[mikl_plkcc]

I will post the full hand after the end of play today, but it was something totally ridiculous, involving an NT opening with two unstopped doubletons, doubled, and not escaped. I was so angry after playing that board that I closed the tournament.

[smerriman]

By robots. But it's not really relevant to the tournament, given your goal is to score more tricks in that same contract than anyone else.

[mikl_plkcc]

The opponents had 13 top tricks in my 2 unstopped suits and I got a 0 because I took 0 tricks!

[smerriman]

If you got a 0 that means every single other human playing that hand took at least 1 trick. So there must be more to the story..

[mikl_plkcc]

The opponents ran their 2 suits for 12 tricks (they both have one of my unstopped suits long), and I was forced to guess which A to discard at trick 12, where each suit was held by one opponent. My guess was wrong and I didn't get the last trick.

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-March-24, 12:55, said:

I was so angry after playing that board that I closed the tournament.

One of the skills that people need to be able to develop in bridge is the ability to shrug off a bad hand

Hamman wrote about this quite a lot

[smerriman]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-March-24, 16:17, said:

The opponents ran their 2 suits for 12 tricks (they both have one of my unstopped suits long), and I was forced to guess which A to discard at trick 12, where each suit was held by one opponent. My guess was wrong and I didn't get the last trick.

But if it were a 50/50 guess, you would score 25% by guessing wrongly, not 0%, since you'd expect half of the other tables to also guess wrongly. So again, probably more to it.

But regardless, I agree with the general sentiment that in these tournaments, some hands are more frustrating than others, though it has nothing to do with the quality of GIB's bidding. A hand where it bids correctly to 7NT with 13 top tricks, or 3NT with 9 top tricks and absolutely zero chance of anything else, is just as frustrating, since you can't score more than 50%. But trying to eliminate hands with no "decisions" to make is an extremely difficult problem.

[lorserker]

if you have played ben & friends just declare, i am interested in your feedback.
there i am testing a way to make the hands more interesting to play by removing hands that are too easy. the remaining hands should still look random, and ideally you don't notice anything.
the easy hands removed there are used in the "easy bridge daylong"

[mikl_plkcc]

---

My final result was 6.8% on this board. As you can see, the opponents had obvious 6 ♠ tricks and 7 ♦ tricks, so the contract was hopeless. Our 2♣ contract would make here.

[smerriman]

There wasn't a guess at trick 12 - dummy had hearts covered - so that explains the low score. But yes, still a bit of a pointless hand to play.

[shyams]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-March-25, 04:11, said:

---

My final result was 6.8% on this board. As you can see, the opponents had obvious 6 ♠ tricks and 7 ♦ tricks, so the contract was hopeless. Our 2♣ contract would make here.

The discard of the Club Ace at trick 12 was absurd.

The situation required zero efforts of counting or such. The ♥Q is staring at you from across the table.

So, unless you forgot that you discarded the ♥K from South's hand moments ago --- which can be "un-forgotten" by viewing the last quitted trick before playing to trick 12 --- the ♣A play deserves the 6.8% score.