Greg and I finally got around to our COP review of the notes—Cut Or Practice. These were things we had identified as complex agreements with relatively rare occurrences that we were not 100% comfortable with. We had to decide whether to keep them and dedicate some time to practice them or cut them.
A lot of them were good agreements; they made sense. But when we thought about devoting some of our limited practice time to working on them, it just didn’t make sense—they just never come up. So we cut a lot of them. Which was very satisfying. But some we kept, and we put together a list of things to practice. I’ll build some scenarios on Cuebids to practice a lot of them; for some we’ll need to do it in real time.
We had another session with Joyjit this week; this time we worked on 2NT agreements in competitive auctions. We use Scrambling 2NT sometimes and Good/Bad others, which can be confusing. The dedicated practice session really helped clear some things up and iron out some agreements that weren’t clear enough. I can’t get over how useful having a coach is. Why didn’t we do this sooner! I’m looking forward to having Joyjit on the podcast after the NABC in San Francisco.
I finished reading Bridge in the Menagerie. I’m not going to do a write-up of it; enough has been said of this wonderful book. It’s really a lot of fun, and the hands are wild. Mollo is partial to spectacular plays like jettisoning aces and making slams in 4-2 fits. It’s not always practical, but it’s fun.
A lot of that carries over to I Challenge You, the other Mollo book I’m working through. It’s very good, but like all problem books it suffers from knowing there is a problem. And knowing it’s a Mollo problem, so the solution is often quite dramatic.
I’m doing a supervised play game on Shark Bridge Wednesday, November 12, at 3:00pm ET. The topic is playing notrump contracts. (Which I know a little something about—I wrote the book on it!) It will be run as a duplicate game that awards ACBL masterpoints. We’ll stop after each round and go over the boards. Should be lots of fun!
I’m giving two lectures at the NABC in San Francisco. Mark your calendars!
Friday, November 28 at 9:15am — Being a Good Partner
Monday, December 1 at 9:15am — When to Draw Trumps
I was not as good about eating well this week as I celebrated my birthday. A little splurge now and then is important, right? I still went to the gym three times and walked the other days. Keeping up with meditation. That part is going well still.
Have a great week!
Hi Adam. Good luck at the NABCs. Closer to home, I hope you already voted for your next Mayor.