Posted 1:20 PM by Floyd

From 1992 to 2000 I lived in downtown Palo Alto. Yesterday I was doing some errands in the vicinity, and stopped by to do some shopping. One of my stops was at Borders, which is my favorite bookstore. It was built in the old Varsity theater, so it has a neat narrow courtyard in front, and an open and high-ceilinged two story floorplan. Also Borders had a good bridge book selection. (Alas, it was even better a few years ago; now they have one shelf of bridge books instead of two.)

I browsed the bridge books and came across Spades for Winners, by Marty Fleishman. Spades is a trick-taking card game with a trump suit; in the play of the cards it is like bridge where spades is always trumps and there is no dummy -- all four players play their cards. (Actually it is exactly like the bridge ancestor whist. One card play difference in spades is that spades may not be led until broken.) It was interesting to see the bridge concepts repackaged for spades form. Fleishman talks about what to lead from honor sequences, playing high-low to show interest in the suit led by partner, and leading a low card to show interest in that suit.

Not all bridge concepts made their way into his book. For instance, Fleishman gives an example where a player leads a singleton club to his partner's ace. Partner, holding the AK of diamonds, cashes the diamond king before returning a club. The player "cuts" (spades slang for trumping) and knows to lead a diamond back for another cut. A bridge players wouldn't bother with the diamond king; he would just lead his lowest club to show a diamond entry.

Spades bidding is of course very primitive compared to bridge bidding, because the only possible bids are a number of tricks, there being no possibility of an alternate trump suit. Also there is no real possibility of conventional bidding, because you get one chance to express the number of tricks you expect to take.

I do not mean to imply that spades is a simpler game than bridge. In the card play, spades is much more complex. It is harder to play with all the other hands concealed; in bridge the dummy is exposed and you get to see half the deck. Another aspect that makes play difficult is the scoring system for overtricks -- "bags", in spade lingo. In bridge you are always happy to get overtricks. In some forms of scoring they are not important and can be sacrificed to ensure the contract, but overtricks always represent some sort of gain.

In spades, bags are dangerous. Each bag is worth one point, but if you get ten bags, you lose 100 points! So in some situations it is important to dump tricks rather than take them.

The problem with spades is that card play is so difficult -- both to work out the lie of the cards and to get two players to adopt a consistent plan -- that advanced card play is impossible. For instance, Fleishman simply recommends that you always pull exactly two rounds of trumps. In bridge you would know how many trumps are missing, but this information is not available in spades. Even a simple play like a squeeze or an endplay would be something to write home about if accomplished by a spades player.

Posted 5:52 PM by Floyd

California is one of the nation's worst nanny states. Witness this:

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Residents of California's agricultural heartland for years have blamed their thick layer of smog on exhaust from cars and trucks in the San Francisco Bay area. Now, air regulators are proposing a solution that hits much closer to home.

Their proposal: a ban on traditional wood-burning fireplaces that has angered many in the state's Central Valley, who say they have the right to burn.

Next I suppose there will be a ban on farting, with Stasi-minded residents encouraged to call a flatulence hotline.

The most egregious instance of fascism was this public-minded official:

Many bought gas stoves -- and realized how convenient they are, said Christopher Dann, a Colorado Air Pollution Control Division spokesman. ``Anytime they want, they can have a fire,'' he said.

What the fuck does a gas stove have to do with having a comfortable, crackling fire on a winter night? Next Dann will be bragging that residents are free to light bunsen burners.

Posted 5:45 PM by Floyd

Letters of genius, from the San Jose Mercury News opinion page:

Redirect military spending

PETER Piot (Opinion, Dec. 1) is correct in insisting that we need to be concerned about the devastation being visited upon Africa by both AIDS and famine. Further, he is correct in insisting that we need to be investing heavily in efforts to alleviate the effects of AIDS and famine in Africa.

This year, Congress and President Bush agreed on a military budget of nearly $400 billion. The rationale is that it will make us more secure. Piot suggests we may be throwing money at the wrong people.

Only by addressing the real social concerns that plague our nation and the world can we hope to achieve security. If we were to re-allocate, say, $10 billion to $20 billion away from our military budget in order to address the AIDS epidemic and other causes underlying world hunger, we would be acting humanely and intelligently. If we really want national security, we need to look at the social conditions underlying national and world insecurity.

Marilyn Feldhaus
San Jose

That makes a lot of sense, Marilyn. Especially considering that no one in Al Qaeda has AIDS, no one in Al Qaeda is starving, and no one in Al Qaeda cares one whit about those issues.

I might also add that there is nothing inhumane or unintelligent about freeing people from homophobic, misogynist, fun-hating theocrats.

Posted 5:32 PM by Floyd

Jay Manifold of A Voyage to Arcturus sent a friendly letter about my post questioning whether Europe's decline is inevitable. Publishing letters of praise is part of what makes The Declarer a fearless, no-holds-barred blog. Jay's letter is indented; my reply is flush.

I would point out, however, that a sufficiently astute prognosticator could
have forecast America's recovery in 1979, by looking at Carter's decontrol
of aviation, natural gas, petroleum, and trucking; the capital gains tax
cut; and appointment of Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve (Greenspan
has simply continued Volcker's policies ever since). Declines in crime
rates were bound to happen eventually, largely due to demographic shifts.

Yes, I did think of that while writing my post. More counter-arguments: The
Republican efforts to cut taxes in 1978, Proposition 13's passage in 1978,
and Reagan's near nomination in 1976.

But -- these events might not have been visible to a foreign observer in Europe
who did not speak English. Much of what goes on in European politics is
not easily discernable to an American observer. Us bloggers probably rely
too much on the Internet; I don't think shifts in a nation's political beliefs
will necessarily be visible there.

As for crime, it has been my impression that in the 90's the American crime
rate has declined, and such decline was not simply due to demographics,
as earlier declines were. (Simple example: New York under Guliani.) But I
am not an expert and do not even know the statistics that well, so I could be
swayed by counter-argument.

Disclaimer: I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican -- I believe that
Reagan's ability to inspire self-confidence in the electorate has been
without parallel in my lifetime and was itself instrumental in our rebound.

The question would be, what signs are there that Europe is beginning to
pursue policies which will turn things around?

I guess events similar to those of the late 70's: Tax cuts, privatisation, easing of
regulations, willingness to say that crime is wrong. It doesn't look good at the
moment, but Europe now is not like America of 1979; more like America of 1965,
when unproductive policies had considerable public support.

And there has been some good news, both recently and in the last 20 years. Ireland
has pursued free-market policies and cut taxes; Italy has elected a less spendthrift
government; the late Pym Fortuyn appears to have been on the side of liberty and progress;
Sweden moved away from socialism. And of course the UK had its own earthshaking political
event in 1979.

For a much more distant historical example, consider the Roman Empire during
the 260s and 270s. It appeared to be on the ropes, but (even in the west)
recovered and held together for another century and a half. The east, of
course, remained relatively functional and powerful until the "Fourth
Crusade" plundered Constantinople in 1204.

For some reason I seem to get in arguments with bloggers about Roman history
quite frequently ... I disagree that the Western Empire turned things around in
the same way that America did 20 years ago. Constantine destroyed the Western
empire to save it; the economy was socialist and the government totalitarian.
By the year 500 there were no cities of consequence in Gaul, Britain, or Spain,
because the Roman government taxed them out of existence.

As for the East, they hung in there for awhile, but it was a long and steady decline.

Posted 11:36 AM by Floyd

Check out this job description (which I received from an online job search agent):

Duties

This is a senior-level professional software engineer position with responsibilities focusing on the design, development and maintenance of high-quality code for complex components in a given product with an overall business objective of producing high quality code according to a given product's functional specifications. Design, develop and maintain high-quality code for complex components in a given product, with a focus on design; identify, evaluate and learn new technologies rapidly and build applications using those technologies; collaborate with other team members ...

Are you in a coma yet? How hard do you think the author had to work to generate such a completely incomprehensible paragraph?

Posted 7:16 PM by Floyd

Run to the Hills!
Run for Your Lives!

The Golden State Warriors are in fourth place in their division. That means that there are two teams with worse records. Both of these teams are from Los Angeles, so I suppose there is an outbreak of scurvy there. Or maybe bubonic plague.

By the way, take a look at the bottom four in the Pacific Division standings. All these teams have seven wins, but a different number of losses. Portland, in third place, has nine losses; the Lakers have thirteen. Who does the NBA schedule? How can the Lakers have played 25% more games than another team? It's not even like basketball teams play doubleheaders.

Posted 3:47 PM by Floyd

My referral logs show that The Declarer has had another visitor from Europe -- from skanova.com, which is a Swedish ISP. I don't need to Google Swedish to know hej; in the early days of Aspect Development (my employer for seven of the last ten years), our most important customer was Ericsson.

Two of Aspect's vice presidents went to Stockholm in August. They said that it was amazingly beautiful, that the women were more than amazingly beautiful, and that everyone spoke English. They would ask shopkeepers or people on the street if they spoke English, and the Swedes would answer, a little surprised, "of course." After awhile they stopped asking.

My manager Brian got to visit Sweden twice -- in November and February. Brian was a native Californian. "Do you think I'll need a coat?", he asked me. Despite the cold, despite sunrise at 10 a.m. and sunset at 2, and despite having his truck broken into and a window smashed while he was gone, Brian also enjoyed Stockholm.

Posted 3:46 PM by Floyd

Lately there have been predictions in the blogosphere of Europe's doom. Eric S. Raymond relayed Karl Zinsmeister's essay Old and in the Way, which forecast Europe's demographic implosion. Steven Den Beste has posted several recent articles criticizing Europe's insular and anti-meritocratic corporate structure, and their military irrelevance. And there have been other data points, including some frightening descriptions of high crime and police torpor in both England and France.

Last night Instapundit said:

...my attitude isn't schadenfreude, exactly. It's more like someone who realizes that an alcoholic has to hit bottom before he gets help. I've been worried about where Europe has been headed for quite a while, and so far it seems to be following the script with worrisome accuracy.

I do agree with Raymond, Den Beste, and Reynolds that Europe's policies of stifling regulations, generous welfare benefits and law enforcement lassitude will result in poor economic performance and worsening crime. Certainly I don't think that Europe is headed in the right direction. But it's too early to say that Europe will definitely hit bottom.

The reason that I say this is that America went through similar problems in the 1970's. I was rummaging through a video store on Tuesday and came across Kurt Russell's Escape from L.A. This is the sequel to Escape from New York, a 1981 movie which envisions a future New York as a giant prison camp. Twenty years ago this premise, while strained, was somewhat believable. Crime had been rising since the 1960's and for most of that period there did not seem to be any official will or capability to stop it. Many inner cities were horrifying jungles of disorder.

America had its own economic problems in the 1970's as well -- shortages, inflation, unemployment, and finally crippling interest rates.

These problems were eventually solved to some extent. Crime is nowhere near the problem it was 25 years ago, and stagflation is a distant memory. But it took a long time before voters were willing to turn the ship of state around.

Imagine that you are an external critic of America in the year 1979. Carter is president, and he is implementing the same sort of socialist economic policies that you have criticized all throughout the decade. He has even proposed a gas rationing system similar to Nixon's disastrous plan in 1973. Crime is high and shows no signs of abating. The inner cities are war zones.

Nevertheless, if you said that America was destined to hit bottom, you would be mistaken. It would seem that there was little opposition to the the disastrous policies of the 60's and 70's, and on the surface that would be true -- conservatives and free-market advocates had been routed in elections for decades. But the mistakes of the ruling order did energize discontents and lead to the Reagan Revolution.

By analogy, just because Europe does dumb things in the year 2001, and makes the same mistakes a year later, does not mean that collapse is inevitable.

Posted 6:25 PM by Floyd

Here are more hands from yesterday's club game with my friend Eric.

***** Board 4 - Both Vul - 2nd chair *****

I held AKxxx x xxx K8xx. RHO passed, and I made a light opening of 1. LHO overcalled 2. Eric bid 3 and I regretted opening my mouth. I raised to 4 and Eric bid 4. This I could pass and happily did.

LHO led the Q and here is what I bought:

xxx KJT AKJT Axx

I won the club on the table, since RHO was the only one who could take club ruffs (there being no entry to RHO's hand). I led a high spade and LHO dropped the jack. This looked ominous. I led a heart, hoping she would duck, but LHO stepped up with the ace and led the J.

I played the other high trump and LHO showed out, pitching a heart. Now what? At imps it would be easy; diamond hook, heart king, and run the diamonds, hoping LHO had Qxx of diamonds. By the time RHO ruffs in I will have pitched my club losers. But at matchpoints I was reluctant to play for the miracle, as it could easily lead to down 2.

So I exited in trumps. This ensures down one and if RHO started with two clubs, he will be endplayed and I will make no matter who has what in diamonds. Unfortunately RHO cashed a club. More unfortunately, LHO had Qxx of diamonds.

Now granted that I'm a moron and a bad guesser, there is no reason for me to be in 4. 3N makes 4 on this hand with no trouble, and 3N is what partner should bid over 2. He has bad trumps and two slow stoppers, and 3N is one trick lower.

***** Board 6 - Favorable - 4th chair *****

I held AK Ax Q9xx Kxxxx and heard it go P - P - 1 to me. I overcalled 1N. Then LHO bid 4, and Eric doubled!

I led the K and here is what tracked in dummy:

xxx Txxxx AKJ8x -

Visions of sticks and wheels danced in my head. I pulled a second trump and led a diamond. I wasn't worried about the diamond suit; my fourth diamond was a stopper and even if declarer ran my diamond lead to his ten, partner was presumably still there with diamond shortness and a third trump. I wasn't worried when declarer pitched a heart of the A. I wasn't worried when declarer pitched a club on the K -- wait a minute, a club?

I was still blinking when declarer spread his hand and conceded a club for 790. LHO's idiotic raise had caught declarer with 66 shape; I needed to cash my ace of hearts -- surely one of the worst defensive plays one could make in the abstract -- to beat the hand.

***** Board 12 - Unfavorable - 2nd chair *****

Here is another 3N versus 4 of a major decision. My partner held Axxxx xx J8xx Ax. I opened 1 and he responded 1. I bid 3N. We hadn't discussed what 3N would be after 1 - 1, but after a minor opening, 3N would show a good long minor, shortness in responder's suit, and around an 18 count. With my partner's hand, do you pass 3N or pull to 4?

I think you should prefer the trump game for the following reasons: You have weak spades, and you have a ruffing value in clubs. But I don't think Eric's choice of pass is badly mistaken, and anyway he may have felt unsure of the meaning of 3N.

The board had a happy ending: I had K AKJTxx AKx Jxx. (Another reason I am reluctant to criticize Eric's pass is that 3N on Jxx of clubs is a little wacky.) LHO led the T and I covered. RHO produced the queen and I won with the ace.

I figured that the opponents would lead more diamonds if I let them in. So I unblocked my spade and led hearts from the top. RHO won her queen and played another diamond. I won, cashed my hearts, and led a diamond toward the 8 for my 11th trick. (I can't build this trick if I finesse hearts, so spurning the finesse did not cost me. Anyway +660 was worth 6 matchpoints out of 8.)

***** Board 13 - Both Vul - 1st chair *****

This hand is about abusing bad players.

I held QT9x AQT8 xx 8xx and passed. LHO passed, partner opened 1, and RHO overcalled 1. I bid 1N (again, prefer notrumps to a major when you have strength in their suits) and everyone was content.

LHO led the nine of hearts. Dummy was

Axx xx Axxx AQJ9

I won the ten and led a club to the queen. It held. I decided to play a spade, figuring that RHO would not be able to stand it if he had the king; if he ducked smoothly I would insert the ten. He did pop king, and played another heart back.

I played the eight and it won. Then another club to the jack drew the ten from RHO.

I played off the ace of spades and another spade to my queen. RHO pitched a diamond on this, so I knew he was 2542. I could have cashed the heart ace and taken the club hook for +180, but I wanted more. RHO was sure to have the K -- he has shown up with only seven points in the other suits -- and I figured he would never throw it away.

So I hooked the club and cashed the ace of clubs. RHO threw a heart and a diamond (note that he can pitch his hearts away too, as I have no hand entry. I played ace and a diamond and he kept the king, so I scored my two hearts at the end for a swinish +210 and a top board. (An utterly unnecessary 210; 180 would have been a top.)

***** Board 17 - None Vul - 1st chair *****

This was my favorite board of the day. I held 4 KJ T87632 QT64. I passed, LHO opened 1, Eric overcalled 1, and RHO raised to 2.

I couldn't double for penalty because double would have been takeout. So I passed. LHO passed, and Eric reopened with a double. This I could pass and did.

LHO bid 3! I guess when she saw Eric double she assumed there would be more bidding and didn't see my pass! Eric passed, managing not to smirk too much, and of course I doubled.

Eric led A (A from AK) and this dummy appeared:

QT953 864 A95 J8.

The defense was fairly easy. Eric switched to the T and it went low, king, ace. LHO played a diamond to the ace and got the bad news (Eric pitched a spade). Heart to the jack and queen, heart toward the eight; Eric played 9 and a fourth round of hearts.

I overruffed dummy's nine and played a trump. Declarer won and still lost a spade, a club, and a trump at the end. But which trump?

Among young bridge players -- that is, players under 45 -- there is the legend of the Beer Card. The Beer Card is the seven of diamonds. If you take the last trick with this card -- and don't pitch a trick to do it -- your partner owes you a beer. As the contract was doubled, winning the last trick with 7 would net me two wonderful beers.

But -- there is also the Scotch! Some friends from California play that if you take the last trick on defense with the two of trumps, your partner owes you a bottle of Scotch.

If you have a beer and a Scotch, what is that? Why, a Boilermaker of course! I first heard the term from über-bridge/gaming-geek Jeff Goldsmith, and as a Purdue graduate I couldn't be prouder to have finally quaffed my own.

(By the way, the re-raise cost declarer one matchpoint out of eight. +300 was a top for us.)

***** Board 20 - Both Vul - 2nd chair *****

Here is another board on which we defended 3 doubled. On board 17 we had a lock to beat the contract, whereas on this board -- well, you'll see.

I held Kxx x 9xx QJxxxx -- and a sane person might say at this point, "clever of your partner to double 3." RHO opened 1 and I passed. LHO bid 1, partner passed, and RHO rebid 2. This was passed around to partner, who doubled.

RHO passed and I bid 3. This was passed around to RHO, who bid 3.

At this point I doubled. Before you call for a veterinarian with a tranquilizer gun, let me explain the mitigating circumstances: On the previous hand RHO had bid 2 over my partner's 1 opening holding 4324 shape; he had an easy takeout double. His partner raised to 3 and they went down one. This was a near bottom, as at other tables partner's hand had bid a strong notrump and played there. We had already been fixed by other bad players in earlier rounds, and this hand put me on tilt. So I cracked 3, figuring that he didn't have his bid, and he was a bad player anyway.

I led the stiff heart and dummy greeted me with

Qxxx KJ9x QTx xx

A typical club game fix: The player with no right to bid his hand three times catches a dummy with good support. Partner won the ace of hearts and put a low heart back (declarer playing the ten and queen on the first two tricks). I ruffed and led a club. He won the king and played the ace of clubs. Here's where I get what I deserve; partner cannot imagine a 6421 club layout after I double, so we lose the chance to ruff off another winner. But the ace of clubs cashed!

Declarer ruffed high on the next heart lead and pulled trumps. Partner showed out on the second round, so declarer was 3262 and still had to lose a spade for +200. This was a top; if I had gone to Axl Rose's anger management class and then bid 4, that would make for 130 and also a top.

***** Board 23 - Both Vul - 3rd chair *****

Let's conclude with the Michael Jordan Board. Test your defensive skills.

You hold 8xxx 98 AJx AJT9. You hear the following uncontested auction by the opponents, starting with RHO:

LHO   RHO

1   1

2   2

2N    3N

Let's say you lead the J. This may work out badly if honor-doubleton of clubs appears in dummy, but I'm a fish who likes fourth best. Here is the dummy:

Axx AKJ72 xxx xx

Partner wins your lead with the king and returns the three. Declarer had Q72, so you cash four club tricks on the go. Declarer pitches a diamond from hand, a spade and a heart from dummy. Now what?

If you cash the ace of diamonds, declarer is down one and you get 3 matchpoints on an 8 top. There is no reason to grab your ace here. Where could it go? You don't even need to count any tricks, just look at the dummy: Where could the losing diamonds go? On a five-card spade suit?

I returned the 9. Declarer led a diamond to the king and I considered ducking, but I won and played another heart. Declarer finessed this, lost to partner's queen, and claimed for -200. This was worth 6 matchpoints for us.

Posted 10:16 AM by Floyd

In the previous post I said that the Harry Potter troll was much better than the Lord of the Rings troll. Really there are two separate issues: The CGI, which was better in the Harry Potter movie; and a particular piece of dialogue which I thought was the low point of LOTR.

What I found objectionable was the Moria scene where the party is attacked by orcs. Boromir looks out the door, comes back in, and sneers, "They have a cave troll."

One of the problems with LOTR is the layer of crud that has built up on top of it, generated by decades of posters, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and imitative books and movies. So even though the book was unique during its time, it now appears to be laden with the hoariest cliches: The wizard with the long beard, the short and stocky dwarf, swords and scorcery.

Boromir's line contributes to the problem. In real life -- and LOTR did try to imagine real life from the point of view of its unlikely characters and milieu -- anyone, even a fierce warrior, would see that cave troll and say "Oh shit, a cave troll!" Or, to be less like Adam Sandler and more like Gandalf:

"For the moment they [the orcs] are hanging back, but there is something else there. A great cave-troll, I think, or more than one. There is no hope of escape that way."

Boromir, by contrast, sounds like a teenager playing Dungeons and Dragons. His speech could logically be extended:

They have a cave troll. Not a big deal, because I have 96 hit points left and a cave troll has 6d8 hit points. Now remember, it does d12 of damage, so you hobbits get in back. I'll get out my +2 sword, and Legolas, you can use your +3 bow on the orcs ...

Posted 10:04 AM by Floyd

I was very impressed with the first Harry Potter movie, which my wife and I watched last night. I do have some comments, which are hidden in the following paragraph to avoid spoiling the movie (and the book). Select the space below to see them:

• The climax was a wonderful surprise and an important moral lesson, that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But poor Snapes deserves better in the ending. At the least he is owed an apology from the young wizards who have spend the last two hours slandering him. Instead at the end we see him glowering over his nasty young charges at Slithering, with nary a word from Potter and company.
  
• The Valdemort parasite was well done, though it revived uncomfortable memories of watching Total Recall.
  
• Ron Weezely controlls the chess pieces by voice when playing on the dungeon chessboard. So why does he need to stick with his knight? Can't he hop off and order it to move?
  
• The Harry Potter troll was about ten times better than the Lord of the Rings troll. (But the centaur was poorly done and scarcely believable.)
  

Posted 9:47 AM by Floyd

I'd like to welcome some European visitors who showed up on my Sitemeter stats. First I got a visitor from azg.nl. Please choose from any of these results from Googling "hello in Dutch":

• Goeiendag!
  
• Hallo!
  
• Goedendag!
  
• Hoi!
  
• Goede middag
  

Next was a fellow from eenet.ee. I did not know what country "ee" was, but my guess of Estonia was correct. (I wish I had guessed this well at the club yesterday.) Congratulations on having a single, consistent phrase for "hello", easily searchable in Google. Tere!

Posted 8:21 PM by Floyd

It's time for a little bit of bridge-blogging before my wife and I watch the first Harry Potter movie. (This is so we can watch the second Harry Potter movie, which I have on DVD and you don't.)

Eric and I played at the club today. We were fixed several times and made some poor plays, but also had a lot of good boards and many exciting boards. Here is my favorite:

I held 4 KJ T87632 QT64 at none vulnerable as dealer. I passed, LHO opened 1, Eric overcalled 1, and RHO raised to 2.

I couldn't double for penalty because double would have been takeout. So I passed. LHO passed, and Eric reopened with a double. This I could pass and did.

LHO bid 3! I guess when she saw Eric double she assumed there would be more bidding and didn't see my pass! Eric passed, managing not to smirk too much, and of course I doubled.

Eric led A (A from AK) and this dummy appeared:

QT953 864 A95 J8.

The defense was fairly easy. Eric switched to the T and it went low, king, ace. LHO played a diamond to the ace and got the bad news (Eric pitched a spade). Heart to the jack and queen, heart toward the eight; Eric played 9 and a fourth round of hearts.

I overruffed dummy's nine and played a trump. Declarer won and still lost a spade, a club, and a trump at the end. But which trump?

Among young bridge players -- that is, players under 45 -- there is the legend of the Beer Card. The Beer Card is the seven of diamonds. If you take the last trick with this card -- and don't pitch a trick to do it -- your partner owes you a beer. As the contract was doubled, winning the last trick with 7 would net me two wonderful beers.

But -- there is also the Scotch! Some friends from California play that if you take the last trick on defense with the two of trumps, your partner owes you a bottle of Scotch.

If you have a beer and a Scotch, what is that? Why, a Boilermaker of course! I first heard the term from über-bridge/gaming-geek Jeff Goldsmith, and as a Purdue graduate I couldn't be prouder to have finally quaffed my own.

(By the way, the re-raise cost declarer one matchpoint out of eight. +300 was a top for us.)

Posted 8:11 PM by Floyd

On the second day of our tour, in Beijing, Sherry and I went to the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling. Like the tombs in Xian, the Great Wall has a lot of tourist gimmicry. There are lots of souvenir shops in the parking area and on the wall, and vendors selling snacks and beverages (including hot coffee).

Two tourist attractions I found quite interesting. One was kind of a luge that ran down from a high point of the wall to the parking lot, a distance of maybe 40 feet vertically and 200 feet horizontally. But the luge had a little roof on top that blocked the view, and crept down the track very slowly. So we forwent that pleasure.

On the other side of the wall was a man, his wife, and their camel. I could not resist. I donned some sort of barbarian costume and sat atop the camel for a picture; then the picture was laminated onto a certificate. The camel was amazingly ugly and irritable, and it emitted sounds exactly like Chewbacca the Wookie! I was terrified that it would spit at me, so I kept my face averted when I passed in front of it.



I was trying to look fierce when the photo was taken. Unfortunately I seem to be either confused, or constipated.

Posted 4:35 PM by Floyd

I'm looking at the flyer for the Monterey Regional, a bridge tournament to be held January 1-6. A fine player from San Francisco of my acquaintance named Sid Lorvan once wrote a letter to the ACBL Bulletin decrying the "disgusting proliferation of events at regionals". At the time I thought he was overreacting. Looking at this flyer, I have to agree with him.

This six-day tournament has no fewer than 25 events, with 52 total sessions. There are the usual knockouts, two-session pairs, side pairs, and Swiss teams. There are Senior Pairs, for people over 55 who want to forget their methods -- or what is trump. But there are also 9 a.m. Swiss teams that continue at 9 the next day. There are 9 a.m. side pair games. (You have to really love bridge to want to play a 9 a.m. side game.)

Opposite nearly every open stratified event is a 299er (stratified) event. The open event is already stratified. What is the point? Also, there is a side pair game! So you can play in a two-session stratified pairs that is not really good because all the pros are playing in the knockouts -- and on which Marge and Betty Guggenheim are scoring 44% for a section 2nd in C and 1.2 red points. Or you can play two 299er sessions, which are also stratified for the benefit of people who are even more terrible than a bad player with 150 masterpoints. Or you can play in the side game and play against whatever's left -- presumably prisoners in bright orange jackets who are laboring for the benefit of society.

All this would be acceptable if attendance were so high that a two-session event attracted an unwieldly number of competitors. But Monterey will probably draw 1000 to 1500 tables. This means that the average event is not even big enough to fill out two sections.

I have heard that 30 or 40 years ago, regionals had these events:

• One big knockout, seeded. No bracketing.
  
• Open pairs every day. No stratification.
  
• A two-session board-a-match on the last day of the tournament
  

That was it! If you weren't a good player you had little chance of winning a pairs event; if you weren't a great player you had no chance of winning the knockout or the BAM. I have no problem with a little bracketing or stratification here and there to help out the less skilled players. But 52 sessions in six days is ridiculous.

The regional schedule is at least accessible to players, unlike the Monterey Sectional. This sectional is held in May -- not the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Last year the Saturday pairs started at 10 a.m., which is a kind way to treat those players driving the one-and-a-half to two hours from the Bay Area. The knockouts were even worse: The first round was Thursday night, the second was Friday night, and the third was Saturday morning!

"Hi, this is Floyd. Do you want to form a team for the knockouts in Monterey?"

"Sounds like fun. When is it? Will I need to get a hotel room?"

"You'll need to stay Thursday night and Friday night ... and maybe take Thursday off work in addition to Friday, since we need to be there by 7:30 and traffic is terrible ... hello? hello?"

Posted 12:32 PM by Floyd

Yesterday I sneered that the San Jose Mercury News calls itself the newspaper of Silicon Valley, though it can't get it's web site to work worth a shit. The real problem is that the Merc does not understand technology at all. As evidence, see this editorial. The money quotes:

PICTURE yourself surfing the Internet at high speed in search of your favorite pizza joint, rayspizza.com, and up pops a window that says ``site not found.'' Worse, you get redirected to tonyspizza.com, a cross-town competitor.

The crust at Tony's isn't at all to your taste and you'd never set foot in the place. But it turns out that Tony's cut a deal with your high-speed access provider to be its exclusive pizza partner. You are out of luck.

Maybe you think this is no big deal. Already when you visit a site like Yahoo, it will steer you to its retailing partners. Yet it's easy to get around that and click over to your favorite retailer.

The pizza scenario is different. It's your access provider, not a content site, that's doing the blocking, and there is no way around it. It's as if you couldn't dial United because your phone company cut an exclusive deal with American.

...

Some companies already prohibit cable modem customers from downloading movies, for fear of competition with their own pay-per-vew offerings. They could easily speed up music downloads from a partner's site, while slowing down those of a competitor. Worse, they could selectively ban content they don't like.

Okay, my first complaint is the vague statment, "Some companies already prohibit cable modem customers from downloading movies"? What kind of companies? Movie studios or the cable providers? And which ones? Why not name them? You're a newspaper, for Christ's sake! Would it be too much trouble to provide your readers with information? To write clear, unambiguous sentences?

If this really is happening, then about a thousand geeks should be screaming about it on Usenet, and there should be information on the Web too. So I Googled:

• Usenet, past year, cable prohibit download movie: 3 hits, nothing
  
• Usenet, past year, cable prevent download movie: 67 hits, scanned the 25 or so that looked likely, nothing
  
• Web, past year: cable prohibit download movie: Many hits; nothing in the first 100
  
• Web, past year: cable prevent download movie: Many hits; nothing in the first 100
  

But let's be charitable towards the Merc and assume that their statement is correct. If it's movie studios prohibiting downloads, you can hardly blame them for trying to prevent piracy of their content. If they try to prohibit specifically cable customers from downloading movies, there is an easy workaround: Use a proxy, like www.anonymizer.com. (While doing my Googling I found that movie companies were withdrawing their movies from the web; I don't think there's anything cable-specific about such efforts.)

If cable companies are trying to prevent movie downloads, there are also easy workarounds. The only way to tell if a file is a movie is by its size, or its extension, or patterns in its content. Movie swappers can split, rename, or encrypt their files.

Anyway, regardless of the technical limitations and workarounds -- and I could be wrong on specific points and would welcome corections -- absolutely no one is going to stand for an internet service that doesn't deliver URL's properly. The minute I figure out my provider is preventing me from seeing rayspizza.com, I am going to pick up my phone and cancel the service. There are other alternatives to cable, such as DSL and satellite service.

We do not need to be protected from cable providers by the government. We do need to be protected from government writing regulations for cable providers; if customers do find that they cannot download movies, it will be because of some government regulation inserted at the behest of some media-bought politician like Fritz Hollings.

"The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it." All geeks know that, but of course the Merc doesn't.

Posted 11:39 AM by Floyd

I have the Game of 99! I have the Game of 99!

Long ago, back when there was just barely a Soviet Union, I lived in a house on Skyline Boulevard that was even more remote than my current abode. I worked for Oracle and so did my four other housemates. One of my housemates had this old board game called the Game of 99. It was very simple; the components were a board with 100 holes numbered 1-100, some colored pegs that fit in the holes, and a set of cards numbered 0 to 99. The numbering of the holes started with 1 near the center, and spiraled around to 100 at an outer edge.

Each player had a hand of five cards. On your turn you played a card, and placed a peg at any hole numbered equal to or greater than that card. Then you drew a replacement card. The object was to get five pegs in a row. It was a simple and fun game, and was out of print, so I never got to play it after I left the house.

Yesterday I was at a game store and was scanning the new games. (One such game making its debut is a Civilization board game based on the computer game; you could get a hernia trying to pick it up.) I saw a game called Five Straight. Could it be ... yes! A remake of the Game of 99! I snapped it up and took it home. I have the Game of 99!

By the way, here is what I got for my $22.95 plus California's extortionate sales tax:

• A two-section plastic board that connects with two supplied spacers. White numbers on black plastic.
  
• Cards with numbers on them, black on white. No logo. No cute font.
  
• Plastic pegs.
  

If you buy a German board game printed in America, like Carcassonne, the quality is, oh, about 99 times better. Carcassonne for instance has beautifully illustrated cardboard tiles and wooden pieces.