A 76 percent game!

I still don't have a regular partner at bridge. When playing online, I register at the partnership desk and take whoever signs up. Mostly, this is a crap shoot. All kinds of people rate themselves as "Advanced" and turn out to be extremely poor bridge players. Over time, I've begun to generalize by nationality. Americans and Canadians typically rate themselves fairly. Turks and South Americans grossly exaggerate their skills. Indians and Chinese underrate themselves -- you would be surprised at how well Indian "novices" play. Europeans typically play Acol, a bidding system I don't know, so I haven't had a chance to make unfair generalizations about them yet.

Today, another Norman bridge club player was logged on to Bridge Base (without his regular partner), so we signed up to play a tournament. What a difference a known partner makes! We ended up with a 76 percent game and second overall (of 210 pairs!). To put this in perspective, I've never crossed a 55% game with any of my random partners, and never been in the top 1/3.

Oh, for a regular partner ...