[mike777]

Do you tend to win your KO or Swiss events from your bidding, play or defense?

Regardless, are you winning more imps in the bidding, play or defense more on 1)slams or 2) games or 3) partscore deals when you look back at the entire event?

[TimG]

I think you are looking at things the wrong way. I would guess that I lose more IMPs on defense than on bidding or play. And, that in general your objective should be to minimize your losses rather than look for ways to gain. The opponents' losses will be your gains.

[Stephen Tu]

I think it depends a lot on the level of the competition. Against tough opposition my feeling is that bidding judgment swings dominate everything, it's like 75-80% maybe, good players don't slip a ton of tricks except for opening lead guesses/randomly played from the other side, and these tend to even out over the course of an event. Only rarely they slip from concentration lapses particularly toward the end of long events, of course the best players are better at avoiding this.

Against lesser opps there tend to be many more defense swings, they let through your contracts that have no business making, and because they are also used to soft defense there is a tendency toward overbidding that you as a hopefully decent defender have to punish by being accurate.

[mike777]

Stephen Tu, on Sep 23 2008, 06:37 PM, said:

I think it depends a lot on the level of the competition.  Against tough opposition my feeling is that bidding judgment swings dominate everything, it's like 75-80% maybe, good players don't slip a ton of tricks except for opening lead guesses/randomly played from the other side, and these tend to even out over the course of an event.  Only rarely they slip from concentration lapses particularly toward the end of long events, of course the best players are better at avoiding this.

Against lesser opps there tend to be many more defense swings, they let through your contracts that have no business making, and because they are also used to soft defense there is a tendency toward overbidding that you as a hopefully decent defender have to punish by being accurate.

If need be assume Hamman/Bramley type local comp. Local Reg.

I am really asking which types of hands are you winning the most imps on:
1) partscores deals.
2) game deals
3) slams deals

[Stephen Tu]

I think that's a pretty random mix, depending on how the cards are dealt that day. The swings tend to occur on competitive bidding, not constructive bidding mostly, but how high depends on how wild the deals are. There aren't that many slam deals so most days won't be dominated by slam decisions, although certainly those are important to try & get right when they do come up since often 20+ imps hang in the balance.

What's the point of the question anyway? Trying to design a bidding system or something?

[Stephen Tu]

There's a thread on rec.games.bridge discussing this sort of thing, some guy went through WC books to get an idea of where the swings occurred:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.b...bef111252a121f/

[awm]

By far the majority of imp swings are random. For example, one table bids a 40% game and the other doesn't. In expectation, this is pretty close to break even, but there are bound to be a bunch of imps on the hand one way or the other.

This is not to say that bridge is "just luck" -- if you consistently make better decisions then the probabilities are definitely weighted in your favor. The point is that just measuring "how many imps changed hands on various boards" is not really the right way to answer the question.

One thing I have noticed is that when one team is substantially better than the other (and I have been on both sides of this equation by the way) the better team seems to consistently rack up a large number of positive swings on partscore deals. This is a combination of better bidding judgment and better play/defense on hands that are usually more difficult to play/defend than game or slam contracts (where there are generally fewer big decisions).

The biggest swings of course come on hands where one table bids game (or slam) and the other doesn't, but I think a pretty high percentage of these swings are of the "random" variety (unless the worse team is actually quite bad) whereas the partscore swings are often more telling as to skill level.

[JoAnneM]

Bridge is a game of mistakes. At a certain level, during any given event it will be who makes fewer mistakes that will win.

[han]

awm, on Sep 23 2008, 07:24 PM, said:

By far the majority of imp swings are random.

I disagree, most swings are because people play badly.

[paulg]

Having analysed the performance of my team in the recent European Championship, 70% of the swings more than 5 IMPs were attributable to bidding mistakes or (fairly clear) misjudgements in a competitive auction.

I know that the Open NPC came up with a similar result for his team. The other NPCs I've spoken to since also say that this is consistent with their findings.

Paul

[Gerben42]

When you are much stronger than the other team, you can completely destroy them on the part score deals. I remember a 32-board teammatch that didn't have much in slam bidding and even very few game hands. It was mostly about part scores.

The other team was, however, much weaker and both pairs managed like 13 plus scores in each half. The final result was a huge collection of 5s and 6s which then added up to a horrible lot.

[rogerclee]

You win by bidding 3N and then making it.

[sathyab]

In my experience in playing against really good teams, by good I mean disproportionately better teams, most of the swings at IMPs happen in bidding. Last year we had the pleasure of playing Jimmy Cayne's team on the second day of Spingold in Nashville. Our loss wasn't totally unexpected, but I thought the margin could have closer than 80 IMPs. There were only about three or four hands where play or defense were interesting, everything else was about bidding. The Italian style intermediate-2 bids posed considerable trouble at both tables, not to mention their hyper-aggressive competitive bidding.

[fred]

I have not done a scientific investigation or anything like that, but I have a clear impression that almost all the long (64+ boards) matches between 2 strong teams that I have ever been involved in have had this property:

If the team that lost did not make any dumb mistakes then they would have won.

This includes a significant number of matches in the late rounds of events like the Spingold, USA Team Trials, and Bermuda Bowl.

Mike - I strongly suggest you focus on why you lost IMPs as opposed to why the other team won IMPs. When you think about this, try to remove your own ego from the equation. If you lost a match and think "the worst thing I did all day was let them make an overtrick in 2D", then you are not being honest with yourself. I hear this sort of claim from non-great players all the time. For some reason the contract against which they tossed that overtrick is invariably 2D!

Your approach should be to try to find a way to blame yourself for your bad results. In this way you will learn that, no matter how good you are, you make a lot more dumb mistakes than you might have realized. Then there is a good chance that you will learn from your mistakes. If you don't try to see or admit your own mistakes then it is hard to improve.

Of course it is more natural for most people to try to place blame for losing IMPs on their partners, teammates, or bad luck when their own decisions work out poorly. But if you can look to yourself first and bend over backwards to come up with an answer to the question "could I have realistically figured that out?" I think you will find that the answer is "yes" a lot more often than you would have thought (even if you already consider yourself to be an "expert").

IMO if you can adopt this kind of attitude it will be good for your future results.

Besides that, this attitude might serve to improve your partners' and teammates' results as well. Players with giant egos and/or unrealistic opinions on the quality of their own game can have a poisonous effect on a team. Those who find the need to make public statements about the overtrick they let slip by in 2D tend to be especially destructive in terms of their partners' and teammates' future performance.

Meanwhile, everyone likes playing on a team with a player who is willing and able to say "sorry I might have made 3NT" as opposed to "how did you let them make 3NT???".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[y66]

Chapter 6 in Bob Hamman's book At The Table has a fascinating discussion of Joe Musumeci's "performance analysis system" that the Dallas Aces used to transform themselves from "wimps to tigers".

Quote

The single most important element of Moose's plan was the system he devised for performance review -- as he put it, "accurate measurement of performance". In other words, how could the Aces identify weaknesses, take steps to eliminate the weaknesses and provide incentive for maximum effort?

... The gloves-off sessions, managed by Musumeci, were the key. 

... It was Goldman's drive for perfection that helped make the Aces' team meetings work so well. Bobby was a truth-seeker and a relentless analyst.

... "I've got a few things I'd like to bring up", Bobby said to a chorus of groans. He got to say his piece, though.

... The peer pressure generated during the meetings was remarkably effective. You couldn't get away with some bullshit excuse for doing something lazy or stupid.

... By the summer of 1969, the team was beginning to gel. The losing practices were slowly but surely being abandoned. The partnerships were really humming. We were defeating teams composed of top players by 100 or more IMPS.

[vuroth]

fred, on Sep 24 2008, 08:14 AM, said:

Of course it is more natural for most people to try to place blame for losing IMPs on their partners, teammates, or bad luck when their own decisions work out poorly.

I'm awfully tempted to say that this varies depending on how much the player is really trying to improve. As you say, if you're honestly trying to improve, attributing all your losses to other people makes it nigh impossible to learn.

Depending on where you are in the spectrum, I would also recommend that you keep track of how you do in the hand RIGHT AFTER a disaster. Depressingly, I'm still finding that I play better after a "good hand" (regardless of the actual result) than after a "bad hand".

V

[pclayton]

fred, on Sep 24 2008, 05:14 AM, said:

Your approach should be to try to find a way to blame yourself for your bad results. In this way you will learn that, no matter how good you are, you make a lot more dumb mistakes than you might have realized. Then there is a good chance that you will learn from your mistakes. If you don't try to see or admit your own mistakes then it is hard to improve.

Can we coin this "anti-resulting"?. This is a very commendable attitude to have, and I love it when my partners and teammates take this approach. It makes comparisons more enjoyable.

That being said, after the match (or tournament) is over, I think you need peer feedback on difficult decisions. If you want to improve your game, I don't think you can automatically assume that a bid or play is wrong because it didn't work out. You need to remain objective.

Similarly, you might have a good result on a board. This doesn't mean that you were brilliant. You might have been lucky and you need to be objective about these matters as well.

[FrancesHinden]

I disagree with both Fred and cardsharp slightly. I don't think you should look over your results and say "why did we lose imps here", or look at all the >5 imp losses and understand them. If you are serious you should do a post-mortem over every board. Boards you lose imps on may be blameless (opponents bid a slam needing 3 finesses all of which were right); but flat boards or even boards we gain on may not be (we made 7NTx off an ace).

As others have said, peer feedback is helpful. Getting a range of opinions from team-mates/friends (or via a BBO poll) can help to see if something was bad judgement or just unlucky.

Some poor results are directly down to system (e.g. going for a penalty in your mini NT). That type of result you don't do anything with immediately, but it's worth keeping some sort of track of the successes/failures of discrete parts of your system (those bits you could change without fundamentally changing your approach).

[NickRW]

fred, on Sep 24 2008, 01:14 PM, said:

Meanwhile, everyone likes playing on a team with a player who is willing and able to say "sorry I might have made 3NT" as opposed to "how did you let them make 3NT???".

Yes, and it is probably also fair to say that good players try to "big" their partners up a little - not in a false way - but a word of genuine praise can be worth saying.

As an illustrative point, this deal came up in the Cayne match yesterday:

Scoring: IMP

Pass-Pass- 1C - 3D
Dbl - 4D -Pass-Pass
Dbl -Pass- 4H -all P

---

The contract came home and North's comment at the end of the hand, "Good bid partner". North was none less than Alfredo Versace.

This isn't simply a matter of "good bridge etiquette" that is sort of desirable because it keeps old ladies happy - it is good human/sports psychology.

Nick

[kenrexford]

The nuance of "win" or "lose" is kind of weird. You clearly "lose" IMP's for a mistake, and you probably "win" IMP's when a special treatment comes up, but many situations are kind of like not failing to do the extraordinary. I'm not sure if that is a "win" or a "loss."

In any event, I would say that the single most frustrating part of teams is in handling games. A ton of IMP's seem to be lost primarily on misdefense of close games, allowing them to slip through, or gains when the opponents do the same. Secondary on the "loss from games" list would be missing games, but that seems to reduce substantially with better teams. The solution for the latter is the wild overbid, which increases the frequency of the former.

I would say that the area where I and partner most consistently bring back "save the match" big pick-ups is in slam bidding, where failing to reach (or stay out) of the right (wrong) slam is not really an error/loss and not really a brilliance/win. It's just having better agreements, IMO.

In looking at this trend, my personal feeling has been to approach team play with three basic ideals (not novel ones, but the "fundamentals" perhaps):

1. Bid games aggressively (insanely?)
2. Improve slam bidding techniques
3. Hone partnership defense

The "second tier" team aspect is in the snatch-and-grab IMPs from partscore bidding. I'm looking for the game swings on air. These come, IMO, in two areas.

The first is in the barrage. Partner can be incompetent, so long as he gives you rope, for this part to "work." Good partners help the cause along. But, anyone can gain by barrage.

The second is in grabbing the penalties. This maximizes the benefit of the barrage and is therefore related. The risk is that this approach makes more contracts "game swings" with the attendant risk of the major problem (poor defense of game contracts) being of even more elevated importance. The solution is not just honing partnership defense (which is of course critical). The second solution is in developing solid partnership understandings as to when and how to effectively pounce as a partnership.

As to the "second tier," the barrage sub-part is largely stylistic and not really that much of a source of "error." The second part is often treated as "picking up" IMP's rather than as "errors," because the CW would never fault missing a 2♥X, because "Don't double them into game" is beat into everyone. Plus, that part is REALLY tough to master as a partnership.