allfail Posted January 30, 2010 Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 This week I have been quite unlucky at the robot rewards... lost almost $10 already in 2 or 3 days... The last one I did, however, has some interesting boards I'd like to share some perspective: Board 2 part opened 1S and we got to a typical 4S and made. So I started okay. At board 4 I hadS Axxx H KQJxxx Dx C KJIn spite of partner's pass I decided to open due to the colors. (Maybe a bad move?) Part replied 1S I happily jumped 3S and we ended up in 4S. Good luck it seemed. However, part's hand turned out to beS Txxx H A D QJTxx C xxxand we went -2 after some long thinking from part. Now that's bad luck... afterwards the results being okay (grabbed 2 vul games) until board 11:I had S AKQx H KQxx D x C KJTx, opened 1C and LHO preempted 4D. Pass back to me, I doubled(T/O as explained.) What else can I do?Partner had S xxx H JTxx D xx C xxxx, passed promptly and they easily made 8 diamonds and 2 aces. 4H for us is makeable. Bad luck again. This behavior of GiB should be fixed... Now the next two board I made a vulnerable game and small slam and climbed to rank no. 2. Maybe my luck wasn't that bad after all. However, immediately after that I have 5 boards (not including passouts) which I can do nothing to prevent it being a partial. The play is so slow and I stuck at the score for maybe 7-8 minutes, my rank dropped to the borderline and then I got this hand: Board 20: S Ax H AKxxxx D x C AJxx. Vul, I opened 1H at 4th seat. Pn jumped 3H and RHO doubled. Generically speaking I think it's always a good idea to try for slam holding nonminimum hands (that is, hands that I would open) facing jump support in GiB tourneys since GiB's jump is quite heavy. I bid 4C, help suit slam try and was surprised to see him replied 4N RKCB. The most common reply here is 5H for some reason. Anyway, We went to 6H and PN's hand wasSQx H Qxxxx D Ax C Qxxx. my LHO led CT and the slam had no play. Bad luck again. The very next board (after a passout) is quite an interesting one:I hold S Jxxx H A D K C AKQxxxx and RHO opened 1C. dunno what to do, I doubled (intended to show strength.) LHO bid 1N and passed to me. I happily doubled again for penalty but pn runned to 2D. His hand was S xxx H Jxx D QTxxxx C x, quite a plausible move from his perspective. However from my point of view I am desparate and tried 3N. Partner bid 5D... and you know the result. Bad luck? I don't know, but what I can say is that after such a long drought this kind of hand is really demoralizing. By the way, the explanation of my 3N bid is 4H 4S and 25-30 HCP. Somebody please fix this as evidently it is not correct in this particular bidding and even in the case it's possible to be correct, it's nearly impossible to happen. The last board I played, in this tournament, board #23, I held this hand:S Kxxx H Ax D AKQxxxx C--I opened 1D, pn replied 1H, I jumped 2S, and pn jumped 6NT. What would you do?I was not sure at the time, but I don't have a long time to think and based on intuition and the difference of score (not to the borderline, but to the middle of profitable regime) I bid 7D. The reason behind the intuitin is that I have a solid suit and a void which pn had no idea about; therefore if he thought we can make 12 tricks then it is quite likely we can make 13. Chances for him to hold SA is not low, either.Pn's hand turned out to beS Qx HKQ9x D Jx C AKxxx. Despite not receiving a spade lead I still cannot find a way to make this contract. 6NT however is cold. Bad luck. What would you say? is this the typical bad luck you had during the tournament? Of course it's not the worst I had as the worst ones I would have trouble even making in to positive scores. I had those this week as well, but they are just too devastating to be discussed... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted January 30, 2010 Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 I'm sure we've all experienced stuff like that, although having them all occur in the same tourney is really frustrating. GIB is constantly taking out penalty doubles, and leaving in high-level takeout doubles even holding 4 cards in an unbid major. I just played a hand where GIB did something ridiculous, but it ended up working out because the other GIBs didn't find the right defense. GIB held ♠AKJ9x ♥xx ♦KQT9 ♣Tx. The auction started normally: 1♣ 1♠ 2♦ 3♦ 3NT. Then GIB jumped to 5NT, supposedly showing 15-17, asking me to choose between 6NT and 7NT. I had a good 20 count: ♠Q ♥KJx ♦Axxx ♣AKQJx. So of course I accepted. RHO doubled because he had the ♥A, but luckily LHO was on lead. He led a spade from 4 small rather than a heart from Qx, the ♠T fell on the 3rd round so I was able to get rid of all my hearts and also a small diamond, so I didn't have to worry about that suit breaking badly (I think it did). I think 4♣ would have been Gerber in GIB's system, would it be so hard to check for aces? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimG Posted January 30, 2010 Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 This week I have been quite unlucky at the robot rewards... lost almost $10 already in 2 or 3 days... I don't know how much you play, but for comparison, I have played 169 $1 robot rewards. I've had occasional stretches of 10 games where I have lost money. But, since game #34, every 25 game stretch has been positive. That is games 10-34 were positive, 11-35 were positive, 12-36 were positive, etc. My longest out of the money streak is 5 games. I don't think I am particularly good at Robot Rewards, my lifetime average is under 4000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jlall Posted January 30, 2010 Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 Maybe you're not good? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allfail Posted January 30, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 Yeah maybe... I intend to find out if that is the case. If you have different actions to the above boards which would work out better in the long term I would love to know about. On the other hand, I have no idea how to avoid slow-playing partials by opps. The best I can do is just pass and play as fast as possible. Penalty doubles and streched overcall doesn't quite work for me in the long term... By the way, I didn't play as much as some others do, but I think currently my life time average return of the $1 best hand reward is around 180% and I played some 250 times. Maybe I am just lucky before this week? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdonn Posted January 30, 2010 Report Share Posted January 30, 2010 By the way, I didn't play as much as some others do, but I think currently my life time average return of the $1 best hand reward is around 180% and I played some 250 times. Maybe I am just lucky before this week? Maybe your lifetime average is a lot lower than you think it is? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimG Posted January 31, 2010 Report Share Posted January 31, 2010 By the way, I didn't play as much as some others do, but I think currently my life time average return of the $1 best hand reward is around 180% and I played some 250 times. Maybe I am just lucky before this week? You should be able to check your gut by going through your tournament history. It's all there and pretty easy to access in the web version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted January 31, 2010 Report Share Posted January 31, 2010 By the way, I didn't play as much as some others do, but I think currently my life time average return of the $1 best hand reward is around 180% and I played some 250 times. Maybe I am just lucky before this week? You should be able to check your gut by going through your tournament history. It's all there and pretty easy to access in the web version. The next version of the web-client (hopefully coming soon) has some nice improvements in this area. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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