Bridge - Luck or Skill?

We are all a bit frustrated about bad luck in Bridge at times. The facts of life, however, suggest that luck is involved. Our job is to select the path that is more lucky more often. If that fails, we might be able to correct the bad luck by good play. All that is not guaranteed to work. Shed no tears and move ahead.

I have a few hands from today's "Play against the Celebrity" on IntoBridge. I like that format a lot. I beat them often, but I have also lost all five boards one time. Playing on a computer against robots let all sorts of terrible mistakes slip through. On average, I play even.

In the hand above, I decided to pass the redouble. It was marked as a penalty redouble. So why not wait for E/W to throw themselves into the knife? Surprisingly, I was allowed to play 2♣XX. I made it barely. But so does 4♠ which was played on all other tables, and which count less. The redouble seems to be an Acol thing on IntoBridge. I would never consider passing in Teams. It is too dangerous.

This one I lost because of greedy and foolish play. I could have ended 3NT-1 easily like the celebrity, but decided to try to make it in the last but one trick. Instead of cashing my trick for one down, I hoped for the best, which did not arrive. The hand can even be made after a spade lead if the diamonds are guessed correctly. West cannot prevent access to the fifth diamond trick.

I am bringing this hand up because it shows how difficult 3NT can be, in spite of 25 high card points, or 26 distributional points. The contract even is down after a heart lead. I do not blame anybody who passes a weak 1NT with 11 points. An extreme example of 3NT would be if your side has AK in all suits. You have 28 high card points, but only 8 top tricks. You will get another one in suit very likely. But take away one K and the contract is already in severe danger.

Here is another interesting case of luck or skill. My 6NT are a bet. It could easily be that North opened 2♣  due to 10 tricks in hearts. So it would be more wise to bid slowly, along the following line.

But I had no trust in my ability to force North to slam in the Acol implementation on IntoBridge. So, I took the chance to bid 6NT directly, hoping for the promised points.

The point of this hand is that 6NT can be made and 6♥ cannot. In 6NT, you can cross to South via the ♥J after cashing the ♣A and get 12 tricks. In hearts, this does not work, because the clubs are ruffed by East.

That of course is pure luck. In teams, I would consider it foolish to play in NT instead of hearts. But such is Bridge.

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