75.7% game in Daylong Pairs

I have been enjoying playing in the ACBL Daylong games which consist of one human and three robots per table. The games are generally 12 boards, either IMPs or Matchpoints. You can join whenever it is convenient and play at your own pace--even play a few boards now and the rest later.  The matchpoint games seem to be quite popular as there are now four per day. Plus...they only cost $1.35.

A loosely-held goal of mine during this time of quarantine has been to crack the top 10.  Well..I did it in fine fashion recently. The stars aligned and I found myself on top of the pack with a 75.7% game in a Daylong MP game with 520 pairs!

As 70% games are rare and 75.7% games rarer still, I thought I'd present some of the hands. The robots are better than they used to be and can give you a decent game from time to time.  Beware making any obscure takeout doubles, and note that their defense is not always the best (except when they are YOUR opponents, of course)!  

 Here is the score sheet from the session.

 You need some luck to have a big game! The first two boards are defensive problems. Let's take a quick look at board 1 and you can see how the robots misdefended:

I received a helpful heart lead, then took a winning finesse of the spade jack.  On the run of the hearts the West robot fatally pitched a spade, and then on the run of the spades West fatally pitched a diamond.  West held on for dear life to the K84 of clubs, so I only lost one spade trick and was able to score 12 tricks for +490 and an 86% board. Good start!

On Bd. 2, I had an interesting defensive problem.

We weren't able to bid our spade game, so needed to take the maximum number of tricks in 4Hx.  East ruffed the third spade and ducked a diamond to North's J.  North returned a club to my K and West's Ace.  West now ruffed a club and ruffed a diamond.  When declarer tried to ruff a club back to his hand, it was time for me to pause and try to work out the best defense.

The good news was that I now had a count on the hand. East started with 6 hearts for the weak-two bid, and had only 2 spades and 1 club.  That meant East started with 4 diamonds.  How would you defend?

I decided to overruff the club with the HJ, then cash the HA and play my last heart to cut down on dummy's ruffing power.  This would cause East to lose an extra diamond trick at the end.

Down 3, +500 was worth 84%, as one pair bid and made 4S, and other pairs either failed to either bid of make 4S, or made fewer tricks in 4Hx.

Stay tuned and keep playing.

See you at the virtual tables!