ACBL

I've managed to play 3 ACBL games this week. I played online Monday and Thursday, online, and both times my partner and I managed to scrape into the points.

On Friday, I managed to get to the local club for the Friday morning 299er game. It was a bit of a strange set of cards, with partner declaring most of the first 12 boards, then very little after that. We were set very often in our contracts, but often wound up with a good score anyways.

Despite never having a very good feeling for how we were doing, we managed to top the session with a 61% game.

So three games, and I got points three times. I'm now probably a club master (whee!) None of which is to say, though, that I wasn't making mistakes. Both online games features discussion with my partner via email afterwards. I think I'm the type of player that really thrives on the post-mortem analysis. I certainly don't mind being told that I did something wrong, especially when it didn't feel right at the table.

There was less analysis in the Friday game, but I still caught myself making mistakes at the table. The most notable was forgetting which contract I was defending (they were in 2 hearts, I was trying to promote my long suit).

The other mistake was while defending 4 hearts. Dummy, on my left, held Kx in diamonds. I held AQxx. We took the first three tricks. Out of clubs, I thoughtlessly returned a spade to dummy, hoping to get 2 diamond tricks later. As soon as I led, I realized I had made a howler. Dummy's spades were KQJTx. Declarer ducked, and dummy won.

Fortunately for me, spades were now blocked, and declarer misplayed it badly. If she hadn't, declarer was going to throw all her diamonds on dummy's spades, and make an unmakeable contract.

I saw it all, but 2 seconds too late.