JP and Jychee have been joining Andre and I on Friday Nights at SCBA.
On the 10th I partnered Danen instead as Andre was not in town. We got a score of 49% and 6th out of 11 pairs.
On the 17th Andre and I had some bad luck and bad judgement and we got a bad score of 40% and 15th out of 17 pairs.
Yesterday we had a good game and we got 56% and 2nd out of 8 pairs. Only 2 outright bottoms: A misdefend by me on 6NT and Andre going down 1 in 4H.
The misdefend was a stupid mistake: I held up my Ace for one round too many. This is one of my common mistakes. Andre’s mis-declaring play was not entirely his fault as I placed the contract wrongly. The other 3 tables were in 3NT making 10 or 11 tricks. So even if we had just made 10 tricks, +620 would still give us a bottom compared to +630 or +660.
Interestingly on the previous hand, we made a top because opps pushed us out of 3NT into 4S. My hand was:
AT
AQTxxx
KQx
Q9
The bidding went something like (Andre opened): 1S(2C)2H-2S-3C*-3NT then 4C by my LHO. This was passed round to me. My choices were X and 4S. I was wondering if X would give us enough penalty as we were vul vs non-vul so 4CX would need to be down by 4 if our game as on. The AT suggested 4S to me and I bid it. 4S made with 1 overtrick and the best score among the other tables was 3NT+1.
Andre actually had Kxxx in clubs! LHO had raised to 4C with only 2 small clubs, much to the shock and amazement of her partner.
Matchpoint Bridge by Kelsey is a good read. My approach towards playing pairs has changed somewhat after reading it.
