[PhilKing]

It's about what I thought.

Do I get a prize?

[helene_t]

Any tactical implications of this? I know it's not a straightforward conclusion that we simply shouldn't open 12-17 balanced hands in first seat but .....

[NickRW]

helene_t, on 2015-March-23, 04:16, said:

Any tactical implications of this? I know it's not a straightforward conclusion that we simply shouldn't open 12-17 balanced hands in first seat but .....

I am not sure that it even begins to say that. Yes, it does suggest that balanced hands would be better opened if they were in 2nd seat compared to 1st - but so what - on any given deal with, say 12-14 bal in 1st seat, you have the hand you've got. The rules of the game preclude you suggesting to LHO that you swap seats! You primarily have to decide to open or not. This data (or at least the particular data to which Ben has recently referred), does not suggest that passing is better instead.

Or at least that is what I've understood.

Nick

[rhm]

helene_t, on 2015-March-23, 04:16, said:

Any tactical implications of this? I know it's not a straightforward conclusion that we simply shouldn't open 12-17 balanced hands in first seat but .....

That the modern trend to light openings is a winner for distributional hands, but dubious for balanced hands irrespective whether you play a strong club system or not?
Fantunes is a system, which adheres to this philosophy.
Statements like "we open all hands with 11 HCP" violate it.
Judgement still rules.

Rainer Herrmann

[cherdano]

helene_t, on 2015-March-23, 04:16, said:

Any tactical implications of this? I know it's not a straightforward conclusion that we simply shouldn't open 12-17 balanced hands in first seat but .....

My conclusion is to wonder about the standard deviation for the total score of a single bridge deal.
What did your back-of-the-envelope calculation lead to? Mine says the results for the various ranges of balanced hands don't even come close to being statistically significant. Of course, combined they might come closer, and if it's the result PhilKing expected, we should set a high Bayesian prior...

[PhilKing]

There is one huge anomaly - balanced 20-21 counts.

They appear to perform massively better in first seat than second, yet the 18-19 and 22-23 ranges perform about the same. Anyway I'll chew it over. Maybe it's just a horrible range to define over first seat preempts. I'm prepared to listen to arguments that 424 and 382 hands is not close to enough hands to draw a firm conclusion, but a difference of 82 points a hand seems like a lot to attribute to variance.

[cherdano]

PhilKing, on 2015-March-23, 05:36, said:

There is one huge anomaly - balanced 20-21 counts.

They appear to perform massively better in first seat than second, yet the 18-19 and 22-23 ranges perform about the same. Anyway I'll chew it over. Maybe it's just a horrible range to define over first seat preempts.

Well, the other difference is, of course, that most of us have an efficient way to show a 20-21 balanced hand in first seat, and not a great way to show 18-19 balanced (especially in competition).

[benlessard]

1- a random balanced hand is negative in 1st and 2nd seat is expected, having a balanced hand is weaker both in offense and in defense (suits break evenly)

2- Having only 1 pts higher is more significant than i previously tought. From -28 (random) to +3 (10-11) to +100 (12-14) for 31 pts and a 97 pts are big gaps in expected score only for half a pts and a few pts on hands that are a close to average. The 97 gap is a little bit surprising I guess the the odds of making game your side combined with the lower odds of a game against you make a significant difference with every pts.

short on time right now ill add other stuff later.