Piss-poor by Foxymoron

The Woodberry B team has been promoted in the Lockdown League to Division 4. The octet of Paul Lamford, Stefanie Rohan, Ken Barnett, Chantal Girardin, Gary Diamond, Paul Thornton, Gerry Weston and Paul Huggins gained promotion comfortably in the end. They had a record score of 62-0 in their penultimate match when the opponents' play was described by one kibitzer as "piss-poor". The same phrase was used today about the defence at one table, but this did not stop us from winning by 24 IMPs and cementing our promotion spot

Piss-poor is a very old word and not obscene in any way. They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tanner. if you had to do this to survive you were ‘piss-poor’. But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low.

I must confess to using the expression "piss-poor" when discussing the EW defence on this board:

The normal opening lead here is AC, followed by a heart switch for 800, but Gary led a diamond. Luckily that did not cost and he won the first spade with the ace and cashed the ace and king of clubs. Still no harm done. Now however he cashed another top club, setting up two winners for South. It would still have been two off if he had exited with a minor but he now switched, belatedly, to a heart. Fortunately East's ace was the defence's fifth trick so this was Diamond-proof on Mohs degree of hardness of letting through the contract. Impossible, but still 12 away against the 800 in the other room when Ken decided he was worth a second bite at the cherry at the four level.

Fortunately the opponents had a piss-poor auction to 4H on the following board:

In the other room, North just raised the 2H rebid to 4H but we had a better auction, which began 1H-2D-2H-3C-3H-3S. I would have cued 4C over 3S on the South hand, but I had enough to move on the North hand anyway. 5D showed 0-3 key cards and South obviously bids slam over 5H as he has three. I think a good method is to bid 5NT now to show the queen of trumps and nothing else. If I had AKQxx diamonds I might then bid grand, but there were too many imponderables to do so on the actual auction. Still 6H+1 was 13 in, as the diamonds came in for four tricks on any reasonable line.

So, division 4 here we come, and a meeting with Woodberry A next season.