[inquiry]

Hannie, on Sep 30 2005, 12:38 PM, said:

Arend, notice "bids and plays" in the sentence you quoted. A play that partner interprets correctly is obviously a defensive play.


Let me add a joke:

Bidding games with good fitting hands and 20 HCP's indeed happened eons ago for me. These days I'm more interested in staying out of 20-point games with badly fitting hands.

Sadly enough, the second part isn't really a joke.

Hehehe,

Playing with me at imps, get use to streching the envelope. Last night we bid six games our way, the most points we had was 25, the fewest was 19, and the average was 22.2.

All in all, for these hands, we went down on two of these that were cold. A 3NT and a 4♠ despite teh low count. Going down when we could have made cost a total of 30 imps (losing around 7 each instead of winning 7 each on both of those). The 19 point hand should have been a minor vicotory.. They bid 4♦ which was cold... and 4♠ should probably be down one (-50, or 100 if doubled), or maybe a huge victory if they push to 5♦ which can not make. Sadly, I played that one for easy defense to beat me two.

Of all the hands, only one was a true misfit, and getting to game on 21 hcp and a misfit was certainly not a bidding victory. One must tread softly with misfits... they are just as bad as 4333 hands. :-) Remember, ZAR starts subtracting misfit points from hands so a good looking 12 hcp can become pretty bad fairly quickly.

[pigpenz]

Jlall, on Sep 30 2005, 12:14 PM, said:

I really don't agree here. There are rights and wrongs when it comes to both bidding and play.

your missing the point, Justin
you can make a 98% line of play and if its not your lucky day and it doesnt work then it doesnt work. So right or wrong play is in the eyes of the beholder.

Like the Rabbie says if its stiff King offside then the right play is to drop it

[Free]

pigpenz, on Oct 1 2005, 12:44 AM, said:

Jlall, on Sep 30 2005, 12:14 PM, said:

I really don't agree here. There are rights and wrongs when it comes to both bidding and play.

your missing the point, Justin
you can make a 98% line of play and if its not your lucky day and it doesnt work then it doesnt work. So right or wrong play is in the eyes of the beholder.

Like the Rabbie says if its stiff King offside then the right play is to drop it

There are no rights or wrongs, the only thing you get is 'feedback'

[beatrix45]

Winstonm, on Sep 25 2005, 01:53 PM, said:

I can also attest that this skill (i.e. counting hands) will atrophy quickly without constent reinforcement - at least for me. 

Winston

True for me as well. That is why I like BBO. I can keep "in shape" mentally despite a fairly busy schedule by playing in the short BBO tournaments.

Also, I have taken a number of long breaks (in one case 17 years), and discovered after a long lay off my ability to count hands went away altogether. Getting that mental ability back has been a most enjoyable experience. For me, the first breakthrough in this process came when I could count and visualize distribution and high cards without really having to think about it at a conscious level. That took months to return after my 17 year layoff. The next step was when I no longer kept coming up with the occasional 14 card suit or 12 card hand.

My results when playing infrequently in ACBL tournaments are now better than ever. My biggest problem has been revoking. This seems to happen about once every two or three sessions. Also, these new bidding boxes still feel awkward to me.

[Wiste1]

There are rights / wrongs in both bidding and play....can be difficult to see sometimes but lets take 2 simple examples :

1. Bidding (sayc): Partner open 1♠ and you have AQxx-QJx-Qx-xxxx
Right answer ? of course it is....3♠

2. Playing: xxxx in hand vs AQxxx in dummy, you must play with no looser
Right answer ? finesse is the only right thing to do. And if you can afford
1 looser but not 2 ? the right thing is to play the ace first.

[Free]

Wiste1, on Oct 1 2005, 01:26 PM, said:

There are rights / wrongs in both bidding and play....can be difficult to see sometimes but lets take 2 simple examples :

1. Bidding (sayc): Partner open 1♠ and you have AQxx-QJx-Qx-xxxx
Right answer ? of course it is....3♠

2. Playing: xxxx in hand vs AQxxx in dummy, you must play with no looser
Right answer ? finesse is the only right thing to do. And if you can afford
1 looser but not 2 ? the right thing is to play the ace first.

1. No right answer, since some will consider this a GF hand, not an invite!

2. Sometimes you just can't play for no loser, or 1 loser. With KJx behind AQxxx, your answer is still 'wrong' However, you get feedback that your line of play didn't work in this scenario

[TheoKole]

Being able to count opponents points and distribution has been the greatest improvment in my declarer play, including (CPA as lawrence calls it) "Card Playment by Assumption". It is like night and day.

While pulling off a squeeze, endplay, trump coup and such does bring a particular moment of pleasure. , one of my best moments happened just a couple of weeks ago at my local club. A very good player, teacher and bridge master asked me in all seriousness, if I could SEE his cards, while I was declaring a particular hand.

I believe that up until now this was the best moment that I have experienced in my brief bridge playing career.

Now if I can only learn how to bid correctly.

Theo

[Rebound]

TheoKole, on Oct 2 2005, 05:04 AM, said:

Being able to count opponents points and distribution has been the greatest improvment in my declarer play, including (CPA as lawrence calls it) "Card Playment by Assumption". It is like night and day.

While pulling off a squeeze, endplay, trump coup and such does bring a particular moment of pleasure.  , one of my best moments happened just a couple of weeks ago at my local club.  A very good player, teacher and bridge master asked me in all seriousness, if I could SEE his cards, while I was declaring a particular hand.

I believe that up until now this was the best moment that I have experienced in my brief bridge playing career. 

Now if I can only learn how to bid correctly. 

Theo

I derive great enjoyment from any slight improvement I gain in each of those skills.

However, while I am far from having mastered it, defense, for me, provides the biggest thrill. Sometimes the combination of the visible cards - i.e. my hand and dummy's - and my partner's carding, give me such a complete picture of partner's hand that I can ensure taking the maximum number of tricks available. Often, one must wait and see as the hand unfolds, but when I get the entire picture early, I can't help but play with great confidence. Especially when I know we're going to stomp all over the contract, heh heh ;-)

[Rebound]

Mind you, declaring is a whole lotta fun when when you happen to get it right.

[ducky_rh]

Master, no, but I began to get some hope when, after some remarkable bidding (lol) I arrived in a slam contract off the A and K of trump and another ace! But I remembered someone's book saying "never give up and never give in", so off we went. I cashed some tricks and then began to draw trump by leading low to the Q in dummy. Well, LHO was having none of this finesse business, so she went up with her K, whereupon her partner played his singleton A, and confidently slammed down the other A, in which suit I happened to be void. I ruffed that, drew the remaining trumps, and cruised to my slam as though I knew I'd make it all along, even having the audacity to wink at my partner!

[cheech]

Jlall, on Sep 30 2005, 12:14 PM, said:

pigpenz, on Sep 30 2005, 12:04 PM, said:

you probably realize that you are mastering bridge when yourealize that there are no right or wrong answers

I really don't agree here. There are rights and wrongs when it comes to both bidding and play.

In card play I'd go so far as to say there is ALWAYS a right play or a wong play given a set of circumstances unless something is completely 50/50. Even "guesses" usually take into account math, the lead, etc. When you go down in a contract that could have made, or dont beat a contract you could have you really have to ask yourself if you made the right play and were unlucky or if you made a bad play. To say "there was no right or wrong here, it was just a judgement call on which inference I thought was more likely" is a copout.

In bidding, there is almost always a right or wrong in the context of your system and style. There is no "wrong" system or style (within reason), but the bids you make within that context can be wrong. In bidding there are more judgement calls, and it's harder to determine if you were unlucky or wrong sometimes. Occasionally, like in situations of tactics, there is no right or wrong really, but again if you make a bid that doesn't work out you should always ask yourself what happened. How often is your bid right vs another bid. Sometimes this is impossible to determine, but sometimes you will realize you made a mistake, other times you were definitely just unlucky and made the right call.

I think if you accept the premise that there are no right or wrong answers you do yourself a disservice because that is simply untrue, and it will be much harder to gain through introspection as you will think "well there really was no right or wrong here."

I do not claim to always know what IS right in a given situation, but 99 % of the time a "right" does exist.

I'm not great at the technical plays (I can just about manage a simple squeeze on a good day) and I don't know all the odds, but the hands where I'd disagree with you about there being right or wrong answers is the hands where I DO know which line has theoretically the best chance, but have some psychological factor inclining me towards another line (perhaps I think I detected a slight hesitation, or maybe it's just a hunch), and there doesn't seem to me to be any scientific way of weighting these factors, to see if they are sufficient to change the best line.

I remember 1 hand, a few months ago, when I was in 4 spades, and the contract could make on a simple finesse in spades, OR I could discard enough losers in the hearts broke 5-3 or better, but I couldn't do both, and so played for the hearts to split nicely (which I'm almost sure is better than a 50-50 chance. Now, when I played the second heart, 1 of my opponents discarded the highest heart out (the J, I think) and I was left having to figure out whether she was likley to play the J from J-10 or J-small (I had played with her before) In the end, I decided she as likley to play the J as the 10 from J-10, and just might have played it from J-small, so I played for the hearts to split, they didn't, and I went down when the finesse was on, and had I made the contract, we would have won the match. Now obviously, I wish I'd taken the finesse, but I didn't (and still don't) see any precise way in which factors such as these (which can include fairly delicate judgements of the people you're playing against) can beweighed against technical and mthematical knowledge of the a priori percentages of different lines of play, to discover which line is "right" (as in has the best chance of success) in a particular situation