WE almost BEAT A TOP TEAM!

I know, I know, not long ago I wrote an editorial devoted to the horribleness of gloating, and yet here I have a title that appears to be doing just that. However, it's not really gloating when you didn't actually win. Here's what happened at the Swiss Teams game this week.

Julie and I teamed with a pair who were new to us; we knew them, but had not previously played with them. We started out together with a positive attitude and little pep talk before we separated and played our first round of 7 boards. At one point I had a hand with 20 HCP and 2 doubletons. I had recently learned that it's okay to open 2NT (or even 1NT) with 2 doubletons. I had never actually done that, and I did have a nice 5 card club suit that I could bid. However, I thought it was important for my partner to know right at the start that I had a big hand. I opened 2NT, Julie bid 3NT, and we made it (vulnerable). This turned out to be a crucial hand in our winning the round, since our opposition didn't open 2NT and so never made it to 3NT.

We won the next round as well, which inspired a lot of knuckle bumping and grins.

Our third round saw all of the points in the north-south hands. Since Julie and I were sitting east-west, all we could do was defend. It was a bit disheartening to see the scores accumulate in the negative column; we could only hope that our teammates' scores were all in the plus column. Not only was this the case, we came out a bit ahead and won the round. Julie and I complimented our teammates' play and they complimented our defense. What a happy group we were!

Then came the fourth round. Since we had won the first three, we knew we would be playing against a top team. We told each other to just "play your game" and that it had alread been a good afternoon, no matter what happened next. Those A players can be very tricky--they interfere with your bidding, they take sacrifices, they double when you try to take a sacrifice, they use confusing conventions, and most of all they play the hand extremely well. By the time it was over, we had lost by only 4 points. Since this A team's previous wins that afternoon were in the double digits, we considered this a kind of victory and congratulated ourselves.

So even though the title of this blog may sound like gloating, remember, we didn't actually win that round. Also, we still need some bridge-ego boosting after STaC week as we head into the GR sectional tournament next week.