Well, San Francisco's over and so is college football.  A few thoughts about each.

First, San Francisco:

Glad to see Canadians Dan Korbel and Jonathan Steinberg string together a few impressive performances.  The brass ring tantalized, but ultimately eluded them, but they still managed a very respectable 16th place in the Blue Ribbon pairs and a top 10 finish in the National Open Swiss event.  (They jumped from 20th to 9th on Sunday.  I was looking to see if anyone else finished in the top 10 who started from further back in the pack and lo and behold Austinites Mildred Breed, Tobi and David Sokolow came roaring back from 40th (last qualifier) to pip them for 8th place.  Fred Gitelman's squad (Lynch) also managed a decent salvage effort, rising from 37th to take 10th spot.)

I was really happy to see Cayne win the Reisinger.  Those guys practice so much and make themselves so accessible, I think a win was long overdue.  Congratulations to Jimmy Cayne, Michael Seamon, Alfredo Versace, Lorenzo Lauria, Fulvio Fantoni, Claudio Nunes and Charlie Weed (team manager).

I was disappointed that they only had final round coverage and only of 1 table of the Reisinger on BBO.  The ACBL is really squandering a great opportunity by not taking Vugraph more seriously.  BBO shows Vugraph (often of pretty rinky-dink events) from Turkey, from China, from Australia, from Scandinavia, from Indonesia, from South America, from Canada, from you name it, but the ACBL can't be bothered to take the broadcast of its premier events seriously.  It's pretty disgraceful. 

On the other hand, watching the final round coverage was pretty excruciating at times.  It's clear that most of these guys play too much IMPs and not enough BAM.  Hand after hand of mistake after mistake (a few tough decisions, but mostly bad bridge) got pretty painful to watch.  It felt like I was watching a CNTC qualifier rather than a Reisinger finals.  My favorite instance of this was on Board 8 when a guy had AQ of trumps and a Diamond loser in one hand and stiff J of trumps and two Club losers in dummy (actually not exactly, but equivalent) and knew the Kx of trumps was behind the Ace and managed to lose 2 tricks. The commentary left a lot to be desired, too. (Sorry, I can't get the link to the Board to work, the file is on BBO here where it says 2007 Reisinger Segment Final 2 of 2.)

On to college football:

I can't remember a season with more upsets.  That may sound exciting, but what it means is that at the end of the year nobody's really worthy of playing for a national championship. 

All 3 of my favorite teams ended the 'regular season' with a whimper.  I got stuck with a rare loserfecta, if you will.

Tennessee lost the SEC Championship Game to LSU 21-14 when quarterback Erik Ainge imploded in the 4th quarter.  The guy reminds me of former Longhorn Chris Simms, who never met an interception he didn't like.

Texas lost to Texas A&M 38-30 when our offense didn't show up.  They needed to put a couple of drives together to at least give our defense a chance to rest for a few minutes and it never happened.  A team that played so bad this year that their coach quit after the game dominated the time of possession and held the ball for over 40 minutes against the Longhorns.  Ridiculous.  Quarterback Colt McCoy played better last year as a freshman.

Oregon lost to the Beavers of Oregon State in overtime.  I transferred to Oregon because Animal House was filmed there.  Well, actually I was young and in love at the time, but I agreed to go because Animal House was filmed there.  At the time their football program was pretty much a joke, but the year after I left they went to the Rose Bowl for the first time in forever.  I think the Ducks were ranked as high as 2nd this year, with a realistic shot at a return to the Rose Bowl but this loss dropped them out of the rankings.

I was reading today's Daily Bulletin from the Nationals and stumbled across an article by Mike Flader that really ticked me off.  Every ten years or so it seems like the ACBL tries to outlaw psychs.  I remember a letter to the editor on the subject I sent in that got published back when Henry Francis was the editor of the Bulletin.  They're at it again.

The article is entitled 'The Trouble with Psychs' on page 14.  In it, Mike Flader describes people who psych as 'perpetrators' and 'offenders.'  He describes those who receive bad boards because of their inability to deal with a psych as 'victims.'  He describes psyching against weak players as 'unsportsmanlike.'  He proposes a psychic offender registration system whereby those who psych must notify the directors in their area when they do so and agree not to live within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop (okay, I made the very last part up.)

Now some of you might be thinking 'I didn't know Jonathan liked to psych.'  I don't.  That's not the point.  If I psych an opening bid or initial action twice a year it's been a busy year.  But psyching is a time-honored part of our game.  When I played with Jeff regularly he used to psych frequently.  It drove me nuts. (If Flader had described the partner of the psycher as a 'victim' he would have been much closer to the mark.)  But if he hadn't managed to expose his own psych, I'd hang him, take the bad result, and make it up on another hand with my stellar declarer play.

As to the argument that psyching is unsportsmanlike I'd call that utter hogwash.  Okay, if you bring me a hand where you psyched against a novice and it worked and you were bragging about it, I might bring you back down to earth.  But if you followed the rules and won, nobody has any business implying that your win was somehow tainted. 

If you consider psyching against novices unsportsmanlike, are these unsportsmanlike too?

Deciding that a novice/intermediate is unlikely to have made a 'mandatory falsecard' and playing a suit accordingly.

Preempting aggressively against novices, knowing that you're less likely to go for a digit.

Playing out a hand against a novice that relies on a 'pseudo-squeeze' or even a complete mental meltdown on defense instead of making a claim assuming perfect defense.

Executing a squeeze against a novice.

Taking a finesse against a novice.

Leading an honor to try to elicit a cover against a novice in a situation where no experienced player would ever cover.

Bidding your hand correctly and arriving at a normal slam contract against a novice that you suspect they would have been unlikely to bid.

Had a pretty ugly set with Jeff tonight.  Usually when we do badly it's because of a couple of bad misdefenses or a misguess or occasionally a clearcut butchery but tonight it was all bidding.

First board out of the box I picked up all white

QT98542 / T5 / 4 / 875

Jeff opened 1 Diamond.  Righty whipped.

Now I get to play my favorite game.  The good old 'I wonder if this is a fit bid situation' game.

Surely over a double by an unpassed hand Jeff will take this as a good old weak jump shift, no? 

 

I trotted out 2 Spades.

 

Lefty bid 2NT (okay, if Jeff's unsure maybe he can figure it out from the opponents' bidding) and Jeff bid 3 Diamonds.

 

Well, I hope he has them, because I don't.

 

Now Righty bid 4 Hearts.

 

Off the hook again.  I hope 4 Spades isn't a good dive, but if I thought it was I should have bid 3 Spades already.  I passed.

 

Now Jeff bid 5 Diamonds.  Wonderful.

That got whipped by Righty.  Float.

The good news is that we had no Spade losers, 1 Heart loser and 2 Club losers.  And Righty only had Qx of Diamonds for his whip.

The bad news is that Lefty had AKJx of Diamonds.  Jeff had

A / J / T98753 / A9632

-1400 was lose 13 and change

http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/fetchlin.php?id=1537451&when_played=1195675346

So 5 boards later I picked up at unfavorable

AJ7632 / Q72 / J532 / -

Jeff passed.  Righty opened 1 Diamond.

I'd already gotten burned once today with a 2 Spade bid at an inopportune moment.  Should I go for best 2 out of 3?  Maybe Jeff will take this one as an intermediate 2?

Sure enough, I was in there with 2 Spades.  My suit quality is horrible.  The colors are wrong.  But I'm 6-4 and pard is a passed hand.  This is somewhere between normal aggressive and nuts.  I tend to think it's closer to the former, but your mileage may vary.

Lefty made a negative double.  Float.

Uh oh.

Lefty led the Club Ace.  Surprisingly I bought extremely well.

K4 / AJ85 / 4 / J97652

AJ7632 / Q72 / J532 / -