Streams

Hi all,

At work I found a tiny corner where I get my daily shot of streams of consciousness. What? Yes, the tiny corner is dusty and mouldy and no one likes to visit it: passwords and password policies. We used to create somewhat short (technical) passwords, choosing one word and then replacing the odd consonant or vowel with a number and sprinkle it with a special character or two.  Our new policy is longer (thus stronger) passwords loosely based upon regular words concatenated with dashes or underscores.

I have to say, a moment of free association every day feels surprisingly liberating. Here are a few examples:

  • enterprise-voluptuous-hummingbird
  • reflection-seismology-apologetic
  • deduction-magnify-gastronomy

Readable, transportable and much, much stronger than, say: “Diff1CulT?”

Anyway, let’s talk bridge. René and I participated again in the 2nd Division Pairs competition (every year two weekends in April) and these are our statistics: Above average in 7 out of 8 sessions. Win 2 out of 8 sessions. Average: 54.74%. Yes, we ended up first with a fair margin to the runners-up. Next year: First Division. Booya!

North
A84
43
AK94
T976
South
K6
J8
QJT872
J82
West
North
East
South
 
 
pass
pass
1
pass
1
2
2
3
3
pass
4
5
DBL
a.p.

West kicks off with the 7. Losing two tricks in and three in I may not, -500 loses to their +420 in 4

Let’s assess our assets. The opponents have nine together and have been raised. I’d say West is 4-6-1-2. My only way of getting rid of a loser is to have West give me a ruff ‘n sluff. So let’s prepare a little ground work.

Silkily smooth I ask for the Ace in dummy and follow up with a small . East jumps in with the Ace to switch back to . I win, draw two rounds of trumps ending in dummy, ruff a and exit with the Jack of . Fingers crossed.

West doesn’t look too happy after cashing Ace and King of and there it comes: the ruff ‘n sluff. Down two. 

East Dealer
– Vul
North
A84
43
AK94
T976
West
J973
KQ9765
5
AK
East
QT52
AT2
63
Q543
South
K6
J8
QJT872
J82

Of course West could have led initially. Of course East shouldn’t have risen. But .. to keep fighting for -300 while staring in the ugly face of demise, needing two errors in defence and it happens to work out: fist pump yeah.