[mrdct]

I presume "doesn't count" is a double entendre in the context of:

1. Any pairs outside the top 300 pairs would not be included in anyone's reasonable assessment of which pairs in the world are capable of winner major events.

2. One of the reasons why these pairs outside the top 300 would be unlikely to achieve great things is a flaw in their game around counting from 1 to 13 in each suit from time to time during a hand; i.e. they do not count.

[Patapon]

Hi all,

You are all making comparisons between female pairs and male pairs.
As a member of the national French woman team I can say by sure that my team isn’t as strong as the open team
My pair isn’t strong enough to compete in open
But the sad fact is that the VC and the BB are running concurrently (same with European Championship) and that women must choose.
Most of the stronger woman players are more or less professional players and being champions in their category in good for their job.
If the women’s events were simply cancelled or at least not running in the same time than the open events (but in the same time than juniors and seniors events) then my guess is that we would see some female playing in the BB very soon.
But not inevitably in women partnership!
Catherine D’Ovidio wouldn’t play with Daniele Gaviard but with a male. Women are forced (obviously!) to play together in VC but they wouldn’t in BB! They would be considered as open players and not just female players.
Most of the very good players don’t even think they could possibly play with a good female and choose weaker partner because good female are not on their list of possible partners and they don’t even think to play with them.
I am now playing with my husband in open French events and trials I have good hope to be qualified some day in the open team. I know this wouldn’t be possible in my female partnership or team.
My husband was Paul Chemla’s partner for the past 6 years and his pair was in the French open team in the last European championship. I am not saying I play as well as Paul Chemla. I know I am far from his skill level but I am sure the pair I form with my husband is almost as good just because we are very happy to play together and that both of us will be able to give our best (that was not the case when Philippe played with Chemla)
A good partnership isn’t only a question of individual skill Confidence and trust is also very important in my opinion.

When I was young I played three European juniors championships and finished 1srt in 1984 and 2nd.in 1986 I played with my sister then with a male
I didn’t realise my chance and I joined the woman team in 1987
This was a big mistake( but I was young). Since this time I have never be considered as a bridge player anymore but as a female player and my bridge hasn’t improve ( you need to play with and against strong players to improve)
There was no discrimination between male in female in juniors. at this time
Unfortunately the WBF has now created girls events- for juniors female-No chance for these girls to ever become top open players!

Benedicte Cronier

[Tomi2]

Patapon, on Oct 12 2007, 02:16 PM, said:

Unfortunately the WBF has now created girls events- for juniors female-No chance for these girls to ever become top open players!

this was an interesting posting, but I have to disagree in the fact, that the Girl's event in Youth Bridge is bad. Girls under 20 years can play both, "Girls" and "Schools", they are not at the same time. In our German team two girls joined the schools team after their own event. Joanna Krawczyk from Poland even managed to win both events! (after winning gold 2005 with the scools team - its her 3rd European Youth title - wow!)
In the Junior series (under 25) we had a lot of female players (who then could not participate in the girls event). In Our Team Maria Wuermseer played very well, we finished fifth, the goldmedal went to the Netherlands with Marion Michielsen and Meike Wortel, silver to Italy with Irene Baroni (oh dear, I played against her and then she had 25VP more) . Many other Teams also had girls in their squad, and most of them played their first international events 2004 or 2005 in the Girls - competition and later joined their junior teams. I bet Joanna and many others will do so too!



To the starting topic: I also think that a small group of female elite-players could play in an event like the BB but they would end somewhere at place 15 or so maybe 10. So those players have to chose "should I fight for becoming an open player and win few medals or should I try to win as much women tourneys as possible and find sponsors for such tournament.

[han]

I really like your attitude Patapon and I hope that we will soon be able to cheer for you in the open events on Vugraph! Go get them!

[Fluffy]

Time for a little history.

All women top pairs in spain are 'anarquic' to say the least, I know of none to be capable of analysing a hand, they always just throw the blame at each other. t the end of any European Championship they come withtheir firends to tell them about, and they only throw the blame at their team-mates who played horrible and thus they finised in X position. No matter if my pair was under-las in the Butler, that's because I played against agaisnt best pairs blablabla.

Only one spanish women I know (Maria Panadero), I've seen explaining a hand full in detail, and that has a lot to do with marring a good male player (Joao Pasarinho) and playing extensively with him. He is just one of the best partners you can have, who never blames partner (ok, sometimes its so clear you can't say anything else, but he will then say nothing).

Anyway other women don't like Maria, they say she is so agressive she is more like a man lol.

Ok, enough said, when I joined online bridge in 2002 I actually belived women were clearly inferior in bridge and had no hope or matching male level. How clueless I was!

I remember misscrediting Frances's post just because she was a woman (only when I found she was a woman, Frances is a male name in Spain), I would just refuse to believe she could be right!. lol how wrong I was. The very same thing happened with Elianna, Helene, Kathrin or any other woman in the forums.

Took me a long time (years, 3 or 4) in these forums to open my mind (thank you Frances, you'll never know how grateful I am), but finally I have realised I was wrong, and maybe (just maybe), spanish women would also be capable of good bridge if they ever were worried about playing good. Instead of making the others to think they are good (wich is the main problem in my opinion).

[mrdct]

In a recent posting to a different thread I made what turned out to be quite an infamatory comment that "ladies ... events are an embarrassment for a mind-sport such as bridge". This was misinterpreted by some and serious offence was taken by a few for which I regret.

As some may now have worked out, I have a very similar perspective to Patapon on this matter that in essence the existence of female-only events is not good for the improvment in skill of female players or partnerships.

Fluffy also makes some telling observations of the real-life adverse effects of running female-only events.

I also believe holding female-only events is not good for the image of the game as it conveys a message that females aren't able to effectively compete with males in a mind-sport where gender ought not make any difference to a person's capacity to be a good bridge player.

As far as I know there was only one female player in the Bermuda Bowl this year, Pauline Gumby from Australia. In her partnership with Warren Lazer she played a key role in getting Australia into the quarter-finals, finishing a credible 13th in the datums. Whilst I haven't been keeping close tabs on Pauline's bridge career, she was fixture on Australian ladies teams throughout the early 80s and, indeed, had a win and few placings in the PABF Championships. Pauline more-or-less stopped playing in ladies events in the mid-80s and concentrated on open bridge and along the way has collected plenty of national titles and earned selection to the Australian open team twice.

As the feminist I am, I encourage my sisters all over the world to break the bondage of stagnant female partnerships and contest open events. But if some still prefer to play in female-only events for whatever reason, that's OK too.

[muggle]

Quote

I also believe holding female-only events is not good for the image of the game as it conveys a message that females aren't able to effectively compete with males in a mind-sport where gender ought not make any difference to a person's capacity to be a good bridge player.

Except it is the harsh truth for every mind-event in the world, from poker, to math, to video games. It is a hard fact that goes way beyond cultural sexism or expectations. If anyone, male or female, is naturally talented at an activity they will naturally strive to excel.

I've heard 2 biological explanations that make sense to me:

1) Men focus, women multitask (I know someone quoted this from Auken/Armin book). I saw this demonstrated a science documentary many years ago. They had test subjects listen to multiple voices at the same time. Men could pick out a single voice, whereas women could not. This was attributed to back during our hunter/gatherer days, where men had to focus and ignore all distractions to hunt, while women did work around the 'homestead' but were also always subconsciously listening for their children.

2) Women's intelligence profile are more centered around the norm (higher and narrow peak), men's are flatter and more spread. I read this as the explanation of why girls do better in school than boys, even after correcting for girls being better behaved. Boys having a flatter and wider IQ profile means more boys are at both the extreme high end and extreme low.



I'm not expert on this, or bridge, so maybe I'm repeating nonsense. Feel free to correct me.

[Mbodell]

muggle, on Oct 14 2007, 12:09 AM, said:

I've heard 2 biological explanations that make sense to me:

...

2) Women's intelligence profile are more centered around the norm (higher and narrow peak), men's are flatter and more spread. I read this as the explanation of why girls do better in school than boys, even after correcting for girls being better behaved. Boys having a flatter and wider IQ profile means more boys are at both the extreme high end and extreme low.

I'm not expert on this, or bridge too, so maybe I'm repeating nonsense. Feel free to correct me.

That is the expected biological explanation from evolutionary biology for just about anything M/F. Since F pay more cost for young and since F have a closer to constant number of children (largely due to duration of time of pregnancy and child raising between pregnancies) while M in many species have a very wide variety of number of young (usually the alpha M gets many, many while most M get none) it means that your best "strategy" for off spring is that if you can have an exceptional young, have a M. If you can't, have a F. Therefore managing to correlate high variance (both +ve and -ve) with M-ness is a good successful strategy (no matter how you pull it off).

I like evolutionary biology. I think it explains far more than most people are aware. But IMO when applied to humans in an activity like bridge I'm far from convinced that the explanation I've outlined above is correct.

[Radrag]

fred, on Oct 9 2007, 11:54 AM, said:

Here is how I think about it:

There is a small (less than 10) group of elite pairs in the world. If these pairs play their best then the only pairs that will normally beat them are other elite pairs.
...
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Who are these half dozens pairs?

Meckwell
Helgemo-Helness
Balicki-Zmudzinski
Laria-Versace
Duboin-Bocchi
Zia-Rosenberg

Are Martelsby still there?
Will Hamway recover?

[helene_t]

muggle, on Oct 14 2007, 07:09 AM, said:

I've heard 2 biological explanations that make sense to me:

1) Men focus, women multitask (I know someone quoted this from Auken/Armin book). I saw this demonstrated a science documentary many years ago. They had test subjects listen to multiple voices at the same time. Men could pick out a single voice, whereas women could not. [....]
2) Women's intelligence profile are more centered around the norm (higher and narrow peak), men's are flatter and more spread. [...]

2) is a well-known fact. Mbodell explains why it must be true. Btw the evolutionary explanation might account for part of the "nurture" component as well. Baboo mothers have been observed to devote more resources to male young than to female young. More specifically, it would make sense if parents encouraged risk-taking in boys and risk-aversion in girls. I don't know if such a difference has been documented but it would surpise me if it has not.

1) may be relevant as well but I'm not sure. Bridge strikes me as an extremly multi-diciplinary activity. Suppose that women tend to be better at counting and at empatising with partner, while men tend to be better at creating mental images of possible card layouts and plays. Those factors might cancel out. They might not. I would expect men to be inherently better at chess, though, where the creation and analysis of mental images of future layouts is a key ability.

[hotShot]

I don't think that there is a biological reason and I wonder why females suggest that it is that way.

I think it's more of an educational and statistical thing.
Boys are educated to search for competition and participate in it. Girls are usually not educated that way.
If you look at the male/female ration in your local club you will probably have a balanced ration. Then take a look at the subset who plays at regional events, you will probably find that the ratio changes. May women are not interested in playing outside of the club, even if they are competitive.

As a result the pool of players that are interested in competitions contains much more men than women. Usually the number of top players grows with the pool from which they are selected.
To form a strong pair you need two good player and they have to build up a lot of partnership experience. But the pool of female players is smaller. It's much harder for them to find a good female partner or if they don't live in the same area, they won't be able to play enough.