Right away I am faced with a decision after partner's 2♣ overcall is passed to me. I could pass and hope partner can make a plus score, or hope to beat the opponents if they bid on. But it seems best to make a call here. 2♦ sounds great as 'pick a major, partner' but in SAYC a 2♦ cuebid will be seen as a raise in clubs. So I choose my best suit and try 2♠. Partner is unable to contain his excitement and I end up playing in 4♠. After the A♦-K♦-K♥ start I need the ruffing finesse in clubs to work. I unblock the A♣, play a spade to the ace and lead the Q♣ from dummy. South covers with the king and I ruff, but when spades break 3-1 I have a spade loser and I cannot get rid of my heart loser in time. Down one is the result. We'd be plus 50 instead of minus 50 if partner passed 4♦, which would be my choice with that minimum. I could have raised to 4♠ with extras but chose not to. Oddly enough, many tables are making 4♠ after some defensive slip up, so maybe partner's bid was not all that bad.

McBruce's Result: 4♠w-1, 50 to NS, 57% to NS, McBruce's score so far: 43%.

Over the weak two this looks fairly good but there are only three high cards in the hand, so I'm not going to go overboard and double: a simple 3♥ overcall seems right. Partner drives the opponents to 5♠ and then makes a penalty double and I am a spectator. 6♥? It might make, but to take that sort of risk we need to be far more confident. The defense is interesting. I lead the A♥ and partner plays what looks like a high spot card, the first trick going ace, four from dummy, eight from partner, five from declarer. In these situations, when dummy will ruff the second round, the signal is supposed to be suit preference, to help me decide which suit to switch to. The high eight means...wait a minute, 2, 3 in my hand, 4, 5 played by dummy and declarer, 6, 7 in my hand: the eight is LOW. I switch to the A♣ and partner signals with the eight (this one looks like it is high). Another club trick and a diamond switch for three more tricks nets us 800. It's an OK score but we are unlucky because people are bidding the slam and making seven because the K♥ is onside and the fourth diamond allows a parking place for the club loser. Not the sort of slam I'd want to be in.

McBruce's Result: 5♠*e-4, 800 to NS, 41% to NS, McBruce's score so far: 42% after two boards.

Maybe it seems to you that 1♦ over 1♣ denies a four-card major and bidding 1♥ is therefore futile. Maybe you think I should have opened 1♦, not 1♣, with four cards in each minor. Wrong on the first, right on the second. I opened 1♣ because I wanted to avoid partner leading a diamond if the opponents took over the auction and I was unable to bid anything else. By doing so mine was the only table where North did not make a takeout double, and we were allowed to settle in 2♦. 1♣-1♦ doesn't deny a major: 1♦ could be bid on a strong hand with a major but a longer diamond suit. The 1♥ rebid suggests (in SAYC) or indicates (in 2/1) an unbalanced hand. North decided to get in over 1♥ and somehow South didn't raise to 2♠, and we played 2♦, where I should have made more tricks than I did.

McBruce's Result: 2♦w=, 90 to EW, 44% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 42.67% after three boards.

Oh boy, it's rookie mistake time. Watch as I make the simplest of rookie mistakes. First of all, the West hand is not quite strong enough to open 2♣, but when partner makes a two over one response to 1♥, everyone should be in slam. The K♣ is the obvious lead and I have a club loser and a possible spade to lose. Again there is a ruffing finesse situation, so I win the A♣, cash the A♦ in hand, play a trump to dummy's entry, and lead the Q♦. South covers and I am home free! I ruff and play a second trump and both follow, but how do I get back to dummy? The 9♥: is it an entry? If it isn't, they will cash a club if I lead another trump. This is the classic fog of euphoria. Once the K♦ appeared in the right hand, I took a bow and stopped watching the opponents' cards, forgetting the J♥ that I led to at trick three, and missing the T♥ that North followed with at trick five, making the 9♥ an entry. I even forgot to simply count trumps and realize that they were all out, having broken 2-2! Eventually, I led a club and North won and returned a spade, so I managed twelve tricks. But thirteen tricks were there and I got a deserved bad score. Lesson: when things go well, don't let your guard down!

McBruce's Result: 6Hw=, 1430 to EW, 22% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 37.50% after four boards.

West's options, when 1♥ gets passed around to him are Pass, Double, and 1NT. Pass is the worst of these three, for partner should have something on this auction. Double is flawed in that one would like to have two unbid suits with four-card support. 1NT in balancing seat is different than a direct 1NT overcall: in the passout seat it promises about 12-14 and is often stretched a point in either direction. I choose 1NT and find that 50 JACK players agree. The question is what should East do? With 13 and a five-card suit, East has a clear raise to 3NT, since 3NT usually needs only 24 or even 23 when one opponent is known to hold most of the missing high cards. On this occasion, however, there is no way to come to nine tricks and I get yet another below average score. A double instead of 1NT would likely have gotten us to 2♦, where ten tricks are easy. C'est la vie!

McBruce's Result: 3NTe-1, 50 to NS, 37% to NSEW, McBruce's score so far: 37.40% after five boards.

After bidding aggressively for five boards, partner cannot find a 1♥ opener with 2½ quick tricks, and the vulnerability prevents me from trying a 2♠ ultralight third seat effort. Finally, an average, my best board yet!

McBruce's Result: Passed Out, 50% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 39.50% after six boards.

Surely ten points and a decent five-card suit is enough to make a positive 3♣ response to the strong opener. In fact, this bid warns opener that slam may be risky with my best stuff opposite his void. Luckily, the day of ruffing finesses continues and twelve tricks are way too easy on a spade lead: win, A♥, 8♥ entry, A♣ pitching a spade, Q♣ pitching another spade when North does not cover. Even the A♦ is onside and a lucky twelve tricks comes in again, on a hand where you wouldn't want to be there.

McBruce's Result: 4♥e+2, 680 to EW, 44% to NSEW, McBruce's score so far: 40.14% after seven boards.

1♥ or 2♥ with the West hand? Either is correct; I'm leaning toward 1♥. But what some players do which is really bad is decide that there are some hands not good enough for 1♥ and too good for 2♥. There is no such animal; pick a bid if you're on the borderline, you can't be too far off! Partner's two over one response in SAYC is not game forcing, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would stop in 3♥ once partner admitted to support for hearts. With five trumps, three aces and the K♠, the tenth trick might come from diamonds but requires a lot of entries, or it might come from clubs. I win the spade lead and pull trumps, then tackle clubs from hand, low toward the jack. North grabs the king and returns another spade. I ruff in hand and lead another club, North plays low right away, and the jack loses to South's queen, and a diamond is returned to dummy's ace. North's low card on the second round of clubs looked like a shotgun, a card played quickly for some reason. In this case, against a computer, I think North has a doubleton, so I lead the 5♣ from dummy intending to finesse the nine if South plays low, but as you see they were 3-3 all along, so no need; contract made, with the 4♣ as the tenth trick!

McBruce's Result: 4♥w=, 420 to EW, 53% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 41.75% after eight boards.

My bad luck continues as I read maybe a bit too much into North's double jump to 3♠ and push to an unmakeable slam. The only real hope is doubleton Q-J♠, and that's not on the cards today.

McBruce's Result: 6♠n-1, 50 to EW, 0% to NS, McBruce's score so far: 37.11% after nine boards.

Partner's cuebid shows about an average hand with club support: should be five but might be four. I'm not too excited about playing 3♣ so when South steps in I look at the vulnerbility and wield the axe! My club opening lead is not the greatest, but eventually we come to six tricks for the magic 200. If opponents were not vulnerable 100 is not so magic on a hand where we might make 120 in notrump. Many different results at the computer tables on this one: perhaps my double was not as obvious to the machines as it was to me! Three likely trump tricks, the majority of the high cards, and no apparent fit: whack 'em!

McBruce's Result: 2♠*s-1, 200 to EW, 85% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 41.90% after ten boards.

JACK does not agree with my 2♥ call but admits that I have the cards for it: 5+ hearts, less than three spades, not longer clubs, and 8-12 points (6-12 if I have six hearts). The machines bid 1NT and play it from the West hand; I get to walk over and play it from the East hand, because JACK and most bridge playing programs let the human declare when his partner is a machine. So from the East side with the club lead I see three clubs and three or four diamonds, not much in hearts, and a useful spade suit. The guideline for developing suits like the spade suit is to begin by leading towards the hand with the single honour, then later lead back towards the honour combination, and see if you can guess what to do. I win the club lead and play a diamond to the ace in order to start spades the recommended way, and North captures the Q♠ with the ace. Back comes a club and I win in dummy. This time I am awake enough to have noticed that South did not follow to the first diamond, so I run the 9♦ successfully, then continue with the J♦. North decides not to cover, probably fearing that my only play from dummy would be to cash the K♠, dropping North's jack. But I decide to leave the fourth diamond trick for later and play on spades. If I lose to the J♠, I will lose a few hearts, but as you can see, it's a happy ending when the J♠ comes down, with everything in dummy now good except for the K♥, which I concede at the end. Eleven tricks is worth all the matchpoints!

McBruce's Result: 3NTe+2, 460 to EW, 100% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 47.18% after eleven boards.

A lot of weirdness going on here. It's a really reluctant opener, this West hand in first seat, but I think 1♠ is OK, and so apparently do 50 JACK players. The weirdness comes after the 2♥ response by partner, which promises five hearts (don't make this bid with only four). In 2/1 this would be game forcing and a 4♥ rebid would show a minimum opener with heart support, while a 3♥ rebid would show more and invite some sort of slam exploration if responder also has extras. In SAYC it is a different ballgame entirely: it seems the correct rebid is...2♠. Both 3♥ and 4♥ show more than a minimum hand, so the idea is that you bid 2♠ and support hearts next to avoid promising any extras. Even in SAYC, partner's two-over-one, while not forcing to game, shows enough strength that you can expect another call from him: 2♠ will never be passed. Good thing too, because rebidding five-card suits is not something I enjoy doing, unless there is some systemic reason for it as here. Now, the play (I take over the East chair again to declare) looks easy until you discover the 4-0 trump break! The T♦ lead knocked out nine highcard points worth of diamonds at trick one, and I led a trump toward dummy, South showing out. Priorities: before I kill off North's trumps, I need a ruff or two in dummy. So I led to the J♦ and ruffed a diamond, then led a club. North played low (oops) and I ducked this to South, who returned anoter club. I won the ace and held my breath and I tried a third round of clubs: when North followed, I had five trump tricks, two diamonds, the ace of clubs and two ruffs in dummy. The T♣ won trick thirteen for a good score, putting me above average at last! (If North covers the first club with an honour, I win and lead a club to the nine and North's other honour. Back comes a trump and I probably don't make the overtrick.) The other weirdness is that in the first 12 hands I have been in the West seat for ten of them. Hope that changes or every North-South pair will be complaining about the cards on game day....

McBruce's Result: 4♥e+1, 450 to EW, 84% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 50.25%

I also wondered, as I'm sure most Wests did, whether to just blast directly to 4♠. I suspect that might be better on this deal. On another my blasting to game might keep us out of a good slam, if we exchange East's Q♥ for North's A♥. So maybe the cuebid is better, especially since overcalls are notoriously unreliable and partner may have such unsuitable cards that even 3♠ would be a struggle! Not much to the play, for which I switch sides to take the machine's role as declarer, except that when South wins the K♣ at trick one and switches to a heart, you must be prepared to drop the Q♥ from your hand convincingly, like it is a singleton, even if North plays the ace. Someone may have a singleton heart and you still have to let them in with the ace of spades, so let them think the singleton heart is yours. Get that queen down on the table as soon as North's card is faced!

McBruce's Result: 4♠e=, 620 to EW, 51% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 50.31% after thirteen boards.

You may not like my takeout double, but 2♦ on a bad five-card suit seemed worse. Partner competed to 3♣ and it took a good defense to prevail: A♦, a heart to the ace, and a spade through declarer's king, a second spade winner, and a third spade, ruffed high in dummy. Needing the rest, I ruffed a diamond back to hand, played the J♣ which East covered, leaving West with the 98♣ for a sure setting trick against declarer's T7♣. It looks like -50 should be better than 14% but the computers were defending 2♠ very well indeed, getting a spade, a diamond, two clubs and two hearts. Unlucky!

McBruce's Result: 3♣n-1, 50 to EW, 14% to NS, McBruce's score so far: 47.71% after fourteen boards.

Looks like JACK disagrees with my decision to open the West hand in second seat: 2½ quick tricks and eleven points. I thought the idea behind the cuebid raise was to allow partner to bid three of the suit to show a minimum. Partner went for the game anyhow, and I probably would as well. No way around two club losers, the A♥, and an eventual diamond. Sigh.

McBruce's Result: 4♠w-1, 50 to NS, 11% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 45.27% after fifteen boards.

3♥ after the double showed a little more than a minimum, but partner was wise not to go on, for I nearly went down in 3♥. I won the spade lead with the ace and pulled trumps in three rounds, then put them back in with a spade, and pitched a club from both hands on a third round of spades. South now switched to a diamond and I ducked in hand, losing to the singleton king. Back came a club, and South tried to cash the ace and king, but I ruffed the latter, and the Q♦ was an entry to cash the established Q♣ for the ninth trick. The turning point in the auction seems to have been opener's rebid after the takeout double: some bid 3♦ and got too high, while 3♥ kept them from trying the impossible game. I think to rebid 3♦ with only Axxx of diamonds is a bit rich: another honour might persuade me though...

McBruce's Result: 3♥w=, 140 to EW, 80% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 47.44% after sixteen boards.

Mentees, listen to my words of wisdom here. When your partner opened 1NT and heard pass, pass, pass, what did he or she do? Nothing, right? Sat there and waited for the opening lead. Maybe wrote the contract down on the scoresheet, or hit a few buttons on the BridgeMate. But if it was you, would you be so calm? My experience doubts it. You can travel to the far edge of the continent, visit a bridge club or tournament where you know nobody, and this auction: 1NT Pass Pass Pass, will tell you who is new and who is not. Because for some reason, this auction is more terrifying to a newcomer than a horror film. This auction scares new players more than Donald Trump pressing random buttons in the White House Situation Room just to see what might happen. All because we've all seen this auction resulting in 1NT going down many tricks. 1NT makes far more often than it goes down, but we don't remember that: we remember the time we got it down five! We don't seem to notice later that down five was worth only 55% or 65%, because almost everyone in the room did the same thing. So if you want to look like an experienced player, do not fear this auction. Wait calmly for the opening lead, and when dummy hits say 'thank you partner!' even if it looks like the opponents can take the first ten tricks. Because if you look like you're going to be fine, sometimes ... they don't. As for this hand, if you really want to be an expert, open 1♥, not 1NT, which might make eight tricks while hearts routinely makes nine...

McBruce's Result: 1NTn+1, 120 to NS, 65% to NSEW, McBruce's score so far: 48.47% after seventeen boards.

In the early days of home computers, baseball writer Bill James, who had calculated batting averages with handheld calculators for more than a decade, wrote about their limits: "the machine mimics intelligence so well that when you encounter something it is not prepared for, you are amazed by the depth of the fall. It's like using a vaccuum cleaner and discovering that some unexpected move causes it to suddenly dump all the dirt it has collected into your face, something which no user could possibly want." In our auction, which may not fit on the screen, we got pressured by the opponents who discovered a diamond fit. But it seemed to me, having agreed on hearts earlier, that by bidding 5♠ and then 6♦ I could get the message across that the A♣, should partner have it, was a huge card and would justify bidding 7♥. Instead, JACK decided that I had 6+ spades that I somehow could not bid earlier, and stuck to that belief right through to the seven level! The biggest joke is getting 6% for this because the distribution is so bad that some went for 500 in 6♥ while I escaped for 500 in 7♠!

McBruce's Result: 7♠*w-3, 500 to NS, 6% to EW, McBruce's score so far: 46.11% after eighteen boards.

Not much excitement here, a simple, standard auction, and straightforward play for 11 tricks: two club losers and ruff out everything else. Three boards left for me to get back above average...

McBruce's Result: 4♠n+1, 450 to NSEW, 52% to NSEW, McBruce's score so far: 46.42% after nineteen boards.