Jim and I played bridge today for what I fear is the last time in the foreseeable future, since I'm moving in a week. We got last place out of 12 partnerships with a 40% game, but I'm marking this one as a win. I finally understand what an uppercut is, and although I didn't perform one, I found one in the postmortem. But the thing that truly sets ( Read more... )

The title says it all. Jim and I had a 53.7% game tonight which placed us 3rd out of 10, and we each got 0.5 Black Master Points. Moreover, on the fifth board of the night, I got a squeeze play! Yes, I have now finally accomplished my goal of successfully executing a squeeze play in a sanctioned game! I got a simple squeeze against LHO, and while ( Read more... )

I played bridge with Jim again this evening. We had a rather poor game (41% gave us last place out of 10 partnerships), at least partly because I had 29 points on the first hand of the night and got flustered (there are typically 40 points in the deck, so 10 points is an average hand, to put things in perspective). I opened this monster with 2C ( Read more... )

Tonight I played bridge with Jim for the first time in about a month. It turns out that this week is the big Aquatennial tournament, so instead of the typical 6-table game, we had a huge 25-table monstrosity that was actually split into two different flights. Some of the tables were downstairs because they ran out of room on the ground floor! Jim ( Read more... )

Jim and I have played in two big bridge games recently, and even though I haven't had a lot of practice this semester, we didn't take last place either time! For those of you who didn't know, the HMC bridge club kinda dissolved last semester, and I barely played at all. I only played one sanctioned game the whole semester, and Whitney and I had an ( Read more... )

Jim called me up again the other day, and we played bridge both today and yesterday. It's quite obvious that I've gotten rusty (before yesterday, my last sanctioned game had been with Jim back in August). We took second-to-last and dead last, both with 41% games, though today's game played better than it scored. Our defense was rock-solid (with one ( Read more... )

This evening, Jim and I played bridge for the last time this summer. It was my one last chance to become a Junior Master before school started. Well, I'm pleased to announce that I made it! Our 54.5% game landed us 3rd place in the C stratification and 4th over all 13 East-West pairs, and we each got 0.49 Master Points. I am now no longer ( Read more... )

One of my goals for the summer is to become a Junior Master at the bridge club. Since the last time I wrote about bridge, I've needed about a third of a Master Point to get there. Sadly, try as I might, I can't seem to do it! Jim and I played together this past Thursday at the club. Thursdays they have a 49er game (for people with less than 50 ( Read more... )

On one hand, I pick up a hand with Ace-Queen-Jack-fifth in both spades and clubs, and open 1S. My left-hand opponent overcalls 2H, and Jim passes. I think to myself, finally! a chance to use Mel's Complete Count! (Mel Colchamiro invented MCC as an approximation to determine when to continue bidding after opening a 2-suited hand with no help from ( Read more... )

Sunday, much to my surprise, my old bridge partner Jim called me up. He had been suspecting that I'd be back in town sometime soon, and was wondering if I'd like to play with him again. This was really touching, since we had only really played together 3 or so times before, and I hadn't told him when I'd be back in town! So I was thrilled. We went ( Read more... )