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Wednesday 29 August 2012

Hugh McGann Magic

Hugh Kelsey said in his introduction to "Logical Bridge Play"
the brilliant card player achieves his results through a combination of logic and flair. And although many people may think flair plays a disproportionate part, the expert player, in fact, produces his sometimes unbelievable results almost entirely by the application of logic.
I was reminded of this when I first viewed this hand by another Hugh from the round robin of the World Mind Sport Games - which at first blush I couldn't believe he had found the correct line.



Click the NEXT button in the diagram to follow the play

I will now go through the logic that led to Hugh being the only declarer to make the contract.

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Suit Combination: AKQ9 v x(x) and AK9x v Qx

The video below talks about using computers to reduce the amount of calculation in maths. An example of where this is useful would be teaching standard deviation. The formulae are imposing to students and the difference between sample standard deviation and population standard deviation is less important than getting a feel for how standard deviation works.


Still sometimes it is important to understand how the gears work.

I was looking through the Suit Combinations missing 1 point on Bridge Guy's and felt that some of their answers were off so I decided to check them myself.

I ran the first example by hand before turning it over to Richard Pavlicek's Card-Combination Analyzer.

AKQ9 v x

BridgeGuys: Finesse the 9 which works 6% of the time.

Drop:
  • JTx: 5-3 split is 47.1, 12/112 comb -> 5.05%
  • JT: 6-2 split is 17.1, 2/56 comb -> 0.61
  • Total: 5.66%
Finesse: theoretically 0%  and JT onside in any combination is obviously 24% ( 1/2*12/25).
  • JT onside: 0.3%
  • JTx onside: 2.52%
  • JTxx onside: 32.7 * 15/70 -> 7.01%
  • JTxxx onside: 41.7 * 20/112 -> 8.41%
  • JTxxxx onside: 17.1 * 15/56 -> 4.58%
  • JTxxxxx onside: 2.9 * 6/16 -> 1.09%
  • JTxxxxxx onside: 0.08 but 0% if AKQ9 in dummy
  • Total: 23.99%

Reaching For The Moon

I think most people will remember this mixed metaphor:
Reach for the moon and even if you fail you will be among the stars.
I remember when Houllier quoted it as the moment I realised the shine had come off. But maybe there is some sense to it. What if it means that if you overreach you may be burned up - meaning you may fail more spectacularly than if you had never tried to succeed at all.

In the the 2005 French 2000 Guineas Shamardal was considered a lucky winner over David Wachman's Indesatchel. Many experts felt that that Shamardal, despite starting as favourite, had been flattered by his win. It was felt that those who raced up with the pace had an advantage and if Indesatchel had been one of those he could have won. The Racing post offered the following comment:
Even Shamardal´s most ardent supporters would have to spare a thought for Indesatchel, for whom this was a Classic that got away. In a race in which the draw was more than a little important, Jamie Spencer had no option from his wide berth but to bring the always held-up Greenham winner across to the inside rail. This he did, and though the Irish colt enjoyed a smooth passage, he also found himself having to make up acres of ground just toget to Shamardal. Having done so, he did not have quite enough energy left to go past. Much better at three than he was at two, he was the only horse among the first four to come from off the pace and can now be called a genuine Group 1 performer. 
A month later Shamardal followed up with a win in the French Derby in similar fashion over the future Arc-winner Hurricane Run. This led to the moneyball-type thinking that Shamardal would be under priced in the St. James' Palace. Indeed, most pundits were touting Indesatchel in the run up to the race - all he would have to do was prevent Shamardal from getting an easy lead.

It is likely that people saw a horse who had been fortunate to win two races and he was not likely to get lucky a third time. This would have been fair comment if the races had been against the similar horses over a similar distance. There were two things wrong with that analysis:

First is that if Shamardal had truly stolen the French 2000 Guineas then it would suggest that he would be better over shorter distances.Stepping up and winning over the longer distance showed that he would prefer a stronger pace over a mile.

Secondly, and I only noticed this when reviewing the races, by beating France's best 3-year-old milers and France's best 3-year-old middle-distance horse he had significantly reduced his odds of not having faced a very good horse. This form of one of the races was very likely to hold up. In this case it was the Derby and the 2000 Guineas turned out to be a very poor race.

So what happened?


Tuesday 14 August 2012

Some Semi-Interesting Shakespeare Stuff


I was recently watching Simon Schama' s Shakespeare which contained the following interesting nugget: James I's mother, Mary Queen of Scots, married the man who was suspected of killing his father.

This means that when the play scene in Hamlet was being performed at court there was a King, whose mother had married the man who had murdered his father, watching a play about a King who had married the widow of a man he had murdered watching a play about King that married the widow of the man he had murdered. Very meta as the kids seem to be saying these days.

Quasi-interesting is that James I married the princess Anne of Denmark and honeymooned in Castle Elsinore where he also met Tycho Brahe's moustache.

James I sponsored the English translation of the bible which bears his name: the King James' Bible. The bible was released in 1611. Shakespeare was born in 1564 which means that he may have been 46 when the bible was released. The 46th word in psalm 46 is shake and the 46th word from the end of psalm 46 is spear.

Shakespeare's birth is celebrated on April 23rd even though the actual date is not known. This is also the day he died and St. George's Day.

Until recently I thought that the quote about the base Indian who threw away a pearl richer than all his tribe was referring to Kino in John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl'. It is actually from a magnificent soliloquy by Othello:


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