The Worst Round Ever

Last night, at the wonderful, well run by bridge dynamo Nell Morgan, well loved New Braunfels sectional, we were given an entry for north/south. Partner/husband wanted to switch to our usual east/west but I said no. I think the directors seat you where they need you and I hate to ask to switch without a compelling reason. East/west took 25 out of 27 bids and had 6 slams their way. We took two hands only; the first, a weaky freaky 4 hearts which brave partner/husband bid and made where I had about 3 points but 5 of his hearts. The last board of a verrry long night, I had 17 HCPs and opened one no trump - only the second opening hand I had in the round. Partner passed - I was down one.

One of our fellow beginners looked as shell shocked as we did. When we met at the one round to go scoring list, she said, "If it were like this all the time, I would never play again". I agree. Remember those old gray metal meat grinders with a vise grip thing to hold them on the edge of the heavy wooden kitchen table? Mom used to throw all kinds of leftover meat into it, turn the handle and grind out little shreds to make hash. After last night's session, we felt like the meat. Husband/partner used the wringer washer analogy. I think we need to work on new analogies. We are incomprehensible to our children who have no idea that the results of a meat grinder or wringer washer look like us after a round of rotten bridge.

The last time this happened to us was April 1st of 2008. We had 24 out of 26 negative scores as did most pairs who sat our way. We thought it was an April fools joke. It wasn't. Of course, like last night, our negative scores were lower than most others, defense being the biggest need for improvement in our game.

We tried not to whine but we did ask Director Scott how they came up with those hands. He told us that the ACBL provides them and that they are randomly generated. If he means computer randomly generated, someone needs to seriously look at that programming. I suppose, in truly random fashion, anything can happen at any time and the mathematicians among us could explain such happenings but it would be beyond my understanding anyway.

I prefer the conspiracy theory. We almost always sit east/west. The evil bridge fates knew what was coming and, purposely, sat us north/south. I wonder if they are trying to tell us something?