Spin-ing wheel

Sorry for the time-delay between posts... the internet has been a bit spotty here.

The FISU 2nd day, back on Sunday, was a difficult match as expected. We played pretty close to our best but we still got beaten pretty soundly, by about 70 IMPS or so in 32 boards. To those who tried and watch us, sorry that the Vugraph thing didn't work out. There were some interesting boards, but nothing that comes to mind to write about.

Sunday night, we warmed up for the spins by...watching Dark Knight, gambling, and otherwise hanging out. It was Lovey's birthday, and we had a good time playing craps and blackjack. Jon thought Dark Knight was very good, but somewhat hypocritical.

Monday morning, we got ourselves knocked out of the Micro-Spingolds despite having a draw against some pretty weak teams. Jon contributed to one tie-instead-of-win by passing a 2NT opener with a good 8 count. Lose 10. On another hand, all vul, the bidding went:

RHO-LHO
1D-1H
2NT-3NT

And Jon was on lead with:

QT83 A2 QJ754 J6

The spade lead seems obvious, right? Maybe a 4th best diamond, or a risky-but devious-club. But no, in the replay, they lead the Q(!) of diamonds, which happens to be one of two killer leads (a club is the other).

In the full hand, dummy has T8 tight of diamonds and partner has 96, so leading a diamond doesn't cost and in fact sets up a trick. Declarer also has AKJ tight of spades, so my lead cost us a trick and another vul game. "These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you can see, it wasn't what we thought."

After the morning of the Spins, we played in a loser-swiss with Argenta and Elena and had a lot of fun. After the 28 and 32 board sets we've been playing all week, the four 6-board matches hardly felt like a full session. Jon also mentally checked out again on this hand:

AKxx Qxxx QTx AJ

Jon opened 1NT, Lovey bid puppet, and once hearts was confirmed, Lovey bid Keycard (0314). Jon counted his aces and bid 5H(!), and when Lovey passed, Jon sadly remembered that 5H did not show his beautiful Q. When the dummy came down...

xxx AJTx AKJ QTxx

.. Jon thought he had fixed the opponents, because the slam was only about 25% due to wasted values in diamonds. Then he noticed the lead - a club. Making 6. Turns out the King of clubs was offside, so slam was off. Jon asked our kind-but-clueless opponenents what they would have lead against 6H, just out of curiosity, and with complete confidence, LHO answered, "Still a club." Now Jon's not sure whether we fixed them, or they fixed us...

Alex is playing in the fast pairs with Argenta this morning, and Jon is doing some work for, er, work. Or perhaps writing blog entries... judge for yourself!