[ggwhiz]

Carole and I lost the Canadian Open Pairs by a hair on a late play when our opponents bid

1nt - 2♣
2♥ - 3♠ intended as showing hearts, slammish
3nt not understood

followed by 6nt making when most of the field landed in 6♥ also making.

It gets worse.

The next day the Regional started and in the first KO the same guy that bid 3nt knocked us out in round 1 by 1 imp.

It gets worse.

Between sessions they had a random draw for door prizes and back to back the same guy won a $100 basket of cosmetics and Carole won a watercolour painting of a fish!

[Zelandakh]

Are you feeling like a small fish in a big painting?

Don't worry, next year it wil be your turn.

[Vampyr]

My least favourite loss was in a 32-board match I played yesterday. Ask me another time and it will always be my most recent loss.

[Fluffy]

I still have nightmares from Lille

[Balrog49]

A friend told me that every bridge player has a few hands that haunt them forever. In my case, it's the hand where I should have made 5♥ redoubled by executing a one-suit squeeze. It was a huge regional Swiss at a nationals and we probably would have won the event.

[EricK]

A hand which sticks in my mind is a 7 hearts contract missing the queen. I somehow miscounted the number of trumps between hand and dummy so played for the finesse rather than the drop. Naturally the queen was doubleton offside.

[GreenMan]

Sectional Swiss some years ago, our C team with about 500 MPs between us had an incredible run and was one match away from winning the whole event. On a key board my partner and I bid 4♥, which would have made in comfort, but an opp gambled that his partner had spades with him and sacrificed in 4♠x. Which he brought home on a 4-2 fit. We ended up fourth overall, which was much better than we had expected going in. But still.

[Flem72]

GNT B in Philadelphia. We had a good team, and reasonably expected to be in it at least for a couple of days. Had the worst day of bridge I've ever had in the round robin. I personally gave away beaucoup IMPs on a few bad decisions, so we were standing at 22/24 after the morning. All played well in the pm, and were told we had made it in at 16, then told we were tied for 16, then told we had been eliminated by the third of three tiebreaker rules. I was really dejected for a few weeks, and I'm still not over a couple of those boards. Was dying just to get to the next day....one lousy VP.

[Cyberyeti]

You hold a 2245 12 count first up love all teams, you decide to open a weak no trump, X-2♥(♥/♠ weak)-X-(gulp) you opt to bid 2♠ which is doubled on your left all pass. Dummy hits Qxxx, xxxx, xxx, xx. OK, you can see you're booked for 2 tricks in this one (you have an AK so they're not even making a slam). Fortunately the defence think you have 3 spades so they don't draw trumps and cash out. You manage to scramble 4 tricks and register -800 and -9 IMPs while still feeling you've played it like a hero.

[Trinidad]

The situation: A skiing-bridge trip, with a more than decent amount of prize money. My wife and I are working on scholarships, the trip is expensive and we can barely afford it. Getting into the money would be a long shot, but it would really help.

In the first day of the three day pairs tournament, the opponents play a really bad 3NT contract. My wife had opened a Multi 2♦, RHO overcalled 3♣ on ♣AKTxxxx and out and LHO bids 3NT. My wife's lead sets up her heart suit immediately (declarer wins his singleton ace) and I hold ♣Qxx behind dummy with an almost opening hand. This contract is going to go down at least two tricks, if not more.

Declarer leads the ♣J from his hand, partner follows suit, and declarer calls for the king as I play the queen. From my reaction it is obvious that I blundered and declarer yells: "THAT CARD IS PLAYED!! THAT CARD IS PLAYED!!" while jumping up and down in his seat like a kangaroo. (It hadn't even crossed my mind to retract the card, but evidently declarer did.)

It is clear that I just turned a top into a bottom. I apologized to my partner after the hand. She told me to forget about it and I did as soon as I got the cards for the next board.

We played well the rest of the tournament, the club queen was completely forgotten. The top 10 of the field (about 80 fairly good pairs, including national champions) would finish in the considerable amount of prize money. At the end of the third day, the difference between 5th and 11th was miniscule, about 10% of a board. We (obviously) were 11th, 1 lousy MP (1/2 in the USA) behind 10th. "Well, such is life", I think and my wife actually says it. It had been a fun tournament anyway.

A little later, we are walking hand in hand to our cabin, and half way through the walk, it suddenly comes back to me and I yell: "Queen of clubs!!!". It dawns on me that if it wouldn't have been for that blunder, we would have had next year's skiing-bridge trip almost paid for.

Then my wife asks: "What queen of clubs?". Right there I decided to start saving, because with this kind of a partner I have to play next year again.

Rik

[RunemPard]

Just played our clubs team match tonight...so right now this would be my worst "loss"...

16-14 VP to us in the first round against one of the weaker teams...could have easily had 25-5...

11-19 VP to them in the second round against one of the top 2 teams in our club...could have easily had 22-8...



My partner is a beginner, our teammates are intermediate/novice...so it was quite frustrating to have so many mistakes from our team when I played one of my best team matches ever! To beat arguably the best team in our club by such a good score would have been priceless as well.

A board that discouraged me even though we got a good score on it was...

Partner..
xxx
AQxx
K
AKQxx

Me...
AKQxxx
x
AJTx
xx

PD-ME
1C-2S
4S?-4N
5H-??

We had not talked about bids over 5N...so I tried 6D...With no chance to show anything else earlier due to my partners "preemptive bidding", I assumed partner would take it as a natural side suit and all controls...
Partner bid 6S only. The other table bid to only 4S after a huge bidding malfunction so we got 13 IMPs anyways (not sure how they couldn't find a slam here...), but missing such a good grand in a team match is still frustrating.

5N would have shown all controls and asks for kings with partner...we haven't switched to direct kings yet. So I had no clue what 6D should be other than natural with real interest? To make it even more frustrating, partner even forgot what we play for jump shifts...

[RunemPard]

To make it even more bitter sweet...

In Sweden we have bronze, silver, and gold points...
1 silver = 10 bronze
1 gold = 10 silver

15-15 to 17-13 VP is a tie and 7SP divided to each player on the team...(not sure why 7 and not 8)
18+ is a win and 14SP divided to each player on the team...(again, not sure why 14 and not 16)

So rather than walking away with 28SP for our team, we get only 7SP.

[Lord Molyb]

I was in fourth seat with ♠xxxx ♥Jxx ♦Kxx ♣Axx and my left hand opponent opened 1♥. My partner overcalled 2NT showing the minors, but I thought for some reason it showed spades+minor and so I bid 3♠, which is raised to 4.
Dummy comes down with something like ♠Kx ♥x ♦AQJxx ♣KQJxx and we manage to go down 7 vulnerable because my RHO had AQxxxxx x xx xxx. What's even better is that we didn't get a bottom board. At another table 4 spades went down 8, from my way!

[olegru]

Recall one.
NAOP, final B. First day. Several years ago.
Red against green. My partner open 1 ♠, stop card, 3 ♦ from RHO, stop card, 4 ♠ from me.
3 minutes hesitation and 5 ♦ from LHO.
Tank for 3 minutes and 5 ♠ from partner.
Two fast passes and 6 ♦ bid after another 3 minutes hesitation from the left.
Central hand opponent again took couple of minutes and bid 6 spades.
Fast pass, fast pass, very slow double from LHO and very slow redouble from CHO.
Very fast pass, very fast pass, very slow pass.
Extremely slow declarer play and defence resulted down two. Big fat zero for us. And well deserved ¼ board penalty for both pairs for slow play.
As a result we got minus 8 matchpoints for playing this board. We did not make the second day by 2 matchpoints.
(If you are wandering why bidding was so strange - 3 diamond bid from RHO was joke and mine 4 spades jump was not from everybody’s book too.)

[ggwhiz]

I have another.

First day of N/A Swiss, last match before dinner and first hand, my pard alerted a mini-splinter that wasn't (as far as I know). We marched into the valley of death and the rest of the match got worse.

When we got back home a teammate picked his head off the table and said "I sure hope you guys didn't have a good round". We won every other match and the next day our captain informed us that we were playing against a bunch of owls. Everytime they looked at the leaderboard they said Who? Of course they crushed us in day two.

The laughs over dinner as to, so you think YOU were bad were great and at least let us put our best foot forward for the 2nd half of day one.

[CSGibson]

All losses suck.

My first ever nationally rated event was the LM pairs in New Orleans, where we were the first or 2nd non-qualifier for day 2.

Before that, I was in a partnership leading a 3 day 0-1500 LM pairs in Las Vegas with 2 rounds to go...partner and I each blew a board, we finished 2nd.

Last year in Toronto we barely scraped by to the 2nd day of the open GNTs, Meckwell's team chose us. We actaully had a 35 imp lead at the half, but that was gone after the first 6 boards. One of the hands I played in the first 6 against Berkowitz & Cohler actually got written up in the Bulletin for Berkowitz's deceptive defense that, combined with my sub-optimal play, led to a vul game swing. The next day Berk went out of his way to tell my partner & I that at the half, Meck had said that we (my partner & I) were beating them single-handedly (our teammates did well in the first quarter, then had a horror of a 2nd quarter when Meckwell switched to play against them, but we covered them). That impression did not last, we wound up losing by about 70.

[jh51]

My favorite loss was in a Men's Regional Swiss (many years ago). Small field (24 tables, the concurrent Women's was much bigger). After 3 rounds our team with less than 1000 MPs among us were still undefeateed and in first my a few victory points. We found ourselves playing a team of pros, each of whom had far more master points tham our entire team. 6 of the 7 boards were fairly close - we were losing by a handful of IMPs. On the 7th board, we bid to 6NT (should have gone to 7NT) and made 7. At the other table the pros bid to 7♣, which would have failed when our teammate led from his 7 card diamond suit and dummy had promised 5 and declarer implied at least 1. Alas, our teammate with the diamond void decided that now was a good time to take a sacrifice, and 7♥x would have still won us the match. However, that gave the pro the chance to get things right with 7NT.

The win would have been a huge upset win for our team. The loss was something to be remembered forever.

[Rossoneri]

U-25 pairs in England a few years back. Made a stupid play which meant I went one off in 4♠X, could have made the contract and gotten 15 IMPs more against one of the two pairs which tied for first.

We ended up in 3rd place, less than 15 IMPs behind them.

That hand still haunts me.

[Lord Molyb]

Some crazy, crazy hand where my partner and I had an 11 card spade fit, RHO was dealt 7 clubs to the AKQ, and LHO had 8 hearts topped by AQJ. We competed to the 5 level on the Law, pushing my left hand opponent to 6♥.
Of course, we misdefended and it made, whereas 6♥ went down two at the other table.

[Fluffy]

On the major tournament in my country, I was playing with my father against a guy who has a long hatred history with him*, known for being very agressive, sitting on my left. I think it was the first time I was playin with screens in Spain.

Dad bid to 6♥ on a board and I passed. LHO doubled and it came back to me. RHO tried to get all of his passes and I correctly read that he was happy with 6♥X and didn't want me to move from it. So Ib bid 6NT, doubled again on my left.

I had 11 top tricks with 7 tricks coming from the blacks and loads of comunication, the reds were:

---

I knew LHO had ♦K I didn't even think about an alternative, and I instantly ducked a heart to claimin hearts were 4-1 and squeeze LHO otherwise.

Sadly for me I was discarding before LHO on the run of the blacks and the only squeeze that works is a strip squeeze, by duciking a heart I was basically playing for nothing. My father told me he was amazed that I played the hand in less than 10 seconds but I saw it so clear


A funny story many years later where they try to out-smart each other: http://www.bridgebas...__1#entry328443 I remember I wanted to title that hand: Spot the world master, because the 4 players involved are world masters