Today's Bridge: Having read some of Murder in the Menagerie, I was in top form today - the best hand was a third-seat opener with S 7 H Q-x D A-x-x C A-K-Q-x-x-x-x. Naturally, I opened 1C, Jerry overcalled 1S, and Ken bid 2D. Paul passed, so I pulled the STOP card and bid 4C. Ken bid 4S, which I took to be a cue since Jerry had already bid spades. With Ken holding the ace, slam seemed like a pretty good bet no matter where his other power was, so I pulled STOP again and bid 6C, skipping the safe game. However, what Ken gave me was S Q-10-x-x H A-K-x D J-10-x-x-x C J. I felt myself channeling Rueful Rabbit as I counted my three losers, but the opening lead was the queen of diamonds, giving me hope of off one. I certainly couldn't let that go with a spade lead defeating the contract, so I took the ace and crossed to the jack of clubs, back to the queen of hearts, and pulled two more rounds of trump, throwing a spade and a diamond. Then it was back to the hearts, on which I sluffed my spade loser. That's when I realized that only the king of diamonds was out there to cover the J-10, so I ruffed a spade back to my hand and led a diamond up. The king came out, but I ruffed the spade return and claimed, making the contract that should never have been bid. I think I had a pretty spot-on defense in a hand that ended up off two, but things were really stacked against Paul in that one. I'm pretty sure we ended up winning the rubber, but it might be the opponents who got the rubber bonus. Our slam bonus would just have offset that. Maybe we made the second game first. I don't remember. I just know they made the final hand for a game, and I think we missed the chance to take the only trick available to us.

Today's Work: Yet more training.

I've read some inspiring things today - and Victor Mollo was only one of them. I have a lot of work to do.