The trip to Providence a couple of weeks ago was quite a pleasant trip. It was low on stress and low on drama, much unlike the previous two. The quality of bridge at my table was acceptable. Cristal and I qualified for the second day of the LM Pairs, had one decent session in the final and then collapsed. It was a real struggle – we didn’t really get any gifts the whole two days and I was pretty pleased with how both of us played. In the two-day BAM, Sean and I played with Cristal and Igor. On the first day, Sean and I got lots of gifts and stole a few boards as well, enough to carry the team into day 2. On day 2, we didn’t get so many gifts, had a couple more than our share of bad boards, but Cristal and Igor did just enough to get us into the extremely low overalls.

Here’s one of our best boards that wasn’t a gift.

QJTx, AK, x, AKTxxx
AKx, Jxx, AKxxx, xx
1♣¹ - 2♣²
2♦³ - 2♠⁴
3♠⁴ - 4♦⁵
4NT⁶ – 6NT⁷
7♠⁸ – P

1 – 15+, balanced or natural

2 – 0-7 w/ 6+♦, or game forcing w/ 5+♦
3 – happy playing 2♦ if responder has the weaker hand
4 – natural-ish, but possibly just a concentration of values
5 – cue bid
6 – RKC for spades
7 – might be off the rails but this is what I think we can make
8 – probably a Moysian but I think this will make

The contract rolled home when spades split 4-2 and clubs split 3-2.

GT-FSU this weekend

I haven’t posted my college football rankings at all this season. Frankly, I’ve been too busy to even bother looking at it until last week. I got caught up on all the games and stuff before Thanksgiving and now heading into conference championship week, I’ll post the rankings.

1. Alabama (11-1)
2. Oregon (11-1)
3. Ohio State (11-1)
4. TCU (10-1)
5. Mississippi (9-3)
6. Florida State (12-0)
7. Arizona (10-2)
8. Georgia Tech (10-2)
9. Michigan State (10-2)
10. Boise State (10-2)
11. Georgia (9-3)
12. Wisconsin (10-2)
13. UCLA (9-3)
14. Mississippi State (10-2)
15. Missouri (10-2)

Yep, my computer dislikes FSU even more than the people. How is Mississippi #5 at 9-3? Does my algorithm have some sort of bias toward Ole Miss for some reason? That's the only ranking that I see as being inappropriate.
Predictions for conference championship games:
Georgia Tech (a 3 point underdog) to win 31-27 in Charlotte on Saturday
Alabama (a 14 point favorite) to win 30-24 against Missouri
Ohio State over Wisconsin 34-31
Oregon over Arizona 37-31

 

I’ll be at the Tech-FSU game rooting for the Yellow Jackets. I’ve actually put in some theoretical results for this weekend’s games and the computer has the winner of GT-FSU moving up to #3 or 4 pretty much regardless of what else happens. I think it’s almost impossible for the selection committee to put GT in the playoff (top 4) even with a convincing win but would be worth considering especially if a couple of the 10-1/11-1 teams lose.