Life Master Pairs

It's now almost a week that I am back from Las Vegas, where I played the LMP with Han (no s, male, not a junior).
I had basically not touched a physical playing card since the summer nationals last year (and had never played a serious MP tournament) - Han had played a bit more often, but far from regularly either. The last couple of months our level of play on BBO had varied quite a bit (having a real job etc...), so I didn't quite know what to expect, even though I knew we could do well.
When I arrived Han had already made a bet with Steve Landen about who would do better (for all of 5$), and Justin had bet on us against himself when Jason (jchiu) offered 75$ to 20$ to do so. So already 80$ were riding on how well we would do, we should better try and play well!

The first qualifying session didn't go so well. We got fixed several times, and didn't play well either, ending at 40%. In the evening, both our luck and our play changed, when we took our tricks and a few more, and our bidding worked out too. I had a concentration gap somewhere in the middle of the session, but thankfully it didn't cost. In the end, we qualified comfortably with 67%. (Each day about half the field advances to the next day.)
The second day started with an "interesting" pair of boards against Ron Smith and partner. On the first hand, Han misplayed because Ron and partner didn't have their NT lead agreements sorted out, and we had to call the director (Ron volunteered to suggest a director call btw). On the next hand I picked up ♦Q9x ♠AT8 ♦AJ8 ♣KQ52 and of course overcalled 1N over Ron's 1♣ opening. Han seemed at least mildly suprised when I showed out on the opening heart lead (I don't think I had heard him asking "No hearts, partner?" before), but opposite dummy's 9xxx Jxxx xx Jxx I got out for -2 for a good score against their heart partial.
In the end we also did well on the second day, qualifying comfortably in 25th spot, even though there were still quite a few hands where we made clear mistakes. I ended up being quite tired towards the end of the evening session. There were still quite a few pairs that didn't seem strong at all, I definitely got a lot more tricks as declarer than I was entitled to when I tried to go for a misdefense. Even the simple ploy of leading the J from ♠QJx at about trick 5 or 6 on defense (when it was obvious to me that this couldn't mislead Han) misled a declarer to let us score ridiculously many tricks for an almost top on a rather non-sensical line.
Reviewing the hands I also noticed that MPs had not yet become second nature to me, there were two or three hands in the evening session of the 2nd day alone where I could have saved about a third of a board by just cashing out against their 3N making overtricks.

The last day is obviously the most fun. There are no weak pairs left, and quite a lot of very strong pairs. We did very well in the afternoon session except for one missed game and one missed slam. However, we didn't get very lucky either and scored 53%. In the evening, we had a 50% game and ended up 30th. However, on review I still found 2-3 hands where I didn't quite find the best play, aside from 2 hands where I had obviously goofed on declarer play/defense, so while I am not complaining about the end result, I am somewhat disappointed I didn't quite do my best towards the end. I guess I was tired again (even though I didn't notice during the session).
Han on the other hand had done extremely well after his sub-par 1st session.

Overall, I also think we had a bit more bad luck than good luck in the final sessions. With a bit more luck, and playing our best, we could certainly end up very high in this event, and I think many others on BBF could do so as well if they manage to play their best for the final two days. And at the very least, those betting on us made all of their 80 dollars.

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