I feel like I beat the game of Bridge

http://i.imgur.com/dhrl0je.png

Behold, ~40.5 IMPs (the pic is slightly out of date) in 17 boards, against the advanced robots. And on many other tables, people were playing as South, but only against the beginner robots. Now, I figure some people might be able to do better, but I thought this was a huge accomplishment. I would like to share my ideas of how I play this game in order to get such a score. I figure this could help new players or some good players may be able to even suggest some improvements for how to play even better than this.

Also note that this is without any weird psyche bids. No opening 1NT without a real 1NT hand or that kind of thing. Some hands you can mislead them into playing badly by doing this, but I did this without those kind of bids. I don't believe that kind of thing makes a player good at the game, it just makes them good at beating the robots.

Board 1: http://tinyurl.com/q4mlmx6
My First bid: obvious 1♦ hand
My Second bid: hand is definitely good enough to go for 3♦ IMO
My third bid: Well, I was worried it would only have 4♠, so I thought diamonds was really the safe way to go here. I was really surprised that it would hide that good of a major.

Playing board 1: This one's almost as easy as it gets. I have 6 top tricks in diamonds and 5 in spades, and with these hands and this bid, I should be plenty happy just drawing these 11 winners and losing the other two.

Board 2: http://tinyurl.com/nrole6z
Hand isn't good enough to bid anything.

Playing board 2: Really it does not matter here. My team has 1 win in hearts and can't win anything else. I'm feel like east should have upgraded its hand to jumping to 4♠ since it has so few losers and an extra trump card.

Board 3: http://tinyurl.com/h9t6fru
Hand isn't good enough to bid IMO. Maybe could have gone for 1♠ opposite the double, but I'm really not for it with a likely offsides Q♣ and long clubs, leaving me with a measly 3 useful HCP and just barely a fit, if even a fit at all.

Playing board 3: I lead a spade. I don't really like my other options, and I kinda feel like spades really was our team's suit to bid. Really not much else to note here as there's no way to get more than the 3 top tricks my team took at the start, unless declarer messes up.

Board 4: http://tinyurl.com/hlm47zc
You might think I'm an idiot for using stayman here, but I can explain. I felt the chances of my partner having a major suit were pretty good, and would have rather just passed 2 of whatever major it had than be left on 1NT here. On the other side, if we do get stuck in NT, it's not that big of a loss as it's not overbidding this hand by a particularly large amount. In any case, I thought it had the overall best odds of getting the best expected score.

Board 5: http://tinyurl.com/goehvhe
I actually wasn't thinking and thought I had more points than I did and bid 1♠ when I didn't really have enough points to do so. But it's not that bad of a bid since it still shows my distribution somewhat, potentially saves my partner from a bad doubled 1♥ bid, and is unlikely to stand as the final bid. After that, since I overbid it already, I'd rather just not bid again unless I have to since my partner is going to get stuck in some suit I don't want us to get stuck on.

Playing board 5: Well, my hand is kind of a joke that's dreadfully unlikely to run any of its suits. But my partner has both hearts and diamonds, so I figured I can lead a diamond to try to help make my partner's hand more useful. That's really the main part of my strategy on this hand was setting up as many winners for my team in diamonds as possible. But this bid actually could have been stopped, if only I'd led a club instead of a spade the last time I had control, but I didn't know that. I thought leading the club was setting up another winner for declarer, and I had no idea who had the better diamond.

Board 6: http://tinyurl.com/nu853u2
NV vs Vul I like to Michael's aggressively, since it likely makes it harder for the other team to come up with the right bid, and it's hard to get into too many points worth of trouble.

Playing board 6: Well, seeing that we have so many hearts, I think a heart lead is good, since it is very unlikely to get endplayed or otherwise set up any winners for the other team. If I'm really lucky, it might even set up a winner in hearts if both opponents have 2, but I deem that so unlikely it should pretty much be ignored. And really, this hand is defenseless the rest of the way, it's just that the bid can't be made with that offside trump K and that club A.

Board 7: http://tinyurl.com/nw6frdh
Should be an obvious enough 3♥ bid.

Playing board 7: This seems like it's going to be a difficult contract to stop. If I let them drop even 1 loser that I didn't have to, they'll probably be able to make it. So, notice on trick 2 that I led a low heart. This is because if I led a high heart, I was afraid of getting ruffed and setting up the q to drop a loser, which I thought was too likely to allow them to make the contract. You could argue that I used up one of North's trump cards, but with a 3-3-3-4 dummy, I figured it wasn't going to ruff anything, so what mattered was how many losers there were in declarer's hand, so that it was of greater importance to still have A♥ than for North to have another trump card. Then, they are unable to find a way to avoid the 1 loss in each of clubs and diamonds, leaving them 1 trick short.

Board 8: http://tinyurl.com/gsufrb6
Nothing to bid, especially if they already bid spades.

Playing board 8: Well, I have some good stuff in every suit. But I figure that leading from a sequence is less likely to cause any problems than leading from something else, since any of the something elses it might do me some good to get to play last. With a J10, it really doesn't get me very far. So I lead the ♥J. Seeing that no one beat it, I put North at having ♥AK, meaning it's another good play to play another heart. Then I figure it's best to cash the diamond before they get any chances of dropping it. Then, I figure that if they have any more out of trump losers, they have to be in clubs, so I play a club to see if I could draw out any of those. In any case, from there it's all about just taking with as many of the spades as possible, but to not waste them when North is already winning.

Board 9: http://tinyurl.com/o5xxz7f
I'm in the 3rd seat with some good length and some good 10s so I open even though it's an 11-count. Then I just don't bid again since I already felt it was a somewhat aggressive bid.

Playing board 9: Really nothing I did here mattered.

Board 10: http://tinyurl.com/zx9wt94
Probably shouldn't have gone for 4♠ here, even though I did have 2 doubletons and there seemed to be a decent chance of making it. But since it is IMPs and I'm vul it seems like it's very often worth it to go for it anyways.

Playing board 10: Well, it can't be done, but I'd still try to finesse the spades and then minimize losses after that failed.

Board 11: http://tinyurl.com/nkg5fnv
Simple enough of a bid.

Playing board 11: Well there wasn't really a good way to do this. You could say to finesse the heart, but East can ruff hearts. By the team East can't ruff, I likely don't have an entry left to use the rest of the hearts in North's hand, anyways. So I came up with nothing was really better than just playing some clubs. I figured this would force them to either do something that doesn't bother me too badly, or let me eventually ruff one of the clubs. Didn't manage to get any extra tricks by doing that in this case, but I don't really see any better options.

Board 12: http://tinyurl.com/jy34v74
Any balanced 15-17 HCP is best to open 1NT with the robots, IMO.

Playing board 12: This one's really obvious. Just draw all the winners you have once you get control. There's really not a good chance of more in any way, but if you lose control you might get less. So just take the winners.

Board 13: http://tinyurl.com/zdatsel
Nothing to bid.

Playing board 13: Well, I've been told that this kind of lead is horrible, but from my experience, it still seems to get the best score on average. They seem to have every suit but hearts, so I like to try to draw the winners in hearts while I still can. But I feel that I messed this one up. At one point I could have dropped a diamond or a heart. I was thinking that I shouldn't drop the diamond since it was the only thing stopped them from just running the diamonds, but actually, I needed to drop it so that I could ruff on diamonds. This contract actually could have been stopped.

Board 14: http://tinyurl.com/zm2c7v9
Pretty easy pass here.

Playing board 14: Really not much to note here. I kept trying to lead clubs since RHO had no good clubs, figuring that might be able to help, but the rest is pretty much just obvious stuff.

Board 15: http://tinyurl.com/zghpv9h
I avoided bidding NT since I had no spade stopper. I decided our hands were good enough that we should try for a game, but if I didn't want to go for 3NT, then 4♥ was the most likely option to make.

Board 16: http://tinyurl.com/hfamdtr
Here's how to show a 2-suited hand's distribution as well as you can. Also I wouldn't run from 3NT in this kind of situation. That's really about it.

Board 17: http://tinyurl.com/hs4ajda
Very aggressive looking 4♥ bid here, but actually, it has very good odds. Since East doubled, it has HCP and spades, so my ♠KJxx is upgraded. Also consider that it is IMPs so bidding games even without all that great of a chance of making them is still be a good idea.

And there you have it. Btw, if anyone has any suggestions for how to improve my game, that'd be great. I feel like my biggest weakness in these was my inability to stop a 3NT and a 4♠ that could have been stopped. Although on the spades one, I definitely should have realized it didn't even have enough entries to use any more diamonds if I dropped my low one from Kx and then could ruff more.

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