Toronto NABC in last day

Cindy (Bernstein) and I bid slam on this (low cards approximate) in the second match of the first qualifying session (Saturday) of the Roth Open Swiss Teams:

                  ♠ 6
                  ♥ 9 5 3 2
                  ♦ A K J 10 2
                  ♣ A 8 7 6
==
                  ♠ J 4 3
                  ♥ A K Q 10 8 7 4
                  ♦ 3
                  ♣ K 2

   West   North   East   South
                         1♥
   Dbl   2NT     Pass    4♥
   Pass  5♥     Pass    6♥
   All Pass

The 2NT bid by Cindy was a limit raise or better. When I showed more than a minimum (4♥), she raised to five, asking about trumps. I was happy to bid slam.

Notice that we could make it even if I had two low clubs instead of K-2. Cindy told me later that she reasoned it might be (at worst) on a diamond finesse which rated to be on.

This was an 11 IMP pickup as the players at the other table didn't bid slam.

Daily Bulletin for Sunday will be available here.

Downtown Toronto is very cool

I think I need to add something to my bucket list: rent an apartment and live in Toronto for a summer. Why not? Same language, same culture (more of less), although different money -- they use Monopoly money, lol, just kidding although it does look funny because I'm not used to it -- picture of the Queen, people I don't know and all that.

Canadians are more practical than Americans. They have coins for $1 and $2 and they use metric. Americans are too lazy to switch.

Canadians are fairly laid back. If the traffic light says "wait," well, pedestrians wait. Americans seem to always be in a hurry.

I'm playing in the Roth Open Swiss Teams, but we have a six-bagger, so I sat out rounds three and four of today's qualifying and walked around. Here are some images I captured (click to enlarge).


Above: The Eaton Centre is one of the largest malls in the world. It's located on Queen and Yonge Streets in Toronto.


Above: Cultures is one of the many eating places in Eaton Centre. It obviously has a colorful decor.


Above: Chalk Chick, as she calls herself, draws on the sidewalk and works for tips.


Above: The new City Hall is very futuristic looking, even though it was built in the Sixties. The curves remind me of the Wynn/Encore in Las Vegas.


Above: The Sheraton Centre Toronto has two towers. This is the one on Queen Street West.

Images by MOJO and taken with my point and shoot.

Mixed team event in the books

Above: The Sheraton Centre Toronto (as seen from the CN Tower) is one of the playing sites for the North American Bridge Championship. Click to enlarge.

My squad came in third place in the Mixed Board-a-Match Teams. I played with Cindy Bernstein and our teammates were Sally Wheeler and Buddy Hanby. We were more than three boards out of first, but less than one-half a point out of second.

You can read about it in the Daily Bulletin here later on tonight.

It was a pleasure to meet bloggers Jennifer Jones and Bob Klein. You can read their blog Jenn Bridge if you click here. Jennifer has a great booklet on losing trick count. If you're interested in elevating your game using this tool, check out how to get one from her at the web site.

The next two days will be the Roth Swiss Teams. I have the same group, but we've added Danny and JoAnn Sprung to make a six-bagger.

Image by MOJO and taken with my Canon.

Toronto NABC at half-way point

Above: The CN Tower in Toronto is an icon. It's seen here from just outside the Royal York Hotel, one of the two playing sites for the Summer North American Bridge Championships.

I'm happy to congratulate my friends and partners Richard and Mary Oshlag who won the Truscott Senior Swiss Teams yesterday. You can read about it in the Daily Bulletin if you click here.

John Schwartz and I qualified for today's final in the Wernher Open Pairs. We had a below-average game in the afternoon, but came back in the evening to make the final.

John held this collection on board No. 9 in the second session:
♠10 8 4 ♥10 9 6 5 3 2 ♦Q 7 ♣9 8.

I opened 1♠ Pass Pass and John's left-hand opponent bid 2♦. Partner doubled and your RHO redoubled, and you?

John jumped to 3♥, a great bid in my opinion. His hand is worth something in hearts. In spades, not so much.

The opponents continued on to 5♦ and I bid 5♥. This was doubled, but made for plus 650 and 23.5 matchpoints out of 25.

Here are all four hands:

                  ♠ K Q 6 5 3
                  ♥ A K 8 4
                  ♦ ---
                  ♣ A J 10 6
♠ A 2                          ♠ J 9 7
♥ J                            ♥ Q 7
♦ A J 9 6 2                   ♦ K 10 8 5 4 3
♣ K 7 5 3 2                    ♣ Q 4
                  ♠ 10 8 4
                  ♥ 10 9 6 5 3 2
                  ♦ Q 7
                  ♣ 9 8

Above: More faces and places -- Paul Gipson ponders his play in the Spingold Knockout Teams.

Images by MOJO.

Faces in a crowd

All these people were playing in the Spingold KO Teams yesterday. How many of them do you recognize? (Answers at bottom)











1. Boye Brogeland - Norway
2. Rose Meltzer - U.S.A.
3. Aleksander Dubinin - Russia
4. Marshall Miles - U.S.A.
5. Bjorn Fallenious - Sweden/N.Y.C.
6. Tadashi Yoshida - Secretary General (CEO) of the Japanese Bridge League

Somebody has lost their mind

Above: The Tour Desk in the lobby of the Sheraton Centre Toronto is a popular place.

In the second qualifying session of the Life Master Pairs, you hold:
♠A 10 7 6 4 ♥K Q 7 5 ♦10 4 ♣A 7.

You open 1♠, pass and partner bids 1NT. Your right-hand opponent overcalls 2♦ and you rebid 2♥. Your left-hand opponent raises to 3♦ and it's passed out there.

You lead the ♣A (I prefer the ♥K) and you see dummy:

                  ♠ K J 8 5 2
                  ♥ J 6 3
                  ♦ Q J 8 3
                  ♣ Q
♠ A 10 7 6 4                    
♥ K Q 7 5                       
♦ 10 4                          
♣ A 7

Partner plays the ♠9 on your lead, then realizes you led a club, not a spade, and corrects to a low club. The ♠9 is a penalty card and when the director comes, she tells declarer (me) his options and he asks for a spade lead. You play the ♠A, partner plays the ♠9 and declarer the ♠Q. Partner or declarer is out of spades. Who?

If declarer started with ♠Q 3, he intentionally opened himself up to a ruff. If partner had the ♠9 3, she should have played the 3 the second time (she was already known to hold the 9) to clear things up for you. Someone has done something irrational.

Declarer decided to trust his partner, always an adventure, and continued with a low spade. I put in the ♠8 and discarded a heart.

Here are all four hands (rotated):

                  ♠ K J 8 5 2
                  ♥ J 6 3
                  ♦ Q J 8 3
                  ♣ Q
♠ A 10 7 6 4                      ♠ 9 3
♥ K Q 7 5                         ♥ A 4 2
♦ 10 4                            ♦ 7 2
♣ A 7                             ♣ K J 10 6 5 4
                  ♠ Q
                  ♥ 10 9 8
                  ♦ A K 9 6 5
                  ♣ 9 8 3 2

I made four for plus 130 and 22 matchpoints on a 25 top.

What do you think of the 2♦ overcall? I used not to make two-level overcalls on bad hands. In this case, partner will often be on lead. You've got to help partner, bid that good suit.

Deep finesse says the opponents can make 5♣, and, in fact, can make 5♥. Your 2♦ bid and North's raise blew them out of the water.

Updates: Our team won the Bracket 1 Knockout. In the final match we were down 9 IMPs at the half, but rallied to win a squeeker by 7. You can read the results in the Daily Bulletin if you click here.

I've had nice visits with two bloggers: Linda Lee of Toronto and Masterpoint Press and Michael Yuen of Vancouver BC. I'm still looking for Glen Ashton, another blogger who lives in a Ottawa suburb and Ray Lee.

I plan to take today off and do tourist things. The have a step-on/step-off bus tour of the city that has an add-on of a harbour boat trip to the islands. On the islands, I plan to rent a bike and get some exercise. It was raining earlier (boo), but has cleared up, so the day's plans look like a go. Have camera, will travel.

Photo by MOJO and taken with my P&S.

Survive and advance

Above: The Sheraton Centre Toronto has this terrific view from its lobby. The Sheraton (along with the Royal York) is one of the two venues for the North American Bridge Championship.

Our team is in the top bracket of the Knockouts and we won both matches yesterday. The second match was against a Scottish team captained by bridge blogger Paul Gipson. He has a very worthwhile blog and you can read it if you click here.

The match against the Scots was hard-fought. Do you think this is a good slam (hands rotated and low cards are approximate)?

                  ♠ K 9

                  ♥ A 9 7 5 2

                  ♦ J 4 3

                  ♣ K J 6

==

                  ♠ A 10 4 3

                  ♥ K Q J 4 3

                  ♦ 2

                  ♣ A 3 2

          North (MOJO)   South (Rich)

                         1♥

          2NT            3♦

          3♥            3♠

          4♣            5♣

          6♥            Pass

The opening lead was the ♦A. Rich ruffed the diamond continuation, drew trumps in two rounds and played ♠K, ♠A and ruffed a spade. When the ♠Q J x ruffed out, the ♠10 was his 12th trick and 11 IMPs for our side.

If nothing good had happened in spades, Rich could finesse the club. Also, If his left-hand opponent held the spade guard, he might have some kind of a squeeze where he could drop a doubleton ♣Q offside. Not likely, I'm just sayin'.

There are four teams left and this afternoon we play another blogger! We drew Jeff Miller and his team.

Image by MOJO and taken with my P&S.

First day hot, but not so hot

Above: Free WiFi in the lobby of the Sheraton Centre Toronto is a big attraction.

The weather in Toronto has been record highs. The bridge for me was not so hot, however.

Rich Rothwarth and I had 52% and 47% games yesterday in the qualifying of the Life Master Pairs, and that won't get the job done. Several bad decisions and several fixes -- not a good combination.

We're heading to the Knockout Teams today. There's good news and bad news. The bad news is we had to pick up a team. The good news is that it's John Diamond and Brian Platnick. We could do worse.

O Canada

The ACBL has three major tournaments each year called North American Bridge Championships (NABC). The summer one is the biggest.

This year the NABC is being held in Toronto, one of my favorite cities. I'm leaving tomorrow to go play. You can follow the results in the Daily Bulletins which will be posted online here.

Image of Toronto taken from the ACBL web site.

Did you notice this?

There have been 50-some bracelets awarded at this year's WSOP. Did you see the winner of Event #12, Triple Chance No Limit Holdem? Some guy named David Diaz? David Diaz? Huh? Besides the great first name (David), who is he?

David is a guy whom I play against in local tournaments. He and his family, immigrants from Honduras, came to Memphis when he was four-years old. One of the great things about Memphis is that it has excellent health care. The University of Tennessee Medical School is located here. St. Jude Children's Hospital is also here. David had cancer and says that it saved his life.

Some young guys are full of themselves -- that's a turnoff to me. David's not that way. He's just a regular guy and nice as he can be and I'm very happy for him.

You can see an interview with Diaz on Poker News here -- notice the blue Memphis University Tiger tee shirt. Also notice he has only one arm. I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing that the arm was a victim to his cancer.

You can also see an interview on YouTube here.

Image taken from the WSOP news site. You can see it here.

A dealer earns her tokes

Dealers have a thankless job. "Blinds and antes, please," is heard about 50,000 times during one tournament. Players are clueless and some have to be reminded twice. I get tired of hearing it, and I know the dealers get tired of having to nag self-absorbed players.

Yesterday, a dealer potentially saved my butt. With the blinds 5000/10,000 and 500 antes, I held ♦J ♥J and raised to 25,000. A guy two to my left was a short-stack and moved all in. Another guy thought for a while and folded. When it got back to me, I started to turn my cards over.

Do you see what's wrong?

The dealer said, "Wait," in an urgent tone of voice. I looked up and she asked, "Do you call?"

Sure enough, the other guy had 3000 more than my bet, and, even though it was obvious, I had to officially say call.

The other guy turned over ♠A ♣J.

"I folded Ace-Jack," said the guy who thought about calling. "There's no more jacks coming." (Calling a raise and an all-in with A-J is suicide, but that's casino poker for you.)

That was also good news for me -- only two aces left in the deck. My hand held up and I won a nice pot.

"If you turned your hand over without saying 'call', he could claim you were folding face up," the dealer pointed out.

She was right, of course. I don't usually make errors like that. I don't know what the tournament director would rule, but the dealer (her name is Vanessa) acted quickly to avoid a sticky situation.

When I left my tip after cashing, I felt good about it.

Photo of Horseshoe Casino by MOJO and taken with my P&S.

Today is another day

Yesterday I went deep in the poker tournament, then had a hiccup to finish out of the money. At the end of my post, I said tomorrow's another day -- and it is/was!

I played today in the 2 p.m. tournament at the Horseshoe Casino (Tunica). The entry was $110 and 49 runners sat down to 20,000 in chips. Early on, I was card dead, but then the cards started coming. I had A-A twice and K-K twice and got big action all four times.

At the final table, there were 980,000 chips in play. When there were eight left, I had 320,000 and the other seven had 80,000 to 100,000 range. Several times a player suggested a chop (divide the prize money) of the $4,050 prize pool. I kept saying let's play for a while. Finally one of them said, let's give the big stack $1,000 and divide the rest ($440 each). That was good for me, so we did.

I wish I could write about how awesome I played, but actually I stayed out of trouble and didn't have anything bad happen. And, oh yes, I had good cards. Hard to beat good cards.

Photo of the Horseshoe taken by MOJO with my P&S.

Aces vs. aces vs. MOJO

Above: The shot clock at the tournament today after five hours play.

One hundred and eleven runners paid $160 to play in the Saturday poker tournament at the Horseshoe Casino. I busted out in twenty-second place. My downfall was calling a three-times the big blind raise (12,000) with ♥Q ♥J. A guy behind me moved all in for another 18,000 and the original raiser called. It would cost me 18,000 to win a 101,000 pot (there were 6,000 in blinds and 5000 in antes), so I called. The original raised turned over ♥A ♦A. The all-in guy showed ♠A ♣A!

The flop had a jack and the turn had a queen -- I'm ahead! But the river put a fourth spade on the board giving the all-in guy a flush.

I started the hand with 35,000 in chips where the average stack was 55,000. Should I have called. I think I shouldn't have called the original 12,000 bet, but once I did, the pot was too big to give it up. If I got lucky, that would have given me the chips I needed to win the tournament.

Tomorrow's another day.

Photo by MOJO with my P&S.

Poker pearl #60

Jake Cody (see above from Card Player magazine) won the $25,000 Heads-up WSOP Championship. He's a 22-year-old professional player from the United Kingdom. Cody says:

You should be very flexible when you play heads up. One of the most important things is adjusting to your opponents to combat their styles. Don't make it easy for them and don't play into their hands. Always be the one who's making them answer questions.

Odds and ends:
I played in the Wednesday night tournament at the Horseshoe Casino again yesterday. When we got down to three people, we all had about the same sized stacks and agreed to chop. I like this tournament because you start with 20,000 in chips. Even so, a player busted out in 25 minutes. If they gave you an infinite number of chips, some people would find a way to lose them.

One cute hand. I limped in for 2000 from the cutoff with ♦9 ♦8. I often raise with hands like this to mix up my play. The button raised to 7000 and one of the blinds called, so I did, too. The flop was a rainbow 7-6-5 -- Yahtzee, as Grange says. It went check, I checked and the raiser moved all in! I obviously called and he showed ♣A ♣J. I don't blame him, he needed chips and figured the flop (even though coordinated) probably didn't connect with anyone -- wrong!

I'm going to the North American Bridge Championships (also called NABC) in Toronto later this month. I'll be playing in the three-day Life Master Pairs with Rick Rothwarth and in the Werner Open Pairs with John Schwartz. I've been to Toronto before and it's one of my favorite places in the world, so I'm looking forward to it. My first day of play will be July 22.

Add Cake Poker to the list of corrupt sites

I had nearly $400 in my bankroll at Cake Poker and decided to withdraw it. That's not life-changing money, but things are shaky right now in the online poker world.

May 23: When I tried to withdraw, Cake told me to use UseMyWallet. When I went to that web site, they wouldn't let me open an account. I wrote to Cake and they basically said, "Too bad." I wrote back and asked how, then, could I get my money?

May 24: Cake wrote back and said they could send me a check, but I had to send a copy of my driver's license and a recent utility bill. I did so. Then Cake told me I could withdraw. When I tried to do that, however, their system wouldn't let me.

May 25: Cake now told me that the withdrawal by check method wasn't enabled. Another e-mail followed. I asked them to fix this, and they said:

From: CakePoker Cashier
To: dave1smith@yahoo.com
Sent: Wed, May 25, 2011 10:14:39 AM
Subject: Re: Re: cash [Ticket#: 548546]

Hello David,
Thank you for your email. Please be informed that we can manually cashout via check on your behalf. Can you please confirm if you wish to cashout your total balance $364.67?
Kind Regards
Norah
CakePoker Cashier Department

May 26: Yes, dammit! Of course I want my money. What have we been e-mailing back and forth about? I wrote and verified the amount and asked them to proceed. Their reply:

From: CakePoker Cashier
To: dave1smith@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 7:38 AM
Subject: Re: Re: cash [Ticket#: 548546]

Hello David,
Thank you for your email. Please be informed that the cash out has now been requested for you. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Kind Regards,
Mark
CakePoker Cashier.

Now we were getting somewhere, or so I thought. They had given me the run-around, but finally they promised to send my money.

June 27: One month later, I still hadn't received a check, so I wrote and asked about it. Their reply:

From: CakePoker Cashier
To: dave1smith@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: Re: cash [Ticket#: 548546]

Hello David,
Thank you for your email. Regrettably, we have experienced some delays due to technical problems, which have created a backlog. We are working hard to have this situation rectified quickly. Please rest assured that your cashout will be completed as soon as possible.
Kind Regards
Norah
CakePoker Cashier Department

July 5: This wasn't looking too good, now was it? I mean it's only $364, and if they can't get that small amount to me, then they have issues. Yesterday, I wrote and asked when I could expect the check. Their reply:

From: CakePoker Cashier
To: dave1smith@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 6, 2011 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: Re: cash [Ticket#: 548546]
Hello David,
Thank you for your email. We do understand your frustration in this matter since this cash out is having an unacceptable delay on which we are aware of. Unfortunately our support and cashier staff cannot promise you an ETA in this matter nor have a cash out process speed up as the issue is due to technical problems with the transfer system. We're working to have this resolved and your funds transferred shortly.
Kind Regards
Norah
CakePoker Cashier Department

Who knows? It might have been a juicy murder trial

I've never been on a jury, but would like to. What goes on behind the scenes? How do the different personalities of the various jurists mesh -- or not! Is it like you see on TV or is that just Hollywood's version?

Today I got a summons (see scan above). Unfortunately, it was for July 25 and I will be in Toronto for the North American Bridge Championship or NABC as we call them, so won't be able to serve.

Have you ever been on jury duty?

Giving back

Above: Dan Cates gave a seat to a stranger to the WSOP Main Event. Image is a scan from Bluff Magazine.

Poker players often get the rap of being degenerates. Me, me, me, it's all about me. Well, Dan "Jungleman12" Cates has proven that all players are not that way. He says: "I noticed that people had not given back to the community without taking a piece of the action."

Cates held a drawing to select the lucky fan and it was uber-blogger Poker Grump. It's great to see a blogger win the seat, especially one who has a chance to do well. Go Grump!

You can read what Grumpie says about it here and here.