A - Pass   Borderline points for 6nt, I'm going to leave it.
B - 2c    normal with 10 points, here not much diff
C - 1s   seems normal
D - (a) 2D   BART thing is weird, would rather 1nt then 2d but can't, note makes it seem like 1nt then 3D is too strong.
E - 1s   op that passed has bupkis or a stack of hearts, I'm looking for something else to land in, maybe my diamonds will be nice in 1nt.
F - Pass - this "feels" wrong to pass in this contest, but I'm hoping thats what I would really do.
G - 3D - can tolerate a rebid by p
H - 8 club - I wrote down 8 as 3/5 lead, so I have to stick with it.

I see that I best get into the strategy of the contest. It's clear to me that conservative bids are not valued as much as aggressive action. Which suits me just fine! I believe I took a conservative bid on about 4 problems and all turned out less than 100! Next time...

Hello all,

I'm posting this now before Sanya has my head!

My bridge story is short because I did not discover bridge until later in life. I began playing somewhere in my early 30s while I was still in grad school earning my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. I was a very good card player before that, including Poker, Hearts, and Spades. I was a very good spades player and like some other people had met Dustin playing that game and we had played together somewhat often online.
    I read a basic book by Lampert I believe and played a bit online in yahoo and World Play (of WP refugee fame, if I still remember the name correctly). Eventually, I found my way to the Barrington Bridge club in Santa Monica, CA where I was living. I showed up there and played in the beginner's room and the director there watched me play a few hands and promptly kicked me out of the room! When I explained to him that I had literally never played the game with actual cards or live people he thought I was from Mars. Online play wasn't as well known at that time and I think the bridge teacher was a bit shocked that someone learned to play on their own and online only. Eventually, that same teacher told me a story - that he was once a Ph.D student in chemistry but that he fell in love with bridge and never finished his degree.  He meant that I should stop playing and finish what I was doing!  Shockingly, I listened to his advice and did not really play again for some years. The other lucky thing I did was to sign up for an ACBL number so that I ended up on the old Life Master schedule for points.
    Later on, I came back to play bridge again, although by this time I had moved to Orange County, CA close to my work. I played mainly on BBO and I played live with Dustin on occasion. Eventually, we formed a small group of decent players who had low master point totals. (To this day I try not to earn Master points except in major tournaments, so I rarely play any ACBL tournaments on BBO for example. As you may know, online points are colorless yet count against you in experience BUT don't count for you in making your Life Master.) This small group of players I ran with began to take the game more seriously, and therefore so did I.
   Eventually, we developed very good system notes (think 100's of pages) and set our sites on national competitions. Long story short, as many of you know, 5 of us won Grand National Teams - C level at the Chicago Nationals a few years back! It was a great deal of fun, but also much more tiring, stressful, and anxiety packed than I expected. However, we will be forever in the bridge encyclopedia for that win and that's really fun! Our group has also been to two other finals including another GNT, and the mini Spingold team finals. We lost the other two finals - once to a team that was better than us, and the other time because of a complete meltdown by a team mate who frankly over a two week period didn't sleep enough, didn't eat enough, and drank too much so that he was rambling zombie by the time we hit semi-finals and finals of the mini-Spin.
   Other than that, you all know that I enjoy teaching bridge and am a certified instructor. I have given talks on bridge in university settings and through one stretch I had several clients that I helped to obtain their life master requirements. Yes, people paid me to play with them! (you could say I was a bridge professional since I was paid for my "work"! lol)  I am in a very valuable position of having low Master points so that makes it much easier for a client and I to win Gold points. Ironically, I will probably not be a LM until I retire from work when I have time to play in clubs. Those black points will just never happen otherwise. Finally, I developed our club system notes  which can be found here at https://goo.gl/FASfsY  . I would love for people in the club to use it more.

620 for september. What did you all get?

Scores for August?

I got to 560. My heart lead was almost a zero. 

Well, perhaps its as simple as posting a google sheet with the pairs names. They email me to tell me results and I move the teams. This is not as nice as some automatic features, but at least everyone could see the ladder and current champions. They could CC me on all challenges and we could generally keep the rules the same.

Here are my answers all together:
A: 3 spades
B: 4 hearts
C: X
D: 4 Clubs
E: 4 Spades
F: 2 Clubs
G: X
H: Heart 4


A: I should have looked at the system notes, but again I'm trying to answer as I would behave on the table. I find this gives me more insight into my assumptions about bidding or principles that might govern my decisions (which I don't always recognize explicitly until I do these kinds of exercises).  Anyway, I also had a thought about leaping micheals but thought it shouldn't apply here (Although we all know that 2s is often bid on air, just like a preempt). I went with 3s as most obviously showing hearts, and an unknown minor which I will likely bid next no matter what p says.

B: I see that I bid 4h. I presume the X by East is penalty oriented for one of the suits, but its not hearts. In retrospect, I wish I had thought more about where the spades were and gone to 5h since the ops have 4S for sure, so I don't know that 4h is getting us anywhere, but white v red, my impulse was to go for the big 4h.

C: X Since I can't bid 3H, I believe I have no choice but to bid X, showing one of the majors and I don't know what to do when partner inevitably bids 3spades. I guess I bid 4d then, which you all know I hate so thats a bit of a lie because I would probably bid 5d.

D:   4 Clubs - I don't think this is right. I don't know why 4c is there, I can not recall what my thoughts would be here. If we are playing minor wood (which is my preference) 4c would be last train kind of bid, but 4H seems normal here. I think this is a mistake in what I inputted.

E:  4 Spades - Non vulnerable, i prefer to make them do the math on whether double or 5h is their bid.

F: 2 clubs - and 3S over partners positive 3c bid.  

G: X  showing my 4 spades. Then when pard passes because he doesn't know what to do over their 3h raise of the preempt, I bid my 4D, which he knows I definately am not offering as a place to play.

H: heart 4. This is the standard lead, therefore it must be the wrong lead in a master solvers club question. However, not knowing the questions too well, I am going to resist out thinking myself and go with standard.