Challenge matches comments

The first things first - if anybody will find inappropriate that I am commenting their game without their permissions - my sincere apologies.

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Looking on results of 1/64 of forum challenge game, one can see 5 upsets - players who had 7 or more seeding points from older forum tournaments lost their first match of the first round. We all know word "upset" is a big scratch, forum challenges seeding points are almost completely meaningless and reflects only older participation and a bit of luck. It is especially true for each of those matches, when “top seeded” players lost to opponents who are new on forum challenges. Abilities of each of new player are much higher than 0 seeding points they got.

Nevertheless, I found it interesting to take a closer look at these matches. Unfortunately, I did not managed to do all I was planned - protocols of some challenges became unavailable in BBO archive before I studied them. So, I can share only comments for two matches.

Match between zzmey and Driver733 was very close. Igor (Driver733) won the first set by 29 IMPs. Majority of them he took by being more optimistic.
Here are two the most interesting boards from the set:

1. Red against green human player holds:

♠ K8xxxx
♥ -
♦ K9xxxx
♣ K

LHO open 3♥, Partner bid 3♠ and RHO bid 4♥. Both humans choose Blackwood. Pass from RHO and partner bids 6♦, explained as odd number of keycards with ♦ void. Double from RHO. What now?

Driver733 bid 7♠, which was claimer. His opponent limited himself by small slam.

2. All vul, humans hold:

♠ QJ10742
♥ Q10
♦ Q97
♣ 72

Robot partner open 1NT. One player transferred to 2♠ and stayed there, second transferred to 4♠. There were 3 possible losers from the top and ♦ depends on finesse. Finesse was working, so game was on.

On the second set Vladimir (zzmey) took 8 IMPs back. Once again, the biggest swing was due to a bold decision on the distributional hand.

3. Red against green humans hold:

♠ 10862
♥ QJ108652
♦ Q5
♣ -

LHO pass, partner open 1♣, RHO interfered 1♦. One player simply jumped to 4♥ that became a final contract.
Second player decided to take it slowly and bid 1♥. 2♣ (invitation on the agreed ♦) from LHO, natural 3♣ from partner and 3♦ from RHO. Another decision time. If player did not think his cards was good enough to bid game on the previous round, I don’t think bids from second round made them better. Human competed 3♥ and gave up after opponents bid 4♦.
CHO hold ♥Kx and void in ♦ so 4♥ was a makeable contract (as well as 5♦ on the EW line).

Zzmiy won 46 IMPs on the 3rd set and took a noticeable lead on the match.

I found the board 9 from that set to be the most interesting board of the match.
North dealer, EW vulnerable.

............♠J753
............♥K975
............♦8
............♣Q964
♠Q9............................♠A8
♥6.............................♥Q10432
♦AQ103.......................♦KJ964
♣AK10743........................♣8
............♠K10642
............♥AJ8
............♦752
............♣J5

Both humans decided to pass with South hand on the third sit green against red, but Driver733 bid 1♠ on the next round (after 1♣ from the left and 1♥ from the right). North used the opportunity to preempt with 3♠ and opponents stayed in the 3NT from East hand. Seems like game could be easily set, but not after the natural spade lead, that gave declarer 9th trick. Actually, CHO managed to present declarer with 3 more tricks.

Zzmiy did not participate in bidding, leaving robot opponents to themselves and they end up in the 6♦. On the first glance contract looks good, but … only on the first glance. I believe it required some luck on trumps or clubs and I cannot see how to make it with current distribution. (I did not check it with computer).

Before the last set zzmiy was ahead on 25 imps, but it appears not be enough. There were two style-related swings very similar to one described above, but both went to another direction. On the board 12, Vladimir let opponents to bid without intervention and they reach 6♠ (making 13 tricks). Igor decided to fight in the bidding, and scared opponents out of easy slam.

Another similar swing from the board 15.
Red against green, humans in the first sit hold

♠ J6762
♥ AQ43
♦ AQJ4
♣ -
Both opened 1♠ and saw: pass-pass–1NT.
Igor made the second bid – 2♦ and end up as a declarer in vulnerable 2♠ contract… with 14 combined points, 5-2 trump fit, missing Ace, King, Queen and 10 of trumps. Contract should go down, but defense by robots was not the best, to say the least.
Vladimir passed and soon found himself on the lead against 3NT. Partner hold magical ♦10x, so the 4th best ♦ lead would set the game, but who could find it?
Declarer took the ♠ lead, played 3 top ♣ and, as soon as human discarded his forth diamond, contract became unbeatable.
Very close match.

2. We match between stoppiello and hanoi5 was even closer.

The first big swing on the first set happened in the board 5. Humans hold

♠Q2
♥KJ7
♦Q732
♣A752

Robot partner open 1♣. One human choose inverted minor 2♣ bid, another – invitation 2NT.
One, who bid 2NT, became declarer in 3NT and made 12 tricks, after catching the singleton ♣K outside.
One, who preferred inverted minor bid, end up in 6♣ contract. Diamond to the ace, diamond ruff. No luck in this life.

The second big swing happened in the board 9. Both humans played the same 5♦* contract. To win it player needs to play suit AKJx – 10xx with no losers. Hanoi made a finesse; John tried to catch the Queen second. Statistics won.

The next board was a biggest swing of the match.
All vulnerable. Humans hold:

♠K876542
♥Q
♦Q
♣J1032

RHO open 1♥.
John bid 1♠ and opponents end up in 6♦. 12 tricks from the top, 13th on the working finesse.
Hanoi bid 4♠ and East Robot with 16 points and 3=1=8=1 distribution made a takeout double (!). West Robot with 2=7=0=4 distribution and 11 points asked for Aces (!) and bid 6♥. The club lead would set a slam, but human naturally lead singleton diamond and slam became easy makeable. Well, easy makeable by a human, not by robot. The line chosen by robot declarer was hard to swallow. Down one.

After 14 boards Hanoi was ahead by 52 imp. Then stoppiello started come back.

There were several other interesting boards in the first and second part of that match, but I was not fast enough to write them down before protocols became unavailable.

Here is the biggest swing from the part 3

All vul. Bot humans hold:

♠942
♥Q52
♦1096
♣K953

and need to decide if they have a bid after partner open 1♠.
Hanoi passed and played there; John replied 1NT and soon found himself in the spade game.
Both took 10 tricks.

Before the last set started, Hanoi was ahead, but already not so much, only 16 imps. They gone pretty fast. Stoppiello took the lead after the board 8 of the set.

Humans hold:

♠AKJxxxx
♥x
♦xxx
♣xx

Robot partner opened 1♥ and jumped to 2NT after 1♠ bid from human.
What now?
One human jumped to 4♠, another leaped all the way to 6♠. On both tables West lead ♣Q, finessing King, and defense took the first two tricks. 6NT from the North hand would be unbeatable.

With 2 board to play stoppiello was 12 imps ahead. Then, on preliminary boards, happened something that I cannot regard other than misclick that cost him 12 IMPs.
Funny, after 63 boards and many adventures score was exactly equal.

On the last board, non-vul against vul humans hold,

♠xxxxx
♥xxx
♦xx
♣Axx

Robot partner open 1♦.
Hanoi bid 1♠ and passed 2♣ rebid from partner.
Stoppiello passed; LHO bid 1♥, partner - 2♣, that became a final contract too.
The same contract, but the very small difference in bidding became critical.
LHO on both tables lead top spade. Against Hanoi it continued second top spade and declarer managed to finish down only one; but against John LHO switched to known partners suit. It was enough to set contract down 2. Exciting match.

frank0, on 2017-July-01, 11:17, said:

This is a reasonable idea, but I cannot control how many people enroll. Let's say, with this format how do you deal with 61 entrants?

You already have that problem now as you have several byes. No difference. However, instead of missing a complete round for some individuals, this will at least allow one to play against 6 others.

By the way, I would also recommend not updating the results sheet till a round is completed. This will make it more difficult to allow one to track how everyone is doing in the round and possibly altering play. Or possibly make it MP instead of IMPS to avoid this problem.

Of course, if one is only doing win-loss against each opp and not total imps across all opps, than this is a non-issue. Maybe total imps only use in the event of a need for a tie brake.

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