Last Friday, the wife was running errands in the mall when she walked by a shop with a sign outside saying:
We’ve got everything you’ll ever need to bake a cake.
Geert wouldn’t be Geert if she didn’t enter the shop. 10 minutes later, she left the shop with a huge box filled with all kinds of things.
Back home, she started to work with the contents of the box and the result can be seen be seen on the left. Home baked cake, with cream filling and dressed up with flowers, orange sprinkles and other stuff. The colors look unreal but actually, you can eat it all and it is all natural. The purple, for example, is a mix of sugar and crushed almonds with some beetroot juice. You don’t taste the latter though, it is sweet and delicious. The cake tasted great too.
The creative mood continued yesterday evening at the Friday night duplicate. Geert was sitting south and ended up in a spade contract, after opening 1♦, a 2♥ overcall by west and negative double. The opening was the ♣7 to the ♣A. East returned the ♥K and she now found a cute end-play. She obviously assumed that west must have the ♦KQ, as he must have something for his bid.
Now, 3 rounds of trumps, followed by 3 rounds of clubs led to this position. Then Geert played the ♦A and a small diamond, endplaying west. He has the highest heart and diamond, but when he attempts to cash either one of them, declarer can ruff it and establish a trick in the suit in the process.
A nice line of play and one of the few declarers to make 11 tricks on a non-diamond lead. Tiny detail in the auction though, over X, 2♠ shows a minimum hand, not this nice 16. Now you lose matchpoints against all the pairs that bid 4♠ even if they make only 10 tricks.
Later, a cute problem occurred when playing against the moderator of the panel in IMP. I’ll guess we’ll see that hand in print sometime soon.
And then this board. We were playing against the pair consisting of a judge at the local court and a inspector for the Dutch IRS. Yes, that is the tax-department or “Belastingdienst”. After a pass, Geert started proceedings with 3♣. Just count the flaws on this one: side 4 card suit, no tricks, wrong vulnerability. But the off-shape preempt worked out nicely. East’s double was intended as responsive but taken as penalty. ♦K led, ♦ ruff, draw trumps, lead a heart. Somehow a trick got lost in the process and Geert wrapped up 11 tricks, for +910. A clear top, but +710 would have been the same good result.
The only downside to all this: for the next couple of years, any creative bookkeeping on the income tax returns will be out of the question.
Coming home, we discovered a problem with the first cake. It evaporates. At least, when we left, 2 slices had been cut from the cake. When we came home, about half of the cake had disappeared. It could be that this has something to do with the kids coming home from school in between.
Geert wasn’t completely happy with the first cake either, so she just had to try again. The result of that one is shown on the left. Inspired by the work of the local pastry shop, but I think it is a lot better. Time to make a coffee to go with it...
Finally, time for a commercial.
organizes an open butler event in the coming weeks (April 26, May 10, May 24, June 7) open to players of 2nd division level and higher. If you are interested,
click herefor more information. They will also organize a day for junior players on May 19th. Contact the same address for more information if you are still a junior.