Today's Bridge: Dan C. and I teamed up against Ken and Kevin, usually quite a powerhouse, but we came out well on top this time. They went for a lot of contracts and fell short, including a vulnerable 3S Dbl that was all Dan - I had the queen of hearts and I think it lost the first trick. They made a 5S, but we made one first, and I think it was interesting if only because it was the only hand I think we got to play at all: I had S Q-J-10-x-x H K-J-x D 8-x-x-x C 4, but when Dan opened 2C, I thought I was close enough to a positive response, particularly with an actual biddable suit, that I stretched a bit to 2S. But when I showed no aces to his 4NT, he settled for 5S. It's fortunate, because all he had was S K-9-x-x H A-x-x D A-K-Q-2 C A-Q-J, which is indeed very powerful, but we've only got ten tricks on top and will need to find two more if we're in slam. There's one potential extra in each side suit, but I have to find two that work, and if I try a finesse that fails, the contract's dead. I think my best play on the club lead is to take the ace - if West has the ace of spades, then a club or heart lead will give me an extra trick for free. However, since I was only in five, I decided to take the simple line of finessing on the lead, which sets up both remaining clubs to sluff the two potential losers in my hand. But the jack won, so I switched to trump - a low one to the queen, and a low one right into Ken's ace. He elected to lead another club, giving me a second finesse for free (since if Kevin had held up the king the first time, I could just ruff it now). The rest was a laydown. The lesson is that sometimes, the opponents should just let us get on with our auction when we've shown that we hold most of the power.

Half of the work day or so was a meeting to go over mostly some things we discussed months ago and don't have any new information about, but we put it back on our radars now that we have a bit of time to potentially look into some of those issues. Then I figured out how to do some stuff and that's about it for now. Tomorrow, I need to do some stuff that I've been putting off, but it's probably okay because I had fajitas tonight. That has nothing to do with anything, but it tends to make me a bit happier and a lot fuller than I should be.