[Mbodell]

If so I have a regular partner I'd like to play with (getting in some pre-platinum pairs practice).

[helene_t]

I can play.

[diana_eva]

Mbodell, on 2015-February-18, 00:29, said:

is there a match and/or match thread?

There is one now Thanks for starting it, Mbodell

Please apply here if you'd like to play vs JEC's team on Saturday.

So far we have:

mbodell + partner (tell us his username please)
helene_t

Looking for one more

[gwnn]

gwnn

[diana_eva]

Helene, will you take gwnn as your bridge partner, for better and for worse?

If so, looks like we've got a team

[helene_t]

Yes of course I will play with gwnn ♥

[diana_eva]

Great! Good luck guys!

mbodell, please post your partner's username here, so I can pass the team to susina 8.

Everyone be online 5-10 minutes before start and send a private chat message to susina 8 so she can get your usernames right when setting up the game.

Also, Michael, if your partner is new to these games, please tell him that all undos are allowed, and to be careful to alert and explain all unusual stuff you are playing - the JEC team are pretty strict about all that.

[mgoetze]

Good luck!

[biciclista]

diana_eva, on 2015-February-18, 01:26, said:

There is one now Thanks for starting it, Mbodell

Please apply here if you'd like to play vs JEC's team on Saturday.

So far we have:

mbodell + partner (tell us his username please)
helene_t

Looking for one more

Hi -- I'll be playing with Michael (biciclista).

- polly

[diana_eva]

biciclista, on 2015-February-18, 09:34, said:

Hi -- I'll be playing with Michael (biciclista).

- polly

Good luck Polly, nice to see you here

[diana_eva]

BBO Forums team for Saturday is:

mbodell + biciclista
helene_t + gwnn

[diana_eva]

Sry guys was away today. Just saw a message from susina announcing that the game starts one hour later today.

[gwnn]

Lost by 78, I gave away at least half of that, sorry team!

[helene_t]

Compared to PAR we clearly lost more IMPs than mbodell/bicicleta did, but other than my pathetic defense on board 19 (lost 8 IMPs) I didn't really see any clearly unforced errors.

---

This was the most expensive board. I think it was my mistake, given the vulnerabilty we can't expect to get rich by defending and my hand can hardly be better given that we play Polish. Maybe Csaba could have made a forcing pass but I can't really blame him with zero ruffing value and zero help in spades. Bidding the slam requires good guessing, though, and since it was bid at the other table 5♥+1 would not have been much better.

---

This one at least I could show a GF diamond raise but I think 5♦ a reasonable bid. Of course hearts are likely to break 4-4 on the auction but we don't know that we have 5 hearts together. The play in 5♦ is interesting DD btw, I don't see any way of finding the right line SD, especially since it is difficult to place the honourse after East's non-opening.

---

This one I butchered. It looked to me as if I needed the finese against ♣J anyway so I might as well take it, but it can do no harm to give opps a discard problem first by playing the diamonds. Another interesting squeeze position.

[cherdano]

Well. I'll go on record and say that the auction on board 5 in the other room was ridiculous. And I use that word because others might get me banned...

[gwnn]

It's nice of you helene_t to say but it's just not true. I was playing on autopilot or worse most of the hands. My play on that 5♦ is really inexcusable, it amounted to "see finesse, take finesse" and the tempo kind of gave me a good indication that E was hiding something. My thought process was "oh right there's some kind of squeeze here but naaaaaaaah let's just play it simple." Going down may or may not be bad but going down like I did was. Then I let them make a slam by not covering an honor with an honor and I let them make a game when I did not trust partner's signal and/or refused to count to 6.

---

---

My thought process in this latter board was "how many solid clubs would he need for all the spades to disappear from dummy? Like a million." When in fact 6 suffices. If bridge is a "battle between the aversion to the pain of losing and the aversion to the pain of rational thought" in my case the second aversion won by a landslide yesterday. Making stupid mistakes is not something I copyrighted by any means but 3 or 4 really bad ones (along with several small ones that cost less) is just a really bad showing. Eliminating them is not possible but I put a month's worth of blunders in a single evening. I'll try to cut down on these really bad ones so I can instead ruminate on much better kinds of mistakes.

[Phil]

Caaba I know you're more than good enough to see the squeeze possibilities on 10. It's kind of interesting what happens if you play a heart to tighten the hand. Or play all trump sans one.

However it's easy to get a little tight in these matches. Seasoning makes us all better players.

[Mbodell]

I got lucky on board 1 after I did the right play to block clubs and then made a reasonable plan to win the diamond K, unblock the spades, return to hand with the heart A, cash spades from the top (if breaking), cash club Q, return to the diamond Q (taking the finesse if spades didn't break) and then cashing the heart K. But having thought through that line I then had a mis-think and won the diamond K and cashed the heart A! Fortunately a spade pitch from JEC resulted in a squeeze on BridgeGoth.

---

On board 5, I wasn't 100% sure we'd be on the same page of 2nt by me, and my clubs were better anyways, so I choose 3♣ instead of 2nt. The auction escalated quickly:

---

7♣ is a great sac, although hard to have faith they've found the right level given their auction.

On board 9 I passed the 3♣ before the alert was made. I probably would have X if not, but even though a club lead sets 3nt double dummy, I'm not so sure we would have set it in practice. Although N may have tried to play 3♣X or XX, but think S pulls that as they should not make that.

---

We lost a small swing for defending on board 14, but not sure who should have done something different there.

---

On board 15 I made it easier for him by rising with the club A, but I think my club pitch had already sunk us (he's cold double dummy from the beginning, but blocking diamonds costs him if I pitch a heart! but keep all 3 of both black suits), since I think he should guess the clubs if I duck given bidding and play. But I should know that my partner has the club Q *OR* my A will give him 9 tricks with club QK, heartK, and 5th diamond, so should be clear to play low.

---

There's a chance for a 6♣ slam on board 16 which makes if you guess trumps. If my hand splinters 3♦ over inverted, we probably correctly still don't find it (and it obviously isn't a very good slam needing the clubs for 1 loser and the spade finesse on). Not sure if I should splinter there or not, but probably?

---

On board 20 after puppet I considered but rejected 4♦ in favor of 4nt. I think my reasoning was wrong and 4♦ would have been better. The slam is pretty reasonable, even if double dummy is down with the 4-1 trump split.

---

On board 23 the standard 1♦ opening let me show both suits, and made E declarer, and the running clubs in dummy which made the accurate defense easier to find.

---

On board 25 my partner did a good job to bring home the 4-3 trump fit in our heart game.

---

On board 26 if I had splintered in clubs perhaps we would have slowed down, but with the good 5 hearts the 2/1 was clear to me. There may have been some state of the match/go for glory behind the serious slam try.

---

On board 27 I let the 4 spades talk me out of the 3♥ preempt I was thinking of, and we didn't get to game. Maybe I should bid it over 2nt? Maybe partner should raise 3♥? Not sure.

---

As is often the case with a big loss, a fair number of learning opportunities.

[MrAce]

cherdano, on 2015-February-21, 17:48, said:

Well. I'll go on record and say that the auction on board 5 in the other room was ridiculous. And I use that word because others might get me banned...

I hear you.

[Lovera]

helene_t, on 2015-February-21, 17:34, said:

Compared to PAR we clearly lost more IMPs than mbodell/bicicleta did, but other than my pathetic defense on board 19 (lost 8 IMPs) I didn't really see any clearly unforced errors.

---

This was the most expensive board. I think it was my mistake, given the vulnerabilty we can't expect to get rich by defending and my hand can hardly be better given that we play Polish. Maybe Csaba could have made a forcing pass but I can't really blame him with zero ruffing value and zero help in spades. Bidding the slam requires good guessing, though, and since it was bid at the other table 5♥+1 would not have been much better.

---

This one at least I could show a GF diamond raise but I think 5♦ a reasonable bid. Of course hearts are likely to break 4-4 on the auction but we don't know that we have 5 hearts together. The play in 5♦ is interesting DD btw, I don't see any way of finding the right line SD, especially since it is difficult to place the honourse after East's non-opening.

---

This one I butchered. It looked to me as if I needed the finese against ♣J anyway so I might as well take it, but it can do no harm to give opps a discard problem first by playing the diamonds. Another interesting squeeze position.

At board 10 there is a single squeeze clubs-spades: having doubled East has points and 5-4 shape in the suits than the King of spade probably is off-side and not is it possible descarting for unblocking by East otherwise you have the eleven trick. It needs after 4 trumps rectify the count leading two hearts, reteining two trumps to stop it eventually.(Lovera)