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The Long Match

#21 User is offline   Cthulhu D 

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Posted 2012-April-23, 20:58

View PostJLOGIC, on 2012-April-22, 12:17, said:

A large reason you see this first half/second half thing in the vandy/spingold is that weak clients always play the first half. This can create an imbalance, even if the teams are equally matched, especially if the clients play at the same table against each other which they will often prefer to do. Whichever side the cards run, your team can be at a huge advantage/disadvantage.


Assuming clients are in it to win it (This may be a mistaken), aren't those with even an ounce of bridge sense going to realise that sitting the same way as the other teams client the best plan - assuming that their team is better?

If there team is weaker I agree it makes sense to sit at the same table and stake everything on them having the cards.
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#22 User is offline   gnasher 

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Posted 2012-April-24, 06:14

View PostCthulhu D, on 2012-April-23, 20:58, said:

Assuming clients are in it to win it (This may be a mistaken), aren't those with even an ounce of bridge sense going to realise that sitting the same way as the other teams client the best plan - assuming that their team is better?

And if they're not in it to win it, presumably they're there to enjoy themselves. If the client wants to play against people of his own ability, he can do so in his local club, so again it seems strange for a client to choose to play against another client.
... that would still not be conclusive proof, before someone wants to explain that to me as well as if I was a 5 year-old. - gwnn
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#23 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2012-April-24, 09:25

There are two ways you can be defeated in a team game: your counterparts at the other table can bid and play better than you, or your opponents at this table can make things harder for you. For example, playing against Meckwell is difficult because their aggressive bidding style makes it hard for you to find your best contracts.

So it can be an effective strategy to sit a pair with Meckwell who are better able to deal with their style.

#24 User is offline   JLOGIC 

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Posted 2012-April-24, 13:20

View PostCthulhu D, on 2012-April-23, 20:58, said:

Assuming clients are in it to win it (This may be a mistaken), aren't those with even an ounce of bridge sense going to realise that sitting the same way as the other teams client the best plan - assuming that their team is better?

If there team is weaker I agree it makes sense to sit at the same table and stake everything on them having the cards.


If they have the better team, then that means the other team has the worse team and should sit client vs client, right? In that case, in one of the 2 sets in the first half, the clients will play each other, which almost always happens. This can lead to the landslide type results Phil was talking about. The top seed doesn't get to pick who sits where every segment.
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#25 User is offline   JLOGIC 

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Posted 2012-April-24, 13:31

And, of course, everyone does not behave rationally, and there are many other factors that could lead the top seed to play their client vs the client. The most important thing is for your client to feel comfortable. If they will not feel comfortable playing against a pro pair, then they will often crater and make far more mistakes than they would have otherwise. If your client rates to play 20 imps worse against a good pair for psychological reasons, it is right to not put them in this situation. You could argue that maybe the other client would also be 20 imps worse against your pro pair, so its a wash, so you should reduce variance by having clients in the same seat, but you are not privy to the other teams client thoughts, you have no idea if they feel that way also. And if your client is saying "I don't want to play against pro pair x, I will do awful!" then that is usually a self fulfilling prophecy.

Another factor is if you are playing a team with a very very aggressive pro pair, you will always shield your client from them, even if you are the stronger team. Your most likely way to lose is to have Joe and Curtis or whoever play your sponsor and crush them by stealing, psyching, making no play aggressive games, preempting, whatever. That is a far more likely way of losing than anything else if you are the better team.

The best way to win matches is to drop the fewest imps. So if you know that your client will be uncomfortable and play badly against a pro pair rather than a client pair, you should not put them in that position anyways on the hope that the other teams client is feeling the same way in order to reduce variance, you should put them in a comfortable position where they're more likely to succeed in dropping as few imps as possible. With human beings involved its not as simple as "any client with an ounce of bridge sense should go sit against Joe/Curtis if they want to win," think about silly that statement is
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#26 User is offline   xcurt 

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Posted 2012-April-28, 21:12

View PostJLOGIC, on 2012-April-22, 12:22, said:

Also, doubling partscores when up a ton is clearly dumb unless you think your side might have a game, but doing things like making normal aggressive overcalls, or bidding slams when you think they rate to be good, or whatever, should all still happen as it is likely that the opponents are doing the same things. You can lose a lot of imps by not overcalling as well. Recently ish's team was down 70 and picked up 69 in the final 16 boards of their trials. One of the opposing pairs was clearly trying to be risk averse to the point of not making normal overcalls in order to not go for numbers, and they kept losing game swings for doing so. Taking bridge actions that you view as correct is almost always correct, except in areas that have a very small upside most of the time, and a huge downside some of the time, such as doubling a partscore, you would want to be a little more cautious. Of course, I would still say that it was just a bad bridge decision overall to be making a limit raise adn then ripping a partscore with AQT of clubs as part of your values, and that is why your team suffered.


I thought that was too loose too (IMO so was the -1100 hand). If that's your style you might say "stick with your style," which is true. On the other hand, the winning case for bidding without values -- blasting the opponents out of games -- isn't as likely to come off when the opponents are stuck so much they can no longer win the match by being right when being right means win 5 or so -- they opponents will just bid game because they need to be right at the game level to pick up enough IMPs to win the match.
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#27 User is offline   Mbodell 

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Posted 2012-April-30, 03:23

View PostPhil, on 2012-April-16, 11:36, said:


(Q1: How you would you run it?)



Play more sessions and longer matches! Fix the CoC.

All matches in our district (21 - we are more geographically compact than many districts, but the event was in the center of the district and there were teams for whom that was a 3 hour drive to reach) for Open and A are 64 boards and are played over 2 different weekends (so 8 sessions, with each match 2 32-board sessions). The GNT B is 28 board matches, and played over as many sessions as needed to be a fair event (currently 5 sessions, so one weekend to play down to the finals and then the finals at a TBA time convenient to both teams). The GNT C is stuck with only a weekend, and is 28 board matches, but is currently less than 16 teams. The GNT are also set up so they mostly don't overlap (only GNT Open and C overlapped at all this year), so people can play in multiple levels if they wish. We had 15 teams in Open, 17 teams in A, 19 teams in B, and 11 teams in C. In the past some sessions of some events (particularly finals or semi-finals) are played at local sectionals, but this year they were all played at a centrally located bridge club.

In the B we started on Saturday with 2 heads up matches and 5 3-way with 2 survives (the seeding process in the B-flight is decent, but still highly debatable, so the top 2 seeds getting a 28 board headsup match to start is a dubious advantage IMO, especially when the 19 seed this year was probably one of the top 6 teams in ability). Then we had 12 teams so did 4 3-way with 2 survive. That left 8 teams for Sunday, all remaining matches heads up and end Sunday with 2 teams left.

In yours I would have done the obvious 2 heads up matches and 2 3-ways with 2 survive. Then with 6 teams left 2 3-ways with 2 survive. And then then final 4 teams play heads up matches for the semis and then finals. That leads to 4 matches, and I'd expect them to be equal length (so 64 boards). If the restrictions are so broken that you can only have 2 days and the finals need to be 64-boards so you need to eliminate 8 teams on Saturday and can only do it with 3-way and heads up matches, then I guess what you describe is best. If you can't get a full second weekend, and stick to 32 board intro matches what about playing a first round Friday night [to cut from 10 to 6]? If there weren't the 3-way and heads-up restriction and I was limited to just normal Saturday and Sunday and needed Sunday to be the 64-board final I'd do a RR on Saturday where each session each team plays the other team 4 times (so 2 36 board sessions). I'd do it that way so that each match (8-boards) is split between the sessions so it is harder to tell if you are in it or not. I'd also use seeding in the first session, and current standings after the first session in the second session, to try and have the top seeds/winning teams play each other at the end of each session, and have the top seeds/winning teams play the bottom seeds/losing teams early in the session. And hope that by doing that I'd have minimized the dumping chances.
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#28 User is offline   Cthulhu D 

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Posted 2012-April-30, 03:42

View PostJLOGIC, on 2012-April-24, 13:20, said:

If they have the better team, then that means the other team has the worse team and should sit client vs client, right? In that case, in one of the 2 sets in the first half, the clients will play each other, which almost always happens. This can lead to the landslide type results Phil was talking about. The top seed doesn't get to pick who sits where every segment.


Yeah good point, the obvious game theory implication has no occurred to me! :oops:
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