2020

 The last blog of 2020 had me wondering when the next year will be which can be scored at bridge; I will leave you to calculate that, as there has not been once since I went for 2000, non-vulnerable, in an Intercity Match, and you cannot score 2020 (nor 2010). My friend Paddy Murphy, a Welsh International as his name might suggest, tells me there is a name for some of the more common penalties:

                    -1100 = sticks and wheels

                    -1400 = an Owain, after the rebellion of that year

                    -1700 = a GT

                    -2000 = Y2K (pronounced why2K?)

                    -2300 = a Nokia

My answer to Y2K?, when I went for 2000, was that we were not playing the same system!

There was nothing unusual about our score here as NS, -850, which I have suffered many a time. The highest score in the other direction was -1110, as a club lead is needed to save the second overtrick in 4Dx, so that made up 2. I think I was a bit naive here, bidding 3NT on the South hand, as that will be -700 if the opponents pass it out. This might be the last making game, of course, but the odds were against it, and I think I should have started with 5D. After 3NT, Derek Essen did well to bid 4S on his shapely 5-count, and I could do little but try 5D, which would probably have made. But Maria Essen went on to 5S. North had no reason to double that, but it only cost one matchpoint as there was no defence. Next time I think I will bid 5m whenever I have an 8-card minor, an ogdoad as readers of this blog will know.

2020 is soon behind us. It has given its name to two strange expressions: 2020 cricket, where there is really only one 20, the number of overs, and 2020 vision, where again there is only one 20, the distance of 20 feet. An odd year, but leap and even as well.