[mink]

Today I played in a free tourney with 122 tables, 3 rounds, 9 boards, swiss. My own result is not important, but I wondered how the winners managed to get 48 IMPs out of these 9 boards. This is what I learnt by myhands:

In board 1 they failed to defend 4♠, so opps made their 4♥ and scored 6 IMPs.
This was the second board:

Scoring: IMP

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West North East South
- - 1♠ Pass
2♠ Pass 4♠ Pass
Pass Pass

Lets say George sits East and Donald sits West (names invented). George is lucky that South leads ♥J. Looking at 4 hands we see that George has easy 12 tricks now by cashing first the trumps and then the hearts. Looking at it from the declarers point of view there also is no other option in sight. But George cashes ♥A, ♠A, ♥K and ♠J, and this is of course the last time for the dummy to lead. George is lucky again that opps allow him to make his ♣Q, but he is still down 2 instead of 2 overtricks.

I assume Donald was angry now. But he found a way to handle his anger: in 5 of the 7 remaining boards, he doubled the final contract. 3 times opps redoubled. There were 2 boards where he did not double: in Board 6 he passed his partner's double, and in board 4 opps had doubled his partner.

Needless to say, everything was perfect for George and Donald in those 7 boards: When opps played, they went down, and in board 4 George managed to make an overtrick in 2♠ doubled. Here is the complete list from myhands:

4♥S= -420 -6.09
4♠E-2 -100 -8.83
5♠xN-2 300 -0.96
2♠xN+1 870 12.99
4♣xxE-1 200 6.45
2♥xW-2 500 7.74
3NxN-3 800 12.35
3NxxS-3 1000 14.38
3♦xxS-2 600 10.62

Just one example of the hands that Donald (West) doubled 3nt with:

Scoring: IMP

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This was board 8 and got him the highest score of all.

Now who is still claiming that bridge is a game of skill?

Karl

[gwnn]

It is possible to win a BBO tourney this short with good bridge, but it's highly improbable - usually it requires bad bridge by opps and some bad bridge gone lucky by you (ie not getting to a 50% slam). This case is the combination of both.