was getting a good deal.

My person could not grasp that when he took a losing finesse that the next time when it disdained the finesse that the finesse now worked. So it threw a strop.

Bridgemaster 2

The other night in the local pub due to circumstances unmentionable here the legendary barman Shane Maxwell was pressed back into service. Now I took the liberty of attempting to teach Shane bridge several years ago. This was a hard task as Shane at the time knew everything about everything. He would tell a fishing correspondent how to fish and a boat how to float.

So Shane knew bridge and even more so when the first hand he played saw him defending against 6NT by the WBridge5 robots. Shane held KQJT of clubs and like any newbie led off the CLUB 10.
Later on as robot cruised towards 12 tricks Shane noted he was getting squeezed but did not know the term squeeze so he discarded KQJ of clubs as he saw no way out. Then his partner was able to win trick 12 with Club 9 and trick 13 with some other card. DOWN 1 and Shane the Unblocker was born.
Now the bugger was even more unbearable. He had added bridge expertise to his long list of know all things.

3 years later Shane was on the drinking side of the bar and now almost qualified electrician and still knowing lots about everything. We got Shane playing some online bridge. Slowly I realized and noticed that Shane never bid past 3 level. So I took the bait and asked.

Shane explained that you get game bonus for 3 level.

Apparently Shane was so busy talking as Eamon was giving him the crash course that he only heard the part about 3NT getting a game bonus and presumed it was same for 3C 3D 3H 3S.
You see I wondered why he was stopping in 3H and 3S with big hands. He said ..game bonus and too far from a slam.

So I educated Shane a little more ... REVELATION he said ...
This is a game changer ...You did not tell me the full rules.
It was all my fault ..

So last week Shane indicated he was still a top bridge man but he was flying under the radar and was somewhat busy. However this night he indicated willingness to have a go at bridge after first offering 20 shots handicap in a game of GOLF. I don't play GOLF so that was not going to work.

So I offered him BRIDGEMASTER and SHANE said " Well I guess I will try level 3 for starters and then maybe level 4.... Level 1 is for dunces "

I put him going on Level 1 and those red circles indicate FAILURE.

That shut him up for all of 10 hours ...Shane rose the next morning and pulled out his laptop before work and scored 27 out of 30 on level 1.

I said "Great so is it level 2 tonight .." He said "Nope I got lots of Level 1 to finish first"

European Bridge Opens continue Instanbul

A woman asked me yesterday was there any bridge on last weekend. I replied "Yes of course the European Open championships in Instanbul" There is an interesting name wonder what does it mean.

Anyway the Joan Kenny plus 5 team qualified comfortably in 3rd place in the European Mixed Teams qualifying. 32 teams out of 86 qualified for the knockouts. 

Now as far as I know leading teams can pick their last 32 opponent. 

(v) In the Mixed knockout the teams placed 1–10 in the Swiss are seeded nos. 1-10. They, in that order, get to choose their “round of 32” opponents from the teams placed 17th -32th in the Swiss. Those chosen teams are assigned seed nos. 32-23 respectively. The remaining seed nos. 11-22 are assigned in ascending order according to the final Swiss ranking.

So the Kenny team picked some Lu Dong team. Now that is always going to end in tears. 

Simple maths indicates as China owns 1/5 of the worlds population then any folk who travel to European Open Bridge championships are going to be damn good. So the last thing you want to do is pick Chinese as your cannon fodder. 

And so it became a good hiding for the Kenny Team. 

That Chinese team finished 3rd place in the last Mixed World championship in Orlando Florida. 

3 minutes on Google got me this. I would have picked a team who came out of the depths whereas Team Lu Dong has form and spent most of qualifying in the qualifying positions so playing tougher teams. However in the last 32 of any Euro championship all teams are very capable. 

Still look for one coming from the depths or a trans national team as partnerships unlikely to be as practiced. 

Meanwhile this morning I finished off my challenge against Mullingar Man and beat him by 32 imps. Mullingar man is not playing too well these last 2 months. He of course will say its Golf time and not bridge time. However he might be struggling at the golf as well. 

Here is a link to the last few boards plus some commentary on Euro Open championships

Galligan v Mullingar Man

Meanwhile Fearghal and Mairead will be touting Joan Kenny as a superstar now as she qualified in this and that and she done this and that. However its easier to be a superstar West of the Shannon. 

Best woman player in IRELAND they say .. Well there is no Shannon in China.

First thing this morning I spotted the Irish Terrors were struggling in Euro Mixed Pairs.
However I know they will improve some.

However things have imporved since but all 5 IRISH pairs remain below halfway for now.