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Wednesday 31 July 2013

Stepping Stone of Thunder

This hand is from the recent European Open Championship pairs championship. The hand needs to be viewed as a 3NT hand by West (sorry about that but the table closed down while I was still analysing it.) The play potentially involves two spectacular plays:

  1. Days of Thunder: coined by Eric Rodwell it involves switching to an opponents long suit to hamper communications
  2. Stepping-Stone Squeze: first analysed by Terence Reese in his classic "The Expert Game" and involves overcoming a blockage by throwing in a n opponent


North opens diamonds and West has a pretty obvious duck after the A and J - fair play to south if this is from AKJ. Now we see play one. If South can imagine a club blockage then switching to a spade creates a blockage in that suit.

This is not the end of the story if West can put South with 4+ clubs with the AH. He runs six spades and has now played 8 tricks. South must come down to either 4 clubs and the AH or 3 clubs and AQ hearts. In the latter scenario the clubs will run but in the former West can unblock the clubs and exit in hearts - thus using South as a stepping stone to the clubs.


Monday 8 July 2013

Champagne-Bottle Sizes and Acronym

I was recently skeptical when a friend used the term  Jeroboam in a game of eye-spy recently. I had never considered the size of champagne and bottles and to use a bit of foreshadowing the word really sounded like a splendid belching noise. Anyway a bottle of champagne is 75cl and is the standard measuring unit we will use. 2 bottle is a magnum and I would imagine most people, like me, would have hear about this far.

Next at 4 bottles we have Jeroboam and at 6 bottles the similar sounding Rehoboam. The latter was a son of Solomon and thus a grandson of David. For some reason the 10 northern tribes were not happy with Rehoboam's ascension and invited Jeroboam to become King of a new state and is thus the first King of Isreal. Rehoboam is the first King of Judah and the last King of the United Kingdom of Isreal.

At 8 bottles we have Methusaleh, who may have been the oldest person to live at 969 years* - his Grandson Noah also lived to 950 years. Methusaleh died 7 days before the great flood. Apparently he is a direct descendant of Adam but then isn't everyone - interestingly it was Adam's third son Seth who got the whole populating the world ball rolling.

* although the Guinness Book of World Record does not recognise him.


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