[luis]

When you are defending and you are not sure about what's going on try to find a natural looking play, don't do strange things unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing.

With a 4333 hand try strongly to play in NT. 5332 hands opposite 4333 or 4432 hands opposite a 4333 play better in NT even with an 8 card fit.

Upgrade 14 counts with a 5 card suit to a 1NT opening, opening 1NT prevents competition and is usually a good start to your constructive auction.

Preempt more, preempt light, preempt. Preempts work even against world class players, it's a myth that they will get you or they will end in the right contract anyway.

If you "feel" your side may have a slam but you don't see a way to find what you need it is best to just bid the slam than to miss it. Short tip: Play more slams

Reaching good 3NT games is only cool in challenge the champs, at the table the bad 3NT games are the ones that pay if you make them, don't look for perfect hands to bid 3NT, the defense is not as easy as you think it is when you are declarer and many times you will get away with an impossible game. Going down in 3NT is normal not bad bidding.

The gods of bridge smile when you make a deceptive or imaginative lead but they don't like it when they gave you a very natural lead like KQJ or AKx, short tip: Don't do strange things when you don't need to.

When the distribution seems to be wild and both sides are competing try to make a lead-directing bid as soon as you can, the lead is very important when the contract is going to be a doubled high level game or slam.

1♠ is never wrong, other bids can be wrong but never 1♠

More later :-)
Luis

[han]

Here are some of the lessons I keep telling myself:

About the bidding:

If your bid worked out badly, don't automatically conclude that you made a mistake. Ask good players what they would have done with your hand. Maybe you were just unlucky.

Re-evaluate your hand after every call, both partner's and the opponents. When LHO opens 1H and you have Kxx think "hmm, that is bad news, the king is probably not worth much", when you have QJ10x think "that's an excellent defensive holding" and when you have xx think "partner may be sitting behind LHO with some good hearts".

If you have made a good description of your hand, let partner pick the contract.


About the play:

Count. Bridge is hard work. If you don't want to be focussed while playing then you are wasting your time, you will never be a much better player than you are now.


In general:

Go over the hands you play. Not only the bad ones, but especially your good results. If you made a really nice bid or play for the right reasons: treasure it, brag about it if necessary, but make sure you remember it so that you may operate at this level again.

Talk about bridge. This has many advantages. Not only will you hear the opinions of others, but you will get better at remembering the hands in your head. Being able to remember 4 hands in your head is a must for becoming better. You can learn this.

Focus when playing.

[mikeh]

Hannie, on Nov 14 2005, 12:20 PM, said:

In general:

Go over the hands you play. Not only the bad ones, but especially your good results. If you made a really nice bid or play for the right reasons: treasure it, brag about it if necessary, but make sure you remember it so that you may operate at this level again.

I agree with just about everything Hannie wrote (in a much longer post than I have quoted). But I would add: don't acept your good results uncritically. Just as you may get a bad result from playing well, you may get a good result from playing badly. And in some ways, this is the worst trap: we tend to feel that we did something good when we get a top or a big pickup, and so our bad habits receive positive reinforcement. We need to be able to recognize when we just got lucky.

That is a major reason for always playing in the toughest competition one can find: playing against weak players allows sloppy bidding and play to escape unpunished and hence either unnoticed or (worse) viewed as 'good' because it succeeded.

[jillybean]

mikeh, on Nov 14 2005, 10:58 AM, said:

That is a major reason for always playing in the toughest competition one can find: playing against weak players allows sloppy bidding and play to escape unpunished and hence either unnoticed or (worse) viewed as 'good' because it succeeded.

I find I can sometimes get results comparable to the experts in a tourney.
Generally, would you say tournament play on BBO is beneficial to your game (indy/pairs) or is table play against a strong pair far superior?

tyia
jb

[han]

Table play against a strong pair is far superior imo. Try to find a regular partner and play against a regular partnership. (often easier said than done online)

[Walddk]

This may sound rude, but it's a fact that on average intermediate players make 4-6 errors per board (bidding, play and defence). Some mistakes are serious, some are rather harmless, but the worst thing is that most of them are not noticed. On to the next board after "wdp", "nice try opps", etc.

What do you prefer: to play 10 boards an hour with lots of errors, or 5 boards per hour where you have time to analyse the hands and learn from the errors?

Roland

[jillybean]

Walddk, on Nov 14 2005, 01:56 PM, said:

What do you prefer: to play 10 boards an hour with lots of errors, or 5 boards per hour where you have time to analyse the hands and learn from the errors?

The answer for me is simple. Finding other players who don't mind playing 12 minute boards and someone who has the knowledge and willingless to analyse the hands is not so easy.

jb