As part of our preparation to compete in the US Open Team Trials (starting April 24), Val and I played two 18 board Open Pairs games on BBO. We had a 44% game on Wednesday and a 74% game on Thursday. Both games were good exercises in the discipline of focusing on the next bid and the next play (versus getting distracted by what had just happened).
During the 44% game on Wednesday, I had made one less trick than I should have, on board five, but otherwise it had seemed to me that we were playing our normal game but without getting as many good results as I expected. And then we had an absolutely wretched final four boards (averaging only 17% per board). Thursday’s 74% game was a very different experience: my impression was that we were doing lots of good things, our decisions were working, and the opponents were having a bad day.
But I like to look past first impressions, so I checked the results board by board for both games, drilling down to see what happened at other tables. Here is a quick summary:
- On Wednesday (44% game), we made 5 good (and 1 bad) decisions, and the opponents made 7 good (and 3 bad) decisions. The awful final four boards were due to two good decisions by the opponents, one lucky decision by the opponents, and one piece of bad luck for us.
- On Thursday (74% game), we made 9 good (and no bad) decisions, and the opponents made 1 good (and 4 bad) decisions.
We played a bit better on Thursday, but not dramatically better. I think it’s fair to say that the boards on Thursday offered more opportunities for good decisions for the pairs sitting in our direction. The opponents had a bad day on Thursday and a good day on Wednesday.
The primary take-away for me is not to get attached to winning or losing right now; rather, I want to stay focused on making the best decisions I can on the next bid and the next play.