Do you whip out your smart phone and read blogs when you're stuck somewhere twiddling your thumbs? I do, but blogs are hard to read. Often you get to see only the first paragraph or so, then have to navigate further to read the whole thing or leave a comment. There's often junk on the sides of the image that you aren't interested in. Let's face it -- most blogs aren't set up to be looked at on a phone.

Now you can make your blog phone friendly, and I've done that. Go to Gadzooks to find out how. Thanks zooks!

When will they learn?

The guy in the shot above limped in. Several of us called. After the flop, he basically went all in. Doesn't that sound like an amateur holding A-A? I had a little surprise for him on a hand I probably wouldn't have played to a good-sized raise pre-flop.

Also saw this. There were about 20 players left. It folded to the button who keyed in the chat box: "shortstack" then went all in. Is that a tell or what? Yes, he was short. He had around 2700 where the blinds were 300/600/75. The big blind foolishly called him only to see A-A. No kidding!

Behind the scenes

Have you ever been to a rock concert with pyrotechnics? Did you wonder how they do it?

Not your father's Christmas music

It must be the holiday season, Why? The TransSiberian Orchestra is back in town. They played the FedEx Forum Friday night, and, even though I'd seen them last year, I decided to go.

TSO played for three hours -- if you like them, you got your money's worth. They had rock fused with symphony. They had lasers, pyrotechnics and fog. They had gizmos that some of the group got on before they raised in the air. Mostly they had high energy and good music.

I gave a full review last year -- you can read it here.


Above: The solo violinist and one of the guitarists rode above the audience while they played.


TSO had a ton of good singers. Besides the women in the middle look to the left of the photo.


Photos by MOJO and taken with my P&S.

Bridge: an international game

Above: The Marriott World Wide Center in Olrando FL already has holiday decorations in their lobby.

I returned to my office Tuesday after 12 days in Olrando at the North American Bridge Championship. I had worked on Thanksgiving and the Friday after (normally holidays) and two weekends. I was ready for some time off, so I stayed home today.

I logged into BBO and noticed there was an individual tournament about to start. Why not?

The bridge wasn't very good, but it was fun to try and guess what random parters were doing, both in bidding and play. I noticed there were many foreign players, so I started writing down the countries. At my table were players from: Bulgaria, Great Britain, India, Turkey, Norway, Canada, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and U.S.A. This was in only six rounds!

Here's a hand from the tournament. It was matchpoint scoring. I held:

♠-- ♥J 9 ♦K Q 10 7 2 ♣K Q J 6 3 2.

With both sides vulnaerable, left-hand opponent opened 2♥, Pass by partner and 2♠ on your right. What would you do?

I could have tried to show two suits, but playing with random players, there's danger lurking at every point, so I simply bid 3♣.

LHO jumped to 4♠, RHO bid 4NT and LHO responded 5♦. RHO bid 6♠ and it passed back to partner who doubled. That was passed to my LHO who redoubled!

What would you lead? Actually, it's a trick question as I don't think it matters. I led the ♦K, declarer won, knocked out the ♠A and made his slam. Thank goodness it was matchpoints and only a 0.




Photo with my P&S.