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.