Weekend Off – Having fun with bridge on the Internet -Day 0

Since this is a long weekend I am going to just enjoy myself over the  weekend. I decide that to celebrate I will look at a fun bridge site or two.

I goggled my way to www.Pattayabridge.com  Pattaya is located in Thailand and seems very proud to be bringing bridge to that island paradise of beaches, diving, windsurfing and gold.  It is warm all year with no volcanoes, tsunamis hurricanes, tornados (but the occasional monsoon between July and November) and a low cost of living.  Wow!

There is a link to the suit split calculator http://www.automaton.gr/tt/en/OddsTbl.htm.  It’s cool but cruelly there is a link to sailing in the Greek islands on the side.   It just sounds so good.

The instructions for the calculator are a little confusing but it works quite well.  You can consider other known cards in the opponents hands and you can combine odds for more than 1 suit.  Even better is a little program which shows you how to play a suit.  I enter AQ764 for North and South J82.  What is the best way for 5 tricks?  It not only tells you that the best line is to playing low to the Q but it walks you through what happens as each player follows with the card of your choice.  Interesting.

And finally I check out the cartoons and quotes.  A sample cartoon:

A post mortem as enjoyed by most married bridge partners

Later in the day I found that I couldn’t resist going back to Richard Pavlicek’s website http://www.rpbridge.net/ .  I played all the oldies like the 2001 A Space Odyssey theme and the Carpenter’s Your On Top Of The World and just loved doing the bridge problems.  I read all the answers and the discussion.  This stuff is great and very addictive and I think I will go to bed whistling 70’s music.  Do they not make great songs like that any more or is that what happens to you when you qualify for the seniors?