We had a 66%. That's some warm up.
Of course, as usual with such a score, it was largely a matter of accepting an abundance of gifts with the appropriate degree of gratitude. But, if just for once I can be a little bit self-congratulatory, I do have to say that we did a very good job of avoiding zeros.
Here's one of our "not so good" boards:
I held:
♠ J7643 ♥J6 ♦AJ76 ♣A8
Jeremy opened with our Polish style 1♣ (12-18 with real clubs, most balanced hands with 15+HCP, all unbalanced 19+HCP hands).
My response of 1♠ was pretty automatic, and Jeremy then rebid 3♠. Now I felt a bit stuck, since that could be either a good 17 to 19 balanced with four spades, or a hand with similar values (possibly including distributional ones) with both spades and clubs. In the latter case it looks a bit early to be giving up on slam. Perhaps with such poor majors I should sign off, but I decided to try with a 4♣ cuebid. I got 4♥ back, and now had another problem. If I sign off in 4♠ at this point it looks like I'm worried about diamonds. So I tried a general purpose 4N, followed by a sign off over 5♦. However, Jeremy holding:
♠ KQT8 ♥AK ♦KQ98 ♣965
reasonably enough interpreted my sequence as concern about trump strength and bid the slam. With the mirror distribution in the red suits, there really was no play.
