A wild hand to start the set off. My 1♦ opener is overcalled, and the next two players make bids that show support: partner cuebids the opponents' suit, and RHO bids 2NT, which JACK claims shows spade support. I'm not sure this is in SAYC, but since it looks to me like I have fine defense against both 3♠ and notrump, I make a penalty double. West retreats to 3♠ and I want to double again, but partner overrules and I am dumped into 5♦, which West doubles. This does not go well. I win the spade lead and the A♣, but then try to pull trumps. West wins his A♦ and plays another, and I end up down three for a complete bottom. How the computers escaped with ten tricks is beyond me; I've replayed this hand twice and I can't even make nine. Long day ahead...

McBruce's Result as South: 5♦*s-3, 500 to EW, 0% to NS, McBruce's score so far: 0%

After a normal 1NT opener, partner transfers to spades and I am left to try to make it. With only one point in dummy this is pretty much impossible. If you ruffed a diamond for an entry to dummy to run the J♠, you might have gone three or four down! Better to have the ten or the nine to try that one: I just plunked down the ace and king and when the queen dropped, I had -200, which was a decent score. Not much fun in these hands so far!

McBruce's Result as South: 2♠s-2 , 200 to EW, 43% to NS, McBruce's score after 2 boards: 21.5%!

After RHO doubles partner's 1♥ response, how good is the West hand in support of hearts? Twelve highcard points, a singleton in a key suit and four trumps to the ace. A raise to 2♠ is clearly not enough. Partner pushes to slam but leaves me in 6♦. I decide not to correct back to 6♥ and quickly regret my choice, especially when the first round of hearts catches an honour in the South hand and I play South for QJ doubleton and make seven. The majority of pairs are in 6♥ and we get a poor score. Should I have corrected? I don't think so. I think something went wonky with JACK's evaluation after the Blackwood response. Maybe the missing heart honours spooked the computer!

McBruce's Result as West: 6♦w+1, 1390 to EW, 12% to NSEW, McBruce's score after 3 boards: 18.33%!

After three deals in which my computer partner has done some odd things, I get a bit frustrated when 1NT doubled is taken out all the way to 4♠. I push on to 6NT and when they double I pull out the rare blue card. West chooses the worst possible lead, the Q♥, and after one trick I have three hearts, three spades, a club and two diamonds, and I need one of the suits to break. Or I could listen to the auction: 1NT by East promised a heart-club two-suiter. This knowledge makes it easy: K♠ and finesse on the second round, for a top score!

McBruce's Result as South: 6NT**s=, 2110 to NS, 100% to NS, McBruce's score after 4 boards: 38.75%!

A spirited auction leads to a normal result that illustrates the difference between what actually happens at the table and what the hand records claim can be made. With eleven-card fits and a secondary eight-card fit on the side, of course both sides compete to the five level, and the normal club lead combined with the percentage play in trumps (who finesses with an 11-card fit missing the king?) leads to the expected result of 5♥ making exactly. The first thing the hand records reveal is that E-W could have gotten four tricks against 5♣ doubled for 500. Next it might be noted that 5♥ can actually be defeated when East plays it. Both are mirages though. To defeat 5♥, South must find a low diamond lead, ignoring his ♣KQJ976. This sets up his Q♦ as an entry after partner wins the Q♠ on the second round of spades, which requires a risky duck of the first round of spades. If you found that defense you probably shouldn't be playing in the Mentor-Mentee game! Beating 5♣* for 500 is similarly difficult: West must lead a low diamond from T2 doubleton. If South ducks the king in dummy, East plays the jack and the defenders wait patiently for their two diamond tricks, along with the K♠ and the A♥. If West leads a normal T♦, South covers with the king in dummy and loses only one diamond. So what have we learned? Double-dummy results are not the same as table results, and all those recommended leads from different holdings that you've committed to memory are best most of the time but not all of the time!

McBruce's Result as South: 5♥e= , 450 to EW, 41% to NS, McBruce's score after 5 boards: 39.20%!

North's 2♥ is a transfer to spades and the continuation to 3NT offers South the choice of game contracts, promising exactly five spades. With two spades South will pass and play 3NT; with four or five spades South will bid 4♠, and with three spades South will usually bid 4♠ but think about it (when you see this happen on defense you can confidently assume the notrump bidder has three trumps). My inkling is that this is awfully close and I use a tool JACK includes to help me. JACK deals out cards from the remaining 39 cards not in my hand to the other three players and if the North hand matches the auction, counts it and checks which contract is better. It is a narrow victory for 4♠, so I make that bid and it turns out to be more difficult than I thought. West leads a club and I have an ironclad heart loser, and possibly two or more diamond losers. I duck the A♣ and the K♣ wins the first trick, and suddenly I need spades to break and to hold diamonds to one loser. The return of the T♦ puts me to the test and I fail, trying the jack. The winning play would be to win the A♦ at trick two and lead a heart towards the king. West can duck but if he does, I win the king in dummy, unblock the A♣, pull trumps ending in hand, and pitch a losing heart on the Q♣, giving up only a club and two diamonds. When West wins the ace, he cannot cash the K♦ and must lead low to East's queen. East has no more diamonds and I can win the next trick, unblock the K♥ and A♣, pull trumps ending in hand, then pitch two diamonds on my Q♥ and Q♣. That's awfully difficult for a non-computer, and I expect 4♠ down one to be worth much more than 10% in the real game.

McBruce's Result as South: 4♠s-1, 50 to EW, 10% to NS, McBruce's score after 6 boards: 34.33%!

Most computer bridge programs, with one human against three computer players, let the human player cross to be declarer whenever the auction makes the human dummy, so I get to struggle to make eight tricks in spades. East leads the 4♦, I duck in dummy and West plays low (why play what might seem like an encouraging 6♦ when West would prefer a switch?). To me the 3♦ looks like a singleton until I see from the spots that East would have led FIFTH-best, so I assume it is the 63 doubleton (any other doubleton and West would try to win the trick). With potential ruffs out there and no sure entry to dummy to take the spade finesse, I try a different tactic: A♠ and a small spade, hoping for a doubleton K♠. No luck; two spade losers. East takes them right away and continues with a heart to West's ace, and a diamond is returned (the expected six). I duck and West wins the king, the fourth trick for the defense. The Q♥ follows and I win in dummy and ruff a heart, then cash my diamond winners. This looks futile: if East has the A♣ he would surely not have passed 1♠, but when I lead a club to the king it wins and I have eight tricks for a good score. Wouldn't you overcall with the East hand? It's risky (and would be too risky in a team game), but in matchpoints surely not as risky as the carnage that the computer Easts brought on themselves by coming in at the three level!

McBruce's Result as South: 2♠n=, 110 to NS, 67% to NS, McBruce's score after 7 boards: 39.00%!

Yes, the unusual 2NT does normally promise 5-5 in the two indicated suits (minors, or the two lowest other suits if the opening bid is a minor suit). But after partner passes and RHO opens, liberties can be taken in competition to get back in the auction. Partner forces them all the way to 5♠ as I silently fasten an imaginary seatbelt. It's my lead and the A♦ feels wrong, so I try the A♣ instead. Partner plays the seven and declarer plays the queen. On first look this seems like declarer has the KQ♣ doubleton, so I switch to the A♦ and declarer has eleven easy tricks. Where did I go wrong? Shouldn't partner play an encouraging T♣? No: doing so sets up a club trick for declarer. If I continue clubs after partner signals with the ten, declarer plays the jack and ruffs partner's king. He pitchs two diamonds from dummy on established hearts and makes six. The only way to beat it is to lead a low club away from the ace and get a diamond return. Nobody is trying that play, because for every time it works there are counless times where partner's entry is somewhere else and it doesn't...

McBruce's Result as South: 5♠e=, 450 to EW, 54% to NS, McBruce's score after 8 boards: 40.88%!

I'm out on a limb on this one and the limb breaks when slam makes easily, dropping me for a zero and a painful thud. Is a decent ten count enough to get to slam after a 2NT (20-21) opener? The JACK method, which I am not sure is part of SAYC is as follows: 2NT - 3♠ (asking if partner has a minor suit), 4♣ (apparently promising a five-card suit) - 4NT (Blackwood), 5♥ (two aces) - 6♣ or 6NT. Seems awfully lucky to me: 30 combined points and every one of them is working perfectly.

McBruce's Result as South: 3NTn+3, 490 to NS, 0% to NS, McBruce's score after 9 boards: 36.33%!

Revenge for Board 9 as my opening bid is unique and my lead strikes gold! The computers are certifiably crazy not to open the South hand: 5-5 in the majors, nine points and a void; this is enough for a 1♠ opener in my book. But having passed, the West hand looks more like a pre-empt than an opening bid, even in. third seat. I actually expect North to have some hand similar to South's, so I begin with 3♦ to exert pressure. Against 4♥ the singleton spade seems best, and we get the A♠, a spade ruff, the ace of clubs, and eventually declarer finesses in trumps and loses to my bare king for a zero. Take that, you silicon sillies!

McBruce's Result as West: 4♥e-1, 100 to EW, 100% to NSEW, McBruce's score after 10 boards: 42.70%!

4♥ makes with the A♠, A♦, and Q♦ all onside, a 12.5% chance, and facing such odds most will sell out to 3♠ as we did. We should get a diamond, two clubs, two hearts, and the king of trumps. The disaster at my table is for once not my fault: I won the heart lead and returned a trump. Declarer ducked and partner won the king and led a second heart. I won this and played a second trump. Declarer won the Q♠ in dummy, and led a spade to his hand. Partner chose as a discard the ... 9♣, killing our second club trick and leaving us with a shared bottom. Discarding is a difficult part of defense, but one of those losing diamonds surely would have been better.

McBruce's Result as West: 3♠n-1, 50 to EW, 1% to EW, McBruce's score after 11 boards: 38.91%!

This run of good board-bad board is beginning to look like one of those global waring graphs that Al Gore displays in his talks. But this result seems normal to me and I'm surprised it paid so well. East has no call to make over the weak two opener and I have no reason to raise with a hand that will be useful on defense and in spades. West might reopen with a double but his values are pretty light. The play is routine: I get the J♥ lead and lose to West's king, then a trump lead back taken by Easts king. A diamond switch puts me in with the ace and I pull trumps, win the A♥ and then the Q♥ and we're dow to the club suit. When East plays the J♣ on the first club trick, I can only lose two clubs and end up losing two clubs and two early kings. A♣ and another on opening lead gets the defeners a ruff, and that appears to be what happens at several tables, giving us a shared top.

McBruce's Result as South: 2♠n+1, 140 to NS, 85% to NS, McBruce's score after 12 boards: 42.75%!

Rixi Marcus was a star player for the Austrian ladies team before World War II; she escaped Austria just before the Anschluss and lived the rest of her days in London as a bridge professional player and writer. Her motto and best-known book was "Bid Boldly, Play Safe." My "a six card suit is worth an extra point, isn't it?" 1NT opener was surely bold, and after a Stayman inquiry it was time to play safe. I ducked the 7♥ lead and East won the J♥ and switched to the T♠. The queen lost to the king and a second heart came back, ducked again and won by East's ace. (West should have led the queen for maximum pressure at trick three.) East continued with a small club and I thought I detected a slight pause after partner's 2♣ Stayman bid, so I was fairly confident that the jack would win. Next was the jack of diamonds, ducked in dummy to East's queen, the fourth trick for the defense. Anything but a club sets the contract, but East led a club and I finessed again for my ninth trick. So it would appear that I bid boldly and played safe to avoid going down more than one, and a key error by the computer allowed it to make!

McBruce's Result as South: 3NTs=, 600 to NS, 100% to NS, McBruce's score after 13 boards: 47.15%!

After the Stayman enquiry is your opening lead choice going to be the same? I was ready to lead the J♠ until I remembered that dummy asked about majors before settling in 3NT. Instead, I led the J♣, and this turned out well, but declarer should be able to force three spade tricks by leading from hand. Perhaps the decision not to lead a spade led declarer astray! With all these tops and bottoms I have somehow averaged out after 14 boards, many of them quite difficult hands.

McBruce's Result as South: 3NTe=, 400 to EW, 87% to NSEW, McBruce's score after 14 boards: 50%!

4♥ and 5♦ both make and 4♥ pays more, but AJ9743 is coniderably below he suit quality I would expect on this auction. After the opponents took their two spade tricks, we needed trumps to be 3-3 to make it. Diamonds is much safer, and on this layout many Norths were afraid to lead the A♠, leading to overtricks. I think East should bid 5♦ over 4♦.

McBruce's Result as West: 4♥e=, 420 to EW, 53% to EW, McBruce's score after 15 boards: 50.20%!

Here is a feature of 2/1 against SAYC that is quite useful and which I assumed on this hand, forgetting that in fact we are playing SAYC with JACK. In 2/1 after a major suit opener, a two-level response in a new suit is game-forcing, and the hands that aren't quite game forcing bid a forcing 1NT. But many 2/1 players go further, urging that these two-level responses be fairly good suits, so that if opener raises, as I did here, we are at least thinking about slam. The route to twelve tricks is a bit difficult when spades break 4-1, but two ruffs set up the last two spades for four spade tricks, five trumps, the ace of hearts, ace of clubs, and a club ruff back to dummy (with that crucial fourth trump in the West hand) to cash the last two spades. The hand record claims 13 tricks in diamonds are possible, but you need to know about the spade break to cash in on that deal.

McBruce's Result as West: 6♦e=, 1370 to EW, 94% to NSEW, McBruce's score after 2 boards: 52.94%!

In this day and age of finding as many sequences as possible to raise partner, and careflly defining all of them, this auction is seldom seen. The last time I saw this auction on a printed page was in a Matchpointer of the 1980s, where the editor slyly placed an asterisk over the 3♠ call and commented that it was "invitational, but the last time they passed one of these was in 1965." But when dummy appears, 3♠ appears to be the perfect spot: two hearts, a club, and a diamond to lose, and no obvious shot at making extras. If one defender has Qxx of trumps we could even be down. So what happened? The 7♥ was led and the K♥ won the first trick and dummy's A♥ took the second. I chose West as the victim if someone had to watch their Qxx of trumps die, so I cashed the ace first and trumps were suddenly no problem, pulled in three rounds. Now the K♣ lost to the ace and another club came back. I won, cashed a third club, and then led the J♦ and ran it, losing to East's king. Back came the seven of diamonds and I saw an opening, inserting the eight and capturing West's queen with the ace. The T♠ was an entry to the established T♦, on which the losing heart went away. Not great defense from the computers, but in matchpoints these things happen and you have to be ready to accept gifts when offered.

McBruce's Result as South: 3♠n+1, 140 to NS, 86% to NS, McBruce's score after 17 boards: 54.88%!

Not sure who should bid 3♥ here, perhaps neither North nor South should, since a double would give E-W 200, even better than the 150 they got. The defensive miscue was my lead of a spade after getting two club tricks; a safer lead would be a trump or a heart, but that cost few matchpoints compared with not getting to 3♥. I see from the Six-Packs that it was South who took the plunge to the three level, but I can't justify it on a 4-3-3-3 hand with close to a minimum. North, with six hearts, really should be the one to be going one level more.

McBruce's Result as South: 3♦w+2, 150 to EW, 10% to NS, McBruce's score after 18 boards: 52.39%!

Easy to see the issue on this hand: South opens 2♥, passed around to East who reopens with a double. Is the West hand enough to bid something stronger than the obvious 3♦? Should East make a move over 3♦? Surprisingly, most of the computers say no to both, and the ones that do get to the cold 5♦ game do so by the doubler rebidding 3♥, a bid I would be afraid to make with only 16 and three stoppers in the opponents' suit! The modern way is to use the Lebensohl convention over doubles of weak twos. West would bid 2NT with minimum values, a forced relay to 3♣, after which West would correct to 3♦, showing about 0-7 points. With this hand though, West has enough to bid 3♦ directly, and East should get to 5♦ easily with the knowledge that West has at least 8 points. Like most bidding conventions, Wikipedia is a good source for information. If you got to 5♦ and North led the K♥ and another, I hope you ruffed the third heart high....

McBruce's Result as West: 3♦w+2, 150 to EW, 44% to EW, McBruce's score after 19 boards: 51.95%!

First we miss a cold game, now we miss a cold slam! What's going on? First of all, it is not a cold slam, you need diamonds to break 2-2 or the Q♦ onside, about 75% or so. From the chart we can see that we gain about 47% by bidding six if the slam makes. If it goes down, the pairs in six will be below us on the chart, getting 16% while 5♦+1 would be worth 53%, a loss of 37% if we are wrong. Gaining 47% three times in four while losing 37% once is good odds, so this slam is worth bidding. Who's t fault? Well, call me biassed, but that East hand looks pretty powerful and a Blackwood call after 4♥ would tell East enough. BTW, the 3♠ bid asks for a stopper for a possible notrump game, but also - since it forces East to the four-level without one - shows a pretty good hand. So there's that...

McBruce's Result as West: 5♦e+1, 620 to EW, 33% to NSEW, McBruce's score after 20 boards: 51.00%!

My overcall of 2♠ propels the opponents to a level where we might get a plus, but my opening lead (9♦) is unfortunate (A♠ and a spade ruff beats it! Who knew?). Now I need a good result on the last board to stay above average.

McBruce's Result as South: 3♥e=, 140 to EW, 0% to NS, McBruce's score after 21 boards: 48.7%!

I open 1NT, reasoning that it is a balanced 17 with a five-card suit, offset by the inflexibility of AK doubleton of diamonds. This turns out to be prophetic as I struggle for most of the hand to engineer some sneaky entry to dummy, ending up down two ... and then discovering that all the computers opened 1♣, allowing North to make a Micheals cuebid, and -200 was a near bottom against the fifteen different outcomes that the 1♣ opener begat! -100 if I could sneak a sixth trick would have been decent, but if West had made some move (2♠ as a response to 1NT, forcing a 3♣ rebid, followed by a 3♦ signoff) gettng us to diamonds, we had a chance to break average on the session. C'est la vie...

McBruce's Result as West: 1NTw-2, 200 to NS, 3% to EW, McBruce's final score after 22 boards: 46.5%!