[jdonn]

This is a very interesting thread, I like seeing what everyone thinks about themself, even if it was a few years ago.

I think my biggest weakness (especially online! but in person too) is remaining focused. Online I am never focused and often make silly plays, and in person I often realize later I missed the key card or inference that would have guided me. More technically and on a similar note, I have always wished I was better at drawing inferences, or more specifically asking myself things like 'why did he play that way' or realizing 'he wouldnt have done that if he held that'. I could use a lot of improvement in that area.

I think my biggest strength is flexibility. I am comfortable playing just about any method, just about any style, regarding aggressiveness, signalling, conventions, all that stuff. I think that came from playing lots of matchpoints, swiss, knockouts, rubber, and chicago, and with lots of partners who were old, young, bad players, great players, etc. I also am very confident at the table, no situation intimidates me and I always feel like I will win, even against someone I logically know is better than I am. I also feel like a great reader of my opponents, against the vast majority of bridge players I am quite confident I can lead toward a KJ and get it right simply based on how LHO plays his card.

[helene_t]

I think my bidding is better than my card play, but that may be a bias in perception that most people have since a bidding oops takes two, and with the lack of solid agreements both can blame it on partner, while an oops in the play (even defensive play) is more likely to be clearly one partner's fault.

Also most of my bridge skills come from reading. I spend much more time reading than playing, and also I have the feeling that playing does not teach me too much. Part of this is due to the fact that I'm a statistician and as such skeptical towards the idea of learning from experience, short of extremely large sample sizes. Also I play too little in strong fields. I have developed quite good skills at taking advantage of weaker players, such as foolish falsecarding and "setting up" my weakest/shortest suit as declarer.

As a declarer, I can usualy recognize a partial elemination and a loser-on-loser play when required. Throw-in and squeezes sometimes work for me as well. I think safety plays and suit combinations are my weaker spots.

As a defender, I benefit from having studied opening lead problems in magazines, but otherwise my defence is poor.

In bidding, my strength is system knowledge. I know the (sometimes subtle) differences between the American, English, French, Dutch and Polish standard systems quite well. My weakest point is probably overcall decisions.

[pbleighton]

Bidding is the best part of my game. It's the part of the game which interests me the most, and (probably related to this) I have a good memory for bidding systems. I have good judgement in competitive situations for my overall level (strong intermediate/low advanced).

Defense is the worst part of my game. I find it to be the least interesting part (again, I'm sure it's related). I can't be bothered to count out hands (and my middle-aged brain is relieved by this), though I am getting better at getting a picture of partner's and declarer's hands. My signalling is OK, but I don't always pick up partner's signals. I find that as my declarer play improves, my defense improves, as I can figure out what the declarer might be doing.

My declarer play is in the middle. My strengths are that I spend a fair amount of time on most hands prior to the first trick analyzing different lines of play (the best change I ever made to my game), and am good at getting the opponents to help me by early, appropriate exits. My weakness is counting.

Peter

[Badmonster]

I'm always very nice to my partner.

[benlessard]

My biggest weakness is remembering the spots. Both my declarer and my defense are affected by that. Ive noticed that most players above my strenght have photographic memories.Most of them have a clear pictures of the 52 cards after and during the deal. Ive played with a partner who could remember almost all the 52*24 cards after a 24 deals sessions. My declarer play/defense was nowhere near of his caliber, It was not because he was choosing better lines of play or could see better defensive lines but mostly in the execution of them. As a declarer he could easily see the hand from the defender point of view (with all the spots,counts signals and subtile suits prefence) and that is a tremendous advantage. In defense every card i played had a meaning and he saw it all.

Me im ok for the honnors after 24 boards but i can forget spots before the hand is over.I have no difficulties knowing if my "6" is master. But to remember what was the exact spots under it is a pain. In defense i can be lazy with the spots.

I think its because i visualize rank instead of the cards numbers. If the AQ63 has been played then i see my 9 as a 'jack now' (4th best card).


Also i don't have the stamina to play 2 sessions per day. My concentration always drop after 40 boards or so.

I also have difficulties when switching from a student to a 'real partner' and from a 'real' partner to a student.

I have a good attitude towards my partners. When i see my partner make a nasty defensive-bidding blunder I can manage to shut my mouth but it take some energy. My aim is to play a full day without coming back on any deals (to only discuss at the end of the tournament) but its not easy.

[han]

Well, I must say I'm also a bit uncomfortable writing about my strengths, so let me start with those. Perhaps my strongest point is concentration. I also take bridge quite seriously, so I will often reread puzzle books, go through system notes and study MSC hands. I think I also have a good poker-face, but I am not 100% sure about that.

I think that neither my bidding, declarer play or defense is much stronger than the other parts. Having said that, I know Arend often complains about my defensive signalling, I haven't given it enough attention recently so I'm going to work on that. I'm probably not aggressive enough when it comes to game-bidding, but that's something that should be easy to fix. Perhaps slam bidding is a weak part of our partnership, although I think that we've been steadily improving that over the last year.

The fact that I play so little face to face bridge certainly is a disadvantage to me. BBO is excellent for improving most aspects, but for some (like reading the opponents' faces) you have to play live bridge. I do think that I am a lot better now than I was 2 years ago, while I hardly touched a card in these two years.

[Codo]

My biggest weknesses are all parts of declarer play. If I compare myself with the guys in the same league, I am ahead of them in bidding and defence but far behind in declarer play. One of the biggest flaws in this area is lasyness. If I find a 75 % route, I too often stop thinking about the 87 % lines. And if I think the hand is easy, I don´t count any more.

In the bidding, the biggest flaw is that I never psych and never bid on real junk.
Better players "know" or at least feal when it is the right to bid bad hands, I don´t.
Like "all" I don´t double enough, even if I do so more oftern then many and I don´t like my abilities in competetive bidding, maybe the law is not enough.

I like my success in finding good marginal slams and in game/partscore descissions. For some seasons my partnership had been realy good in finding 80 % slams with less then 27 HCP and failing to the 4-0 split in the trump suit.

In defence, I need good signals from partner, then I can figure out most hands. With partners who are lazy signalers, I am quite bad.
Of course I prefer to defend at imps, because the goal is much clearer.

As a partner I am not able to get the best out of my partner. I don´t argue, growl or do anything nasty (as long as my partners are no relatives).
But there are people who can make their partners feal really good, so that they can play their best bridge. I am not good enough in this part of the game.

[Gerben42]

My biggest weakness is mental toughness.
This is about avoiding making the stupid mistakes. I guess it also has to do with "giving up" in some situations where there is still one more trick for us in the bag.
Also, I have never won a "big" event, but have led before the final session more than 5 times. Then ALWAYS suddenly heat 3 sets in.

Also I tend to go for the legitimate line rather than so psychological stuff, which I should probably do more, but I am not a gambler. This also means that I don't attack enough against weaker opponents. The problem is that if I bid agressively against weaker opponents and might reach a bad game which they might misdefend, I fear looking stupid since the game is not 30% but 0%, or the defense turned out to be totally trivia.

One reason for this is that I often cannot figure out if someone has the queen in guess situations, even if they are really bad players. So I stick to the math in that case.

Overall that means I tend to produce boring results. Luckily I almost always play agressive bidding systems.

Quote

Better players "know" or at least feel when it is the right to bid bad hands, I don´t.

I noticed that when I "try" something, it is invariably badly timed. So I don't. See above.

[Fluffy]

Gerben42, on Aug 20 2007, 09:19 AM, said:

Also I tend to go for the legitimate line rather than so psychological stuff.

I do this also, and it is very hard to improve ebcause there is no way to tell after the hand what was the % for the psychological play.


I also miss the good old times when I just run my 6♦ tricks in 3NT afte winning the lead no matter what and saw how my opponents discarded wrong. Now I tend to keep the suit for comunication in case of (put your prefered low % reason here) and I think I often make less tricks than I could have done because of that.


From the previous post, I think I am no longer that good on what I felt good (maybe I was being lucky). I don't realise having improved on my bad areas at all.

Yet my results are better, and the reason is simple: I make less silly mistakes, I can concentrate better.