The phrase “slam dunk" was first used by Los Angeles Lakers announcer Chick Hearn. it is now used about something that is easy to achieve, but originally was a basketball shot where the player is tall enough and athletic enough to get his hand above the basket and drop it in.
On a fifth Tuesday, there is usually a different format to matchpoints, and the simplest to organise is IMP pairs, in which bidding games (and slams) gets a much higher reward. I thought one hand on Tuesday was a "slam dunk", or a "grand dunk" I suppose. However it transpired that only the winners, John Bernard and Mike Bull, managed to bid the grand.
This does look easy, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Assuming silent opponents NS might bid 1D-1H-3D-4D (which my regular partner and I play as ace-asking, or minorwood) - 5C(2 key cards plus the queen of diamonds)-7D. South is known to have at least AKQxxx in diamonds, and needs some extras for his 3D jump rebid. The worst that can happen is that it needs hearts 2-2, opposite Kx xxx AKQxxx Kx, and it will be cold if South has a doubleton heart or the queen. On the actual hand it makes even if hearts are 4-1.
As I was host this week, I had some spare time and amused myself by calculating
a) the chances of the host getting a game. You need to know the average number of people who turn up without a partner, and that historically is about 1.2.
b) the chances of the month that you are in having a fifth Tuesday.
I will revert, as they say.
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ReplyDeleteIf you want a more precise calculation, the leap year rule is:
ReplyDelete"The Gregorian calendar, the world's most widely used civil calendar, makes a further adjustment for the small error in the Julian algorithm. Each leap year has 366 days instead of 365. This extra leap day occurs in each year that is a multiple of 4 (except for years evenly divisible by 100, but not by 400)."
Brilliant analysis by Andy.
ReplyDeleteThank you Paul.
ReplyDelete