[Echognome]

I've now included all of the boards that were bid for comment. I'd like to thank Jon (griffenmac), Dan (lanor fow), and Mike (mickyb) for their help in testing out the bidding on the boards and also for writing down a few early auctions. Jon also hosted the webpage where I posted the board analyses (by Eric Kokish) that I sent to each of the pairs that participated. You can read it yourself here:

http://members.aol.c...dequatesolvers/

I'd also like to thank Kathyrn (jillybean) for helping me run the sessions.

I'd like to know what people thought of the format and style.

Was 12 too many boards or just about right? (I doubt I'll find people saying too few)

Was the selection of boards alright or would you rather see more themed boards in the future? I thought it might be useful to have a session of "handling preempts by opponents" or "slam bidding" or "handling competitive auctions" or "balancing".

Any other comments or feedback for future sessions?

Thanks,
Matt

[Cascade]

I think the format was great and the hands were interesting and realistic not too difficult or contrived.

Thanks

[inquiry]

I don't think all one kind of hands would be a good idea.

The current method seemed fine and the 12 hands were fun. For the record, the system Hannie and i were playing should have done a lot better than we did, and the vast majority of the wacky stuff came from my side of the table. We bid 8 hands to great spots (at least imho). On three of the four bad hands, I choose non-systemic bids. The pass on hand six where the correct bid with my hand with a singleton ♥ is 2♠ patterning out the hand. After 2♠, we have a chance to stumble into a horrid but making six clubs, but we will surely will get to game. Another hand was hand 10, where I masterminded the auction with 1♦ rather than a systematic 1♠ with GF hand and 5350. I followed this up with one more non-system bid on hand 2, where I should bid 4♥ as choice of game contracts.

The other really bad hand was missing the grand slam in clubs (or possible hearts) to play in game (hand 8). Here we had a bidding misunderstanding as well as non-systemic auction. Even after our less than ideal auction to 4♣, 4NT would solve the hand even then. The systemic auction painlessly finds the grand. So, I rate this performance at 8 out of 12 right, for 67%. If hannie had a better partner who would have just made the systemic bids, he had a shot at been 92% on these hands.

Among the successes was the excellent slam on 2, the good stop at the one level on 3 (any plus score will score well here), the stop in 2S after opening 1S on 7, and stopping low on 11, and 12.

[david_c]

Even though I didn't take part, I've really enjoyed reading all the auctions and comments. Thanks Matt and everyone.

[Free]

Great initiative, cool format. The only thing I miss is some sort of table where we get an overview of what system ended in what contract, and perhaps a probable result when it would be played (double dummy or so).

12 boards is more than enough. I hope there will be more of these

[awm]

Good job Matt! This was lots of fun, and very enlightening. The one thing that seems to be missing is a summary of the hands and contracts reached by different pairs. Here I'll try to remedy that. I've selected five pairs to summarize on the basis that: (1) they definitely bid these hands with a moderator, rather than on their own or individually (2) they posted results for all or nearly all the hands.

Hand 1:

hrothgar/free: Defend 3♦
hannie/inquiry: Defend 2♦
cascade/kermit: Defend 2♦
mickyb/lanor fow: Defend 2♦ (edited)
elianna/awm: Defend 2♦

Best: Defend 3♦, although perhaps the main key is not to double a diamond partial...

Hand 2:

hrothgar/free: 4♠
hannie/inquiry: 6♠
cascade/kermit: 4♠
mickyb/lanor fow: 4♠
elianna/awm: 6♠

Best: 6♠

Hand 3:

hrothgar/free: 3NT
hannie/inquiry: 1♠
cascade/kermit: 2NT
mickyb/lanor fow: 3NT
elianna/awm: 2NT

Best: The lowest partial; 1NT is probably ideal.

Hand 4:

hrothgar/free: 5♠
hannie/inquiry: 5♥
cascade/kermit: 5♠
mickyb/lanor fow: 6♠
elianna/awm: 5♠

Best: Key is to avoid slam (requires unlikely 2-2 spades after the preempt).

Hand 5:

hrothgar/free: 4♠
hannie/inquiry: 4♠
cascade/kermit: 4♠
mickyb/lanor fow: 4♥
elianna/awm: 4♥

Best: 4♥.

Hand 6:

hrothgar/free: 3NT
hannie/inquiry: 2♥
cascade/kermit: 3NT
mickyb/lanor fow: 3NT
elianna/awm: 3NT

Best: Both 3NT and 5♣ have reasonable chances.

Hand 7:

hrothgar/free: 4♠
hannie/inquiry: 2♠
cascade/kermit: 4♠
mickyb/lanor fow: 3NT
elianna/awm: 4♠

Best: Defend 4♥X. I'd rate game and partial in spades as roughly equal, 3NT is not so good.

Hand 8:

hrothgar/free: 7♣
hannie/inquiry: 4♥
cascade/kermit: 6♥
mickyb/lanor fow: not posted
elianna/awm: 4♥

Best: 7♣. The small slam in hearts will also make (for a lower score).

Hand 9:

hrothgar/free: 4♥
hannie/inquiry: 5♥
cascade/kermit: 5♥
mickyb/lanor fow: not posted
elianna/awm: 4♠

Best: 4♥. 5♥ is also fairly safe. Four spades is... lousy.

Hand 10:

hrothgar/free: 4♠
hannie/inquiry: 6♥
cascade/kermit: 6♦
mickyb/lanor fow: 6♦
elianna/awm: 3NT

Best: Game in any strain but clubs. Key is to avoid getting too high.

Hand 11:

hrothgar/free: 1NT
hannie/inquiry: 1NT
cascade/kermit: 2♥
mickyb/lanor fow: 1NT
elianna/awm: 1NT

Best: 2♥. 1NT is also quite good. Key is to avoid 2♠ (or getting too high).

Hand 12:

hrothgar/free: 2♠
hannie/inquiry: 2♥
cascade/kermit: 2♥
mickyb/lanor fow: 3NT
elianna/awm: 3NT

Best: 2♠ or 1NT.

[Echognome]

Thanks Adam. That was really helpful. I hadn't compiled the statistics, but could be more organised for next time.

[MickyB]

Sorry, am struggling to remember the auctions on 8 and 9 - I think they ended up in 3NT and 4♥ respectively, but I may be wrong. Board 1 we were indeed overcalled, although I feel responder promising 5 diamonds would have kept some pairs out

[Rebound]

I would just like to mention that although I didn't have the opportunity to bid these with my partner, I think it's a great idea and reading about them on here was nevertheless very interesting and informative. Thanks very much.

I sincerely hope there are future such opportunities. I would like very much to participate.

[Free]

Tnx awm!

[hrothgar]

Few quick thoughts:

1. Not sure where you got the hands from, however, I thought that they were a "good" choice. More specifically, I think that Kokish did a nice job analyzing the hands.

2. I prefer not to have "theme" weeks. As soon as people guess (or worse yet misguess) the pattern, it will start to skew their results...

3. At some point in time, I'd like a format in which a full table was bidding each set of hands...

[inquiry]

The hads came from the "WBF Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs", and not a bidding contest, per se . For people worried about copyright issues (if anyone), the site included the following comments..

1) Comments are deemed to be copyright free.

2) Comments will appear on the site and may be published elsewhere

So Matt was fine lifting the hands (that is always ok), and Eric's published comments.

Ben

[han]

Thanks to Matt and others for organizing this first round! I think the hands were great, the discussion was interesting and it was very good that this was not a contest (and that there were no scores. For next time it would be nice if we have more different methods. I'm thinking about Gerben's F-N system, Mike777's light openings and Fluffy's "2NT GF wtp ".


As I see it, most of the bad results were not due to systemic flaws but rather to personal mistakes. I think that this nicely reflects real life bridge. It is helpful to have a well thought-out system and (more importantly) to know it well, but in the end the winner is usually the pair that makes the best choices and the fewest mistakes. The fact that not everybody was in top shape while bidding these hands made the discussion only more interesting in my opinion.

[cherdano]

I echo the thanks to echo, and would also like to thank the pairs for presenting their unpolished real life auctions. The discussions were nice, and I would hope to see a few more bidding styles represented next time, who could only present hindsight-auctions this time.

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