[Rain]

So, playing rubber bridge, you have a great hand! Lotsa diamonds. But your opponent with lots of spades easily overcalls you.

And if he makes the contract he gets more points for it.

This is unfair!

The raw score should compensate the additional difficulties of holding lower ranked suits.

[blackshoe]

Not unfair. Everybody has that problem from time to time, so it evens out.

[cherdano]

Bridge is unfair. I had all the queens, but my opponents had all the kings and aces, and they took all the tricks! And they even got 100 points for honors!!

[SoTired]

I agree... and it is dying... I am switching to poker

[EricK]

blackshoe, on Jun 18 2007, 05:11 AM, said:

Not unfair. Everybody has that problem from time to time, so it evens out.

"Fair" can be used in two different ways. Consider a variation of football where before the game there is the toss of a coin and the winner of that coin toss gets a one goal advantage. Is that fair? Well by your argument it is fair because over time each team will have the one goal advantage as often as they have the one goal deficit. But clearly (at least it is clear to me) it makes any individual game unfair.

So is it fair (in the second meaning) that not only do spades outbid diamonds, but they outscore them too?

[helene_t]

In duplicate bridge it evens out in absolute sense, not merely statistically. This is because you're not competing against your table opps, but against the other players who hold the same cards as you do. So it barely matters what the scoring is. Maybe the game could be made slightly less random by making sure that no two results produce the exact same result. Now it doesn't matter if you make 2M= or 3m=, and making those two scores slightly different would create more opportunities to those with the better bidding judgement.

In rubber bridge, I agree with Rain and EricK. But given the fact that so many prefer poker to bridge, it is not evident that fairness is what the consumers want.

[whereagles]

Bridge is unfair? So what??? Who said life was fair?

[mhais]

everybody has freedom to express his opinion about bridge, if luck is with u then everything is fair, no need to feel sad.

[Free]

Everything where money is involved isn't fair unless you're really really really good...

[Fluffy]

If bridge is unfair then you can make your own house-rules

I know of some variations of bridge:


-Power 2s!: The 2 of amy suit is allowed to revoke at any trick (bad breaks all around)

-Reverse bidding: You bid seeing ONLY LHO's card (but not yours!), after the bidding you give the cards to LHO and play (no dummy since everyone knows 13 cards). I played this a lot, its very funny (specially with a couple of beers)

-Vulnerable color Bridge. So spades are Vulnerable, but Hearts ain't, will you try that 4-3 fit instead of the 5-4 for 200 bonus points?

[helene_t]

whereagles, on Jun 18 2007, 10:19 AM, said:

Bridge is unfair? So what??? Who said life was fair?

Life isn't fair but fairness is still something to strive for, isn't it? Or are you suggesting that life shouldn't be fair?

Anyway, if you want to make rubber bridge more fair you'd better look at the unfairness related to the fact that you expect to win if you have many high cards. As a child, I played something called "Pirat Bridge", by which you had to predict the excact number of tricks you'd win and overtricks were punished as well as undertricks. That is probably somewhat fairer than rubber bridge. But still you have an advantage if you hold many top honours and very low cards, which are more predicatable than the intermediates. Maybe something like
- Card Y beats card X if it's 1-4 ranks higher (cyclically)
- You can only "beat" a card that was played before yours, so the non-transitiveness of "beating" is not a problem

would be the ultimate fair sort of bridge. Then again, the lack of known strategies for such a game would make it pretty much random (and, thus, unfair) until the game becomes as well established as bridge is today.

[Quantumcat]

Hi fluffy, I know those variations, at the youth week during the summer festival of bridge in january, we had one session of novelty pairs ... it was SO much fun!

Each board was a different rule. We had the bid your opponent's contract (e.g. bidding 2S with a spade void, or 1NT with a yarborough ... then pass the cards around clockwise and play your contract with their cards) one where each player is allowed to revoke exactly once but doesn't have to announce it, one where the opposite partner to the one that won the trick leads next, one where there are bowers like in 500 (ranking higher than ace), one where the order of suits is reversed (i.e. 1NT is lowest bid, then 1S ... etc) and some more that I've forgotten ... it was heaps of fun, and we found that the newer players did better than the more experienced ones, since we are less set in our ways and more open to adaptation and change.

Also helene, a friend of mine knows that game and I think it's called Oh Hell. (possibly just similar not the same game, but it sounds like it)

[keylime]

If bridge was fair, we've fuss more often at the bad bingo callers or the shuffleboard layouts....

[BebopKid]

Everyone who plays duplicate bridge should know that you aren't competing with the players at your table. You are competing with all the other players holding the same hand as you are.

So, the only thing unfair is when my opps don't overbid and others do.

[Rain]

cherdano, on Jun 17 2007, 11:54 PM, said:

Bridge is unfair. I had all the queens, but my opponents had all the kings and aces, and they took all the tricks! And they even got 100 points for honors!!

Can't get 100 for honors without your queens :>
150 for aces maybe. =P

[Walddk]

Rain, on Jun 18 2007, 10:43 PM, said:

cherdano, on Jun 17 2007, 11:54 PM, said:

Bridge is unfair. I had all the queens, but my opponents had all the kings and aces, and they took all the tricks! And they even got 100 points for honors!!

Can't get 100 for honors without your queens :>
150 for aces maybe. =P

Oh yes you can. AKJ10 in a trump contract earns you 100 points.

Roland

[Rain]

Walddk, on Jun 18 2007, 02:59 PM, said:

Rain, on Jun 18 2007, 10:43 PM, said:

cherdano, on Jun 17 2007, 11:54 PM, said:

Bridge is unfair. I had all the queens, but my opponents had all the kings and aces, and they took all the tricks! And they even got 100 points for honors!!

Can't get 100 for honors without your queens :>
150 for aces maybe. =P

Oh yes you can. AKJ10 in a trump contract earns you 100 points.

Roland

Right, forgot about that, thanks for pointing it out.

[Aberlour10]

I don't know why, but I have always bad feeling while I sign off in 5c or 5d

Robert

[whereagles]

helene_t, on Jun 18 2007, 10:57 AM, said:

Life isn't fair but fairness is still something to strive for, isn't it? Or are you suggesting that life shouldn't be fair?

Fairness is a moral concept. Nature is not aware of it, which might be why it doesn't exist in nature. Unless, of course, you consider equality of all before the laws of physics as fairness.

Whether or not we should strive for it, is debateable. There's a tendency to say "yes", but there are some perfectly sensible ethical doctrines which do not require fairness. (e.g. utilitarian ethics)

[barmar]

It sounds like Rain's and EricK's definition of "fair" is that you're scored only on things you have control over, i.e. your ability. By that definition, any game where there's an element of luck is unfair. And rubber bridge is certainly not fair in that respect -- if your opponents get dealt several cold game and slam hands in a row, you're probably going to lose alot. But it could just as easily have gone the other way, with you being dealt these hands.

If this "unfairness" bothers you, card games are probably not for you; sports, and games like chess and go would be more appropriate. Duplicate bridge reduces the luck aspect, but doesn't get rid of it completely.