poorbridge.com
Poor Bridge of the Week
A Poorbridge Correspondent's Fortnight, Part One
By Michael Clark

To all readers who routinely stay up until midnight on a Sunday evening in order to be the first to read the crisp new Poor Bridge of the Week, I apologise. I can assure you it's not a ploy to get more hits on this website while you all spend the week frantically refreshing the home page, desperately hoping for the title Short Delay to change to something else. I don't even know how many hits we get; we could be the seventh most popular website in the world and I wouldn't know it. It's also not due to a dearth of good articles as we have plenty of good ones in the pipeline, some well over-due in fact. So why have you all had to wait so long for an article to appear? What the hell is wrong with us? What on earth is happening in our lives that is more important than your fix of Poor Bridge? Well, I can't speak for Steve, Phil, Rob, Luke and Xebon but if you want to know what I've been up to, why not look at my diary?

Friday 13th April. Drove down to Newport to watch the Lady Milne today. Lovely weather. Australia a wee bit too good for Ireland. I'm down here to help operate Bridge Base Online vugraph and to support the sextet of hot England babes as they try to win the trophy for another year. Martin Jones is obviously David Hasselhoff, but who are Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth and Alexandra Paul? These thoughts keep me up late into the night.

Saturday 14th April. Had long conversation with Xebon this morning. Drank tea. Xebon was wondering what Amitabh Bachchan's best film was. I suggested he look no further than Sholay but Xebon wasn't sure as he had never seen any of his films. I BBOed Cath and in the closed room when this hand came along:

None Vuln
Dealer S
S9 7
H10 8 6 4
DJ 5 2
CJ 5 3 2
S5 2
HK J 9
DA K 10 7 6
CQ 10 4
DIR
SK J 8 6 3
HA 7 3
DQ 8
C9 7 6
SA Q 10 4
HQ 5 2
D9 4 3
CA K 8

South played in 1NT and Sarah, as West, led a low diamond. Cath won the Queen and continued them. Three off. Yawn. Next board. When you operate BBO and there isn't an operator in the other room of your match, you usually get given little slips of paper with the result from the other table. So a few minutes later, the scoring lady walks in and gives me the result from this board, board 27. It had South making 1NT with an overtrick! It even said there was a diamond lead. I dutifully entered it into the system, giving England 7 IMPs, but felt that there was probably a transcription error somewhere and it would have to be adjusted later.

The match finished and a little later I asked what the real score on board 27 was as it surely couldn't be 1NT+1. However, she confirmed that it was indeed correct and went on to explain how she had made it. You see West, in what can only be a rather confused idea of what strong ten leads are, led the D10. This was ducked all around. She then decided to play for declarer to have opened 1NT with a singleton diamond and for her partner to be incapable of unblocking and continued with a low diamond to East's Queen who now found herself short of diamonds to continue. East carried on with the S8 which Bryony sent round to dummy's Nine in order to take another spade finesse, S7 — SK — SA — S2. Now the SQ was cashed and West found the truly brilliant discard of the C4. Not quite believing her luck, Bryony cashed four rounds of clubs and, to add insult to injury, the defence butchered the endgame to give her a heart trick too, her eighth in total. International bridge at its finest.

Sunday 15th April. A day of poor bridge, but not in the sense that it was funny silly bridge. Just disappointing. The England ladies couldn't hold it together when it came to the crunch and Scotland, who we will give full credit for playing very well, just pipped them in an exciting final match. Drove back home to Aylesbury. Ireland beat Bangladesh! Too tired to put up this week's article.

Monday 16th April. Had to pick up Rob from the airport today. He had been in South Korea where he was forced to fight his way through five levels of a pagoda, with each level being tougher than the last. The multiple henchmen at the bottom were easy enough, he said, but by the time he had reached Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the top floor he was really starting to feel tired. Still, he won and has gone back to writing up his thesis. Then passed out on absinthe and so couldn't put up the PBOTW tonight. But how could I write this diary entry? Confused.

Tuesday 17th April. Ate a sandwich for lunch today. Put up Paddy Bowen's article as PBOTW. It's very poor. Discover I made an error which is now corrected.

Wednesday 18th April. Play with Luke at the Young Chelsea tonight. Our system runs riot through the field and we emerge with 71.06%. We mostly just get good scores from frustrating the opposition with our perpetual alerts:

E/W Vuln
Dealer N
SQ 6
H9 7 4
D8 7
CA J 8 5 4 3
S10 9 8 7 2
HA J 10 8 3
D
CQ 7 6
DIR
SK J 5 3
H2
DA K Q 9 5 4
C10 9
SA 4
HK Q 6 5
DJ 10 6 3 2
CK 2

WestNorthEastSouth
MCLP
Pass1S1Pass
2C2Pass3D3H
XAP

Notes
(1)4+ diamonds
(2)5+ hearts

Only after my double did South ask what 2C actually was. All we can really say there is Oops!

Later, David Gold overcalls my weak 2H opening with 2S. He gets raised to 4S and is pleased when dummy tables SQ J 10 9 8 6 4. Luke is no longer optimistic about scoring his singleton trump King offside.

Thursday 19th April. Had a league match tonight, for Thame in Berks and Bucks division two. This league is truly a case of which side can play the least terrible bridge and tonight the oppo are far less dreadful than us. I seem to have suppressed all memory of the night to avoid too much psychological damage, but do recall gleefully penalty doubling a natural 2NT with a 20 count opposite a weak two only to find partner pulling me into a contract which didn't make. It's always nice to turn +1700 into -100.

Friday 20th April. Carry a freezer. Witness an anarchist friend steal the screws from a pepper pot in a restaurant. Half an hour later, a man sprays pepper all over his wife. She sneezes into the soup of her husband's boss who they are wooing to get a promotion. Carrot and coriander goes everywhere. The man gets fired and enters into a cycle of depression and drug abuse. Murders two people in a bar. Serious stuff. Let that be a lesson to you all.

Saturday 21st April. National Pairs Final Day One! We're in the top ten overnight, but 4% behind the leaders. A fair amount of poor bridge. Example:

E/W Vuln
Dealer W
S10
HA Q 10 5 3 2
DA 10 9
C10 5 2
S9 7 5
HK 7
DQ J 6 4 2
CA 4 3
DIR
SK J 8 6 4
HJ 6 4
D8 7 5 3
C9
SA Q 3 2
H9 8
DK
CK Q J 8 7 6

North opened 1H, Luke overcalled 2S as East and South eventually declared 3NT. I dutifully led my partner's suit, declarer winning. Top club, ducked. Top club, ducked. Then the master play. Declarer "unblocked" the DK and played another club, setting up the suit. Big oops. It wasn't too taxing to now lock declarer in dummy and set up our diamond and heart tricks. One off. 100%.

What will happen on Day Two? What will happen in week two of this great fortnight? Find out tomorrow!