LotG and I had a practice session tonight on BBO.
We played twenty boards against some friends using the newish 'Vugraph' table option, which is available if the table host is using the web client. Instead of playing random hands that are compared with fifteen random tables, you play hands from an event that was covered on Vugraph and compared solely with those tables.
So I selected a match from the European Team Championships held in Dublin last June between Monaco and Sweden. We missed a good game and slam, but pulled it back with some sound competitive bidding and some luck to finish +0.5 imps.
Then, following the example set by Ulf, I fed the results into the double dummy solver. This showed:
When I opened, we gained 1.44 imps/board.
When LotG opened, we lost 3.00 imps/board.
Clearly our partnership results will improve significantly if LotG is not permitted to open. However she pointed out:
When I declared, we lost -2.42 imps/board.
When LotG declared, we gained 1.57 imps/board.
So the conclusion is that I should open the bidding and LotG should play the contract. The numbers cannot lie.
