Battlestar Valkyrie

For my birthday last month Karen got me the Battlestar Galactica DVD box sets (now that's a great gift for a techie hubbie). Thus you might think that the robots of this series have kept me busy since the last posting, but instead it's been the Bridgebase robots: I've been playing them in the ACBL speedball events now established and running every 15 minutes during most of the day. The format is easy: 12 speedball boards, each board against three robots - okay, one of the robots is your "partner", but you will soon believe this one is also working for the Cylons – in a tourney I just completed, I gave my "partner" a ruff, careful to provide suit preference in order to give another ruff, and of course, the "partner" now led his last trump to avoid any possibility of getting that ruff.

In the four weeks of playing, I've obtained over 200 masterpoints playing against these three robots, and for this month, I'm the leader in ACBL online masterpoints, and in 2nd place in BBO points, with the overall leader playing in non-ACBL events. It has been more fun than I would have imagined. I started playing the events to "recon" them, and find out what makes the robots tick. Instead it's a pure rush of intellectual stimulation. I play about one board every two minutes, and can play a tourney within a half hour and have a few minutes left over for tea and chores between each event.

At the end of the month I'll post on the secrets I've found to play against the three robots, and then continue the Bread n' Butter series about Meckwell.

Here's an early secret: if it goes 1NT(by you)-X-P-P-?, you pass and even though the double is for penalty, your first question is how many overtricks you will make.

And for more on BattleStar Valkyrie: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Valkyrie