Posted 2012-September-14, 14:32
I mean, look, on hand 1 they basically gave us a straight up donation. Sam and adam did normal things, played a normal partscore, fine. There was nothing special about this board, except their counterparts screwed up an easy one, did not know what they were doing, and bid to a 22 HCP 3N with no fit. All north had to do was lead the unbid suit (a normal non genius thing to do, and by the way, I would consider leading the HQ but lets stick with this theme of doing nothing special at all), and we win 6. Unfortunately, we donated back and did not capitalize on the free imps they tried to give us. Leading partners known stiff or void with KJ98 is just not good.
On hand 3, we simply had to not overcall 1N with Txx of their major, and double with 3433 and 15 and Txx of their suit. We just had to play normal bridge, and we push, but instead we tried to be a hero and we lost some imps.
So, those 2 hands, doing nothing special we will be +6.
That leaves hand 2. That is a hand that requires some judgement, maybe some system knowledge. How light ad strong can 2C be? As has been mentioned, maybe north was worth more than 3C or maybe south was worth more over 3C. But even if we get this one wrong, that is ok. You're going to get some tough judgement hands wrong. So will they. So let's say we guessed wrong and we lost 6.
Ok, so worst case, we tied these 3 boards. We are in the game. This is all bridge really is, at any level. I sometimes start to doubt myself because I know all the tough/close hands that I get wrong, and I think, I get all these hands wrong, Helgemo, Meck, they must get more of these right, and that's why they're better. But the truth is, when I think back on matches we lost, matches like the bermuda bowl final, I realize our opponents just donated less than us. They were more solid on the basic hands where simply doing nothing wins. And by the end of it, we had simply given up too many free imps and even if they got less tough hands right than us, they would still win. The best players make fewer fundamental errors, period.
Let's just focus on being tough on the routine hands, playing down the middle, not trying to be a hero and I'm sure we'll win some of these.