Swiss Teams Match
There's a regional Bridge tournament in Santa Clara this week, and the regular partnerships in our Bridge group (all two of them) are playing quite a bit. But tonight, Becky wanted to go but her partner Grant was not available, so instead I partnered with her, and we and Subrata and Ben played in a "Swiss Teams" match.
A Swiss Teams match is like this: Becky and I sat East-West at one table, and Ben and Subrata sat North-South at another. A single round consists of six hands, played at both tables (our opponents form a team of four as well), and you get points if you make a contract or defeat your opponents' contract, the goal being that you want your team to do well on both sides of each of the six hands. After the hands are played, you compare how you did, and award from 0 to 20 points to each team based on the results. Four rounds are played, so 24 hands in all, so you can end up with anywhere from -80 to +80 points. It's pretty funky, but pretty cool to see how hands get played from both sides, by different partnerships.
Oh, yes: And which opponents you play in each round is more-or-less balanced by how many points you've accumulated in previous rounds.
So, it turned out that we drew (at random) some pretty easy opponents in the first round, and had pretty good results. I was completely bouncing off the walls because we'd rushed to get food on the way there and got there just at the last minute. But actually I seemed to focus pretty well, and we ended up at +14 (helped a lot by Ben and Subrata crushing their opponents in one hand).
This meant that we drew much harder opponents for the next round, and Becky and I had something of a meltdown. I had a brain hiccup on nearly every hand, and I think our partnership was negative on every hand, although not by much except on one hand. It was especially annoying because I played two contracts which I missed by one trick, and felt I should have been able to make. Argh. We went -16.
The third round was even worse, as we were completely crushed for a -20; I think we were just outmatched all around. (Ben said later that it seemed to be a very competitive field.) We did better on the fourth board, but still went -2; our opponents declared a lot of contracts which we took down, which helped, but not a heck of a lot. I played these boards a little timidly and should have bid in a few places where I didn't, although at Ben and Subrata's table I guess the East-West combo did bid aggressively and got whacked a few times.
So, it was a pretty mediocre outcome, but we had a good time. I wish I had a regular partner to play with; it's getting to be a drag to be the odd man out. Mostly likely I won't be playing at all this weekend. Sigh.
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