[kenrexford]

I was amazed to see that the difference between gold and silver this year for two fields was 1 and 2 IMP's respectively. Very close finals are how you want it. This says much about the need for VERY tight bidding, play, and defense, eh?

[pclayton]

Nail biters. I wish I would have stayed up

Partials? Try overtricks.

I doubt this changes anyone's strategy in long matches, however. Play good bridge however you define it.

[jdonn]

kenrexford, on Oct 17 2008, 11:28 AM, said:

I was amazed to see that the difference between gold and silver this year for two fields was 1 and 2 IMP's respectively.  Very close finals are how you want it.  This says much about the need for VERY tight bidding, play, and defense, eh?

As said by Meckstroth, if you lose by an imp in a long match it's not because of an overtrick or undertrick you blew. It's the end result of all the big swings you won and lost.

Having said that, I think a number of players in general grasp at straws to try and set contracts at imps and end up giving away needless overtricks too often.

[barmar]

I've long felt that bridge matches should require wins by more than some threshold of IMPs, somewhat analogous to the way games like volleyball and table tennis require that you win by 2 points. If you have a 64- or 128-board match where the margin is only 2 IMPs, the two teams are really very equal, and the direction of the win is effectively random. You look at the score sheet and you'll often see a dozen big swings in each direction, it's often dependent on which boards happen to fit different pairs' systems well.

[xcurt]

barmar, on Oct 19 2008, 10:06 PM, said:

I've long felt that bridge matches should require wins by more than some threshold of IMPs, somewhat analogous to the way games like volleyball and table tennis require that you win by 2 points.

Jeff Goldsmith looked at this a long time ago, see A Study of IMP Matches. Your ability to discriminate between the teams goes up with log(boards played) so you would to play many additional boards (maybe even another full match worth) to get any significant additional confidence that the team with the lead after the last board is played is, in fact, the better team.

I agree with Josh. I once lost a 64-board district-level GNT KO by 2 ******* IMPs (the team that beat us went on to make the open -- back then it was just called Flight A -- national finals that year). The two big missed opportunities were not partscores.