Highlights since yesterday.

Canada's Bermuda Bowl hopes officially went from slim to none yesterday.  They pretty much had to go 9-0 with 20 VP wins in their last 9 matches (give or take) to qualify for the quarterfinals.  I really have to wonder at Nader anchoring Nic/Kamel yesterday.  Not only that, but they sat down against Helgemo/Helness in the last match of the day.  Christians, Lions, etc.  On the bright side, Jeff/JZ continue to play well (if not great) and two more positive Butler rankings yesterday bumped them to dead average for the tournament so far.  In this field, that's very respectable.

The Canadian ladies are on track for the quarterfinals in the Venice Cup.  Ray Lee declined to take my advice (he cited a variety of factors in his decision) and continued to give the ladies equal playing time.  Izzy/Sylvia had a rocky first set, costing Canada a win against France, but they did face the strongest French pair, Benedicte Cronier (patapon on BBO) and Sylvie Willard.  (That doesn't explain why Izzy went down in a cold 5 Club contract, though.)

In other news, I missed acing the September Pavlicek quiz by 1 question!  I loathe his analysis on the question in question (sometimes getting his quizzes right seems to be more a function of guessing his personal bridge philosophy than taking the line of play that would work best in real life) and I'll probably post it separately in the next day or so.

Chris sent me the latest Butler analysis.  Here it is.

Thursday Butler