[geoffff]

Two consecutive hands this morning convinced me to go to a forum and get things off my chest. I hope I am in the right place, never having started a thread before:
I was playing the Express Free Automated Fun tournament.

First board, we were in 3 No Trumps. I had 6 clubs A,K,Q xxx with no other entries. Declarer had 2 clubs, leaving 5 between the opponents. Small club to dummy results in A,K,Q being led in turn and opponents, split 3 and 2 being left with no clubs. Does declarer take my 3 xxx tricks? No! We go one down while almost everyone else ends up 3NT+3 or 3NT+4. Therefore 0%

Next board.partner pre-empts 3 Clubs. Next player bids 3 NT. All pass. My lead and I have K,Q,x of clubs. I expect that with my three and partner's seven clubs, declarer has Axx. I lead K expecting declarer to hold off the Ace, but see 2 small clubs in dummy (Funny I think!). Partner plays low and declarer pops up with J. Second trick is Q clubs. Partner overtakes with Ace and proceeds to win 5 more tricks in a row, making 7 all told. This with a random Ace and King gives us 9 tricks, i.e declarer is 5 down by bidding no trumps with a singleton against a pre-empt. Therefore 94%

So, in two hands I experienced both the penalty and bonus of playing an automated tournament with random partners and opponents. I just can't remember two such hands consecutively before.

Any other odd experiences so close together?

[661_Pete]

Well - I can't quite match that, and my contribution really ought to be elsewhere because it's not about BBO. But here goes.
A small U3A tourney, pairs, MPs. I was playing in 6♠ and went four down. Not a happy experience, seeing as most other tables made game. My partner gently chid me for not drawing trumps, but I had a diamond suit in dummy which I was desperately trying to reach with a ruff (I was void in ♦) but no luck: LHO ruffed high each time and I couldn't over-ruff. Probably bad play but I tried to make my case. Anyway, a rank bottom....

Next board, I stopped in 3♠ and easily made 4. Partner said, this time, "why didn't you go to game?" I replied "not after last hand..." which was a silly answer of course, but my confidence was a bit sapped.

But later on in the tourney, I made an easy 6NT +1 (I very nearly bid 7NT: could almost count the 13 tricks - but reasoned that, at MPs, it wasn't worth chancing). No other table took 13 tricks, and only one other bid the slam, taking 12 tricks. A clear 'top'.

So yes: bridge has its ups and downs. As does life...

[661_Pete]

Just thought I'd add another comment to this - I think relevant.
STRENGTH DOESN'T (always) MATTER!

Just played a sequence of 11 hands. In them I was dealt a grand total of 61 HCPs. The individual hands amounted to 2,5,6,4,5,7,11,3,7,0,11 respectively. Hardly a resounding sequence of powerhouses there! Can anyone beat that?

Nevertheless, we ended up ahead of the oppos, to the tune of 28 IMPs . Admittedly that was partly down to an awful bidding mix-up for their part on the last hand, but still IMPs are IMPs, however gained....

So take that as a moral, next time you get a string of lousy 5-pointers-or-less....!