Bridge Match 2 - Conclusion

I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I went to play my bridge hand today, since I was pretty sure I've already played all 60 hands in the competition. It gave me a nice list of all 16 pairs by their percentage of MPs earned with Jack and I finishing on top with 63.33. Second place was only 56.31, so we won by a pretty substantial margin. High five, Jack!

As a reward for winning we got promoted out of Flight D and have moved up to Flight C. It then started up another round of 60 boards against presumably stiffer competition, if that's what I want to do.

I feel like I played reasonably well this time around but mostly it felt like we won because our opponents made some pretty big blunders along the way. I imagine that was part of being in Flight D, where the game forced the opponents to make mistakes every now and then to simulate playing against worse players. And I can't say I disagree with that tact... I played in a fair number of bridge tournaments at a local club with Andrew back before he had kids and I never walked away from a night feeling like we were awesome. But we did pretty well sometimes, and I remember feeling like we scored a lot of points those nights by snookering some poor old ladies with our crazy bidding. I remember one hand where I opened 3 clubs with 6 to the T and they just couldn't comprehend what was going on. Playing weak no trump almost felt like cheating! Other times the opponents would just hang themselves with mistakes and we'd get points by not stopping them from being insane. Of course the same is true in reverse, as there was the hand where Andrew didn't understand my cuebid and decided the best course of action was to pass, letting me play 4 hearts in their 9 card fit instead of making our spade slam.

I didn't get very many comments this time around, certainly not relative to the people commenting on my first match. But I guess a lot of the comments then were about how I was getting screwed by my partner being crazy and random and it's just not as interesting when I'm winning by the opponents being crazy and random. At the end of the day I like playing bridge hands, and I like having something short scheduled on the weekend, so I think I'm going to keep making a bridge post each Sunday. And while I'm tempted to go back to the IMPs format, this current one has a nice feel to it. Only 60 hands (I'll be done by next September!) and a sense of progression if I can play well enough to get promoted again! I may mull it over a bit more in the coming week, but I fully expect to start match 3 next Sunday in Flight C.